2025.11.19: The Backlog Of The Year Awards

Speaker 1 Hey!

Speaker 1 Reporting the podcast! Gun up!

Speaker 1 Good morning to you, wherever you are, because it is morning somewhere!

Speaker 1 That was early, early in aggressively aggressive sitting right over there, balancing out my primal aggression. It's Ashley Burns.
Hi, Ashley, everybody.

Speaker 2 I don't know what's going to balance that out.

Speaker 1 So, we're going to cue off your face a a little bit there because when we played that drop, you had a very quizzical look on your face.

Speaker 1 So, here's what we're going to do: okay, we're going to have a drop contest. And I'm not going to explain the rules of the drop contest.

Speaker 1 I'm just going to say there's a drop contest so that I don't have to explain this anymore. If you want to find out, go talk to people in the comments, they'll tell you what to do.

Speaker 1 That way, I don't have to sit there and go, Here's this reason, and at my sole discretion, and everything like that, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 2 You know, I feel like Bernie, you just spent as long explaining that you're not going to explain it as you would have just explained it.

Speaker 1 First of all, how dare you? secondly let me give you the uh the the the bird's eye view here the high-level vision for this actually the reason why i did that was

Speaker 1 ender's game style here i explain it now okay but in the future i never have to explain it again so i did take as long to explain it now that i wasn't going to explain it But in the future, I'll just say drop contest and that'll be it.

Speaker 1 What?

Speaker 2 This is you like winning the future fights? This is you.

Speaker 1 Exactly.

Speaker 2 This is you like beating the shit out of the cate at the beginning of the story so that they never get up again.

Speaker 1 Look who knows for sci-fi by a

Speaker 1 slightly problematic author.

Speaker 1 Yeah, that's exactly right. Ender, Ender got in a fight with some bullies and he beat the hell out of the kid.
And they asked him, why did you do that? And he said, I wasn't trying to win this fight.

Speaker 1 I was trying to win all the future fights. Yes.
So he could beat the kid so badly, nobody would ever mess with him.

Speaker 2 Which then running theme throughout the book. Wonderful book, by the way.
Love it. Couldn't recommend it enough.
Yes, the author is highly problematic, but it's a great, great book.

Speaker 2 Or, you know, go watch the movie, I guess, if you don't want to read the book.

Speaker 1 Did you like any of the other ones? Did you read any of the follow-ups to Ender's Game?

Speaker 2 I did. I read, was it Speaker for the Dead?

Speaker 1 I like the concept of that. The title talks about Speaker for the Dead, someone who speaks for someone who's passed away and talks about their life very honestly and openly.

Speaker 1 I always like that as a concept. Nobody does that.
We go the exact opposite route.

Speaker 2 You mean they're like, don't say anything bad about anyone who's dead?

Speaker 1 Or the moment somebody dies, like there could be someone, like I saw this with Richard Nixon. Everyone, his whole life was like, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

Speaker 1 And then he died, and everyone's like, oh, what a terrible loss. Yeah, you know, and like celebrate his life.
That's kind of changed now that

Speaker 1 a lot of that communication has been handed over to social media and the mass public. They're not, they don't really adopt that.
Yeah.

Speaker 2 They're like, six, seven, bra.

Speaker 1 We had that. Yeah.

Speaker 2 It's very, there's been, you know, fairly recently a confronting moment in our household where Finn came home with school lingo for the first time.

Speaker 2 This is like words that he did not learn in our house. He came home and started like braing us.

Speaker 1 He said specifically bruh. Yeah, not a broken pronouncing that correctly.

Speaker 2 But like bruh, because I'm sure we've said bro to him, but the bra, he absolutely picked up at school. And so then now we're like, now we're living in fear, right? What's the next thing?

Speaker 2 Is he going to come home with a six, seven?

Speaker 1 I dropped him off at swimming practice yesterday and it just started to snow here. I mean, it was a crazy, awesome, like huge snowflakes coming down.

Speaker 1 Dropped him off in the locker room because because we were in a rush. I said, here, you get changed.
I'm going to put your stuff in the locker.

Speaker 1 So I was in there with him, a bunch of dads in there, and I saw a dad moment. Nice moment because he was sitting there with his kids.

Speaker 1 He had two kids, and he was doing the hands up and down, going six, seven, six, seven, like playing along with him. And I,

Speaker 1 I'm ashamed to admit this. I stared that dad down.

Speaker 2 I stared him down.

Speaker 2 Did he like catch your eyes and stop? Or did he, did he just like eventually subside under the weight of the random numbers?

Speaker 1 I saw a little shame. I saw

Speaker 1 a glimpse of it. Yeah.

Speaker 2 He's just trying to be, you know, be on a level with his kids, right? And connect where, where they are.

Speaker 1 No, we're adults, Ashley.

Speaker 1 There are lines in the sand. There are responsibilities that we have and that we share as a group.

Speaker 2 And that's to be as unclue as possible.

Speaker 1 We got to keep that at bay, dude.

Speaker 2 The thing about that, though, is that I feel like there's a lot of really weird generational markers. And they have to do with numbers specifically.

Speaker 2 Like, we have so much like random bullshit that we would quote as kids, like all the Beavis and butthead butthead stuff i mean come on like you just you'd see kids walking around going corn holy

Speaker 2 but numbers specifically seem to occupy a really weird niche right right now it's six seven if you were to go to someone and say one three three seven and they went nice you're even going back some you're missing like 420

Speaker 2 there's there's a lot of them but like that one is a is a specific generational marker right like if someone responds to that number you know when that person grew up i'll be honest with you i always hated hated this shit.

Speaker 1 I honestly, I always hated it. I always thought it was so stupid.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 But I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to things that aren't creative, like where people just lump in with that like mad lib style humor.

Speaker 1 Like I really hate when there's a serious political event that takes place or something that happens and people like race to the comments to make the comment.

Speaker 1 Like, it's always the ones you expect most or something like that. You know, everybody wants to be the first one to make the appropriate cookie cutter response.

Speaker 2 I guess you say that, but in a way, memes are how we've always communicated. We've always communicated via a lot of these communal jokes.
It's just what the jokes are change. Yeah.
And they evolve.

Speaker 2 And then like when we get uncool and they no longer make sense to us, that's because they've been handed off to the new generation, right? They're carrying the torch now.

Speaker 1 A big number that has hit in the last 24 hours is one I would not have thought I would hear in 2025. 100% of the U.S.
Senate unanimous vote.

Speaker 2 Imagine saying the word unanimous on a vote in the Senate to the U.S. Senate.

Speaker 1 Weird in my mouth to say the word unanimous in 2025.

Speaker 2 Wait, hold on, though. I thought it just

Speaker 2 went through the House, right? And there was like, it was not unanimous in the House. There was one dude, one dude who voted.

Speaker 2 So specifically, we're talking about there was a vote on whether or not the government is going to release the Epstein files.

Speaker 2 And it went, it passed the House in flying colors with only one dissenting vote. Like one dude from, I want to say it's like Louisiana or or something.
And everyone else voted yes.

Speaker 1 He's the guy from the British Virgin Islands. That's what that's his jurisdiction.

Speaker 1 I really think though that guy who didn't vote for it, the one guy, I bet there was like 40 other guys who's like, hey, let's all tell him we're going to vote no. Let's all tell him.

Speaker 1 And he's like, he goes like, hey, no.

Speaker 1 He's the only guy. I would not want to be that guy today.
And I don't, I honestly, I don't want to hear his rationalization. I don't want to hear it.
I don't. And then the Senate voted unanimously.

Speaker 1 If you're not familiar with U.S. politics, there's 100 people in the Senate.

Speaker 2 And getting the Senate to vote unanimously on anything seems like an

Speaker 2 impossible thing.

Speaker 1 Actually, you could have a vote that was like, do we like the U.S. Senate? And the Senate would not be unanimous on that.

Speaker 1 So, yeah, so I don't know what this means, to be honest with you. My sincere hope is that this is now the end of this constant discussion of the Epstein files and speculation.

Speaker 1 And while it is a very important issue,

Speaker 1 it is an ongoing, I feel like, distraction that comes up at certain times, or there's efforts to distract away from it.

Speaker 1 So I hope this will have some closure and finality to some of these accusations that have gone through. What I fear is that it's now just the beginning of a new era.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, the thing about a lot of this is I feel like

Speaker 2 And maybe this is by design, but that there have been a lot of things like, this is it. This is going to change everything.

Speaker 2 There's going to be, there's going to be accountability, or there's going to be like, this is going to give us the answers we need. This is going to give closure.
This is going to like get results.

Speaker 2 And then it just doesn't. And it, but it continues to almost for so long that it's, it, it wears everyone out.
And I, I feel, I do feel like the wearing out is by design.

Speaker 1 No, I feel, I feel like that too. It's, and then we've lived in it now for 12 years of this, going all the way back to presidential campaigns.

Speaker 1 I feel like we've lived in an era of, oh, oh, look at this incredibly damning smoking gun. Let me add this to the pile of smoking guns, right? Yes.

Speaker 1 And then we have this gigantic feeling that the people that we entrust to help run our country and help guide our lives are just working in against our best interests and even just in a lot of ways, just against us entirely.

Speaker 2 But there are places where I feel like having a vote can drive really positive force and really positive change.

Speaker 2 Bernie, and that is Game of the Year.

Speaker 1 My segue was going to be to talk about the giant pile of smoking guns. I was playing Fortnite Simpsons

Speaker 1 and they had the Springfield tire fire in, which I liked seeing. So your segue was better than mine.

Speaker 2 No, I love that, though. That's a nice attention to detail for Fortnite Simpsons.

Speaker 1 Yeah, it must have been fun to go through the map. At first, I was like, man, how did they come up with all this stuff?

Speaker 1 But then I guess when you have stuff in the game, like there's a fish in Fortnite. So you think, okay, what does a fish in Simpson look like?

Speaker 1 And Simpsons, as we all know, has covered everything at this point. So they use the three-eyed fish from the nuclear point.

Speaker 2 But it's, it's nice. I'm sure it's got to be like both really great and also like maybe a little bit corralling to work with such an established franchise as the Simpsons.

Speaker 2 Because one, you know that like they didn't have to really come up with the map of Springfield, right? Like that's something that is in the Bible.

Speaker 2 It's like, here's the map, here's where everything is.

Speaker 1 They already knew where the tire fire is.

Speaker 1 Maybe not, maybe not, because Springfield as a location was

Speaker 1 when I first learned this term, it was I was working on a commercial for Left 4 Dead 2 all those years ago.

Speaker 1 And by the way, the other day when I was trying to come up with what are the Valve franchises where they need a third iteration, people in the comments were like, How did you not come up with Left 4 Dead?

Speaker 1 Everything. That's the one that I played the most amount of hours was Left 4 Dead.
So Left 4 Dead 3 could be another one.

Speaker 1 Also, Dota 3. Dota 3 as well.

Speaker 2 There's a lot of threes that Valve could use.

Speaker 1 They could do a lot and really capture capture the market. Yeah, really.
I would be there day one, actually. Day one.
I would buy that for just those like five games, six games. Absolutely.

Speaker 1 And Team Fortress, you wouldn't even need to do anything, but just update it. Sure.

Speaker 1 For modern graphics and sound effects and all that stuff. You don't need to add in another character.
It might throw off the balance and everything.

Speaker 2 Right.

Speaker 2 Throw a new skin marketplace on there and you're good to go.

Speaker 1 Kind of like Shrintendo.

Speaker 1 Just

Speaker 1 give it to me again. I'll take it again and pay for it again.

Speaker 2 Okay, first of all, how dare you? They iterate every single time, but that's not the point. You were saying something about Left 4 Dead 2.

Speaker 1 No, no, tangents. We're in it now.
No, I'll get back there. I love my tangents off the top of tangents.
Did you see the photos that were released from the live-action Legend of Zelda?

Speaker 2 I did. I did.
What did you think?

Speaker 1 They look good.

Speaker 2 Okay, yeah, but they look good. I mean, it's interesting because they're mixing characters from like different versions of Zelda.

Speaker 1 Okay, that's something that only Nintendo fans would notice.

Speaker 2 No, but

Speaker 2 it's like Breath of the Wild era Zelda, right? But that's not Breath of the Wild Link. Okay.
So that's, I just mean that they're like, they're, you know, they're looking.

Speaker 2 So maybe this is like a new timeline. It's maybe a new story.
I don't know what they're doing with it. We take the clues where we can, bro.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.
Let me tell you what you sound like. This is what you have to deal with living with me.
I'm like, they have Smart Hulk along with Mark VI Armor? That wouldn't even be possible.

Speaker 1 That's what that sounds like.

Speaker 1 In fantasy land over there. Okay.
I got to say, though, real quick, while we're in this level of our tangent, before we roll it back up,

Speaker 1 the Project Hail Mary, second trailer came out, the official trailer, looks great. I mean, it's one of those things where it's like, it looks exactly like what I'm hoping.
You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 It looks like a very faithful adaptation of the book. And now I'm to the point where I'm getting kind of like, this is so faithful.

Speaker 1 It's going to make the stuff that I feel like they imagine differently than me. It's going to feel more uncanny because it's so faithful.

Speaker 2 Well, I mean, I'm basically turning into a bitch.

Speaker 2 I guess that remains to be seen. Is it Breath of the Wild era like Project Halmary?

Speaker 1 Does Rocky have on March 34 Armor?

Speaker 2 What I,

Speaker 2 the, the response that I read about that trailer is that they would recommend it to people who've read the book, but they would not recommend that trailer to people who have not read the book because it spells out a lot of the things that they're keeping very faithful to the book, right?

Speaker 2 Almost like to the point where it could steal some of the magic if you haven't already experienced that story. If you have experienced that story via the book, then it might add to the magic, right?

Speaker 2 Because then you're getting to see these things that you imagined.

Speaker 1 Or just you're going to watch the movie anyway, just wait for the movie.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, which is, you know, a tack that I'm taking a lot more with things these days.

Speaker 2 But looking at, like, for example, the ship, I remember, you imagined very differently than what was shown in the initial marketing and stuff.

Speaker 1 So differently. The ship is, the environment is completely different.

Speaker 2 Right. But so far, like, is that looking too weird to you in the trailers, or do you think that's a change you can accept?

Speaker 1 Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 So, rolling our tangents back up here,

Speaker 1 I learned the term when I worked on Left 4 Dead 3. I learned the term designed ambiguity.

Speaker 2 You worked on Left 4 Dead 3.

Speaker 2 You heard it here first, people.

Speaker 1 Left for Dead 2. Left for Dead 2.
When I worked on the commercial for Left 4 Dead 2 to clearly define my role, they talked about designed ambiguity.

Speaker 1 And it was that you don't have to spell everything out, that you can leave clues in the world, like environmental clues, that people can use to establish their own lore in their head.

Speaker 1 And a lot of times, what people will imagine in their head is better than what they could tell you explicitly in the narrative, anyway.

Speaker 2 Well, and you know, the best part of that is then people will have all these really creative head cannons.

Speaker 2 Uh, and if you never told them which one is right, you get to decide which one you're going to keep.

Speaker 1 It's like an engineered head cannon, right? Like a or an engine for that. Yeah, so with Springfield and The Simpsons, I think they kind of kept a very designed ambiguity.

Speaker 1 I will admit I kept up with Simpsons during the first 20 years and not the second 20 years of the show. So they might have changed that entirely.
Like, I didn't even know what state it was in.

Speaker 1 But yeah, so

Speaker 1 that was my attempt to segue away from that. I also want to say, too, if 6'7 shows up in this house, Ashley, if it comes here, we are locked.
COVID lockdown is going to seem like a dream.

Speaker 1 Never was a rehearsal.

Speaker 2 Never leaving the house.

Speaker 1 We are shutting the doors for like three times.

Speaker 2 We are going to forcefully prevent the children from being cool.

Speaker 1 We are going to win all the future fights.

Speaker 1 It's not because of 6'7. It's for everything else.
All right, Ashley, who is in our,

Speaker 1 is it a six-way battle royale for Game of the Year for the Game Awards?

Speaker 2 Yes, six nominees for Game of the Year. And we already, we knew, like, deep breath, everybody, let's stretch.

Speaker 2 We knew months ago that this was going to be a big one because it's been such a good year for games. There have been so many games coming out getting just stellar reviews.
Like,

Speaker 2 I wonder if it was a record-breaking year for like 90-plus rated games, right?

Speaker 2 Um, but they had to narrow it down to six nominees for Game of the Year, and those are Claire Obscure, Expedition 33, Death Stranding 2 on the Beach, Donkey Kong Bonanza, Hades 2, Hollow Knight Silk Song, and Kingdom Come Deliverance 2.

Speaker 1 Okay. Okay.
So I'm going to, I think, like most people, I'm going to pick out the one or two games that I played in that list.

Speaker 2 Just being like, this must be the best because I played it.

Speaker 1 And then four games that are in my backlog permanently now because I've heard such amazing things about them. Except for one.
There's one I won't play in there. Right.
Which one's that?

Speaker 1 Death Straining 2 on the Beach sounds like a game adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's The Road, and I'm not playing that video game. I'm not playing that video game.

Speaker 1 I like Death Straining the first one anyway, and it's like, I didn't want more from that world.

Speaker 2 You got the experience that you wanted.

Speaker 1 Totally get it. People love it.
You know, more power to you. That's why they make so many games.

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's the game on here that I would put in my like, I'm glad it's really good, but I'm not going to play it is probably Hollow Knight Silk Song.

Speaker 2 I've heard nothing but good about that game from people who've played it. I understand it's a fantastic game, but as I understand it, it's also one of those games that enjoys being really difficult.

Speaker 2 And for me, that just leads to frustration. So I wouldn't enjoy the game the way the people who love that game enjoy the game.
Right. You know, and that's, that's not fair to me.

Speaker 2 It's not fair to the people. It's not fair to the game.
So I will, I'm going to put that one on my I get to skip it list.

Speaker 1 Plus, you never played Shovel Knight. So

Speaker 2 expedition, yeah, why would I play the sequel?

Speaker 1 You wouldn't understand it at all.

Speaker 2 How did he go from having a shovel to being hollow?

Speaker 1 The whole Knights franchise is all over the place: Ghosts and Goblins to Hollow Knight. How do you even get there?

Speaker 2 No, no, I think Expedition 33 is like about the trickiest I can handle for a turn-based game. It required an awful lot of quick reflexes.

Speaker 1 Oh, really?

Speaker 2 Yeah, there's because there's a lot of like real-time elements, like you can parry or dodge shots

Speaker 2 from the enemies.

Speaker 2 Or like there's a lot you can do if you're good at it. If you're not good at it, it's wildly frustrating.

Speaker 1 So does this, like seeing this list, is there anything that is going to line up next? Like you're going to put anything in the hopper to be next out of the gate?

Speaker 2 Yes. I think I'm going to take Donkey Kong Bonanza, which has been, has been on my like, we need to play this list.

Speaker 2 And I think I'm moving it up to, I'm going to download it, install it, and play it with the kids this weekend. Okay, good.
Good. I feel like the kids are probably a really good buddy for this game.

Speaker 2 And if I can keep them playing Donkey Kong instead of learning 6'7, I'm gonna go there all day long.

Speaker 1 I'm not gonna be swayed by these

Speaker 1 Silicon Valley elites telling me what art I should be consuming. I'm this weekend.
I'm trying to figure out, and I can put this out to the audience. Let me know what you think.

Speaker 1 Should I try dispatch this weekend? Because someone did explain in the comments, and I got to admit, I stopped reading the premise because I was like, okay, I like this premise.

Speaker 2 They gave you the story premise, and that's what you need.

Speaker 2 It's a

Speaker 2 style game by former Telltale employees. The studio that was famous for the episodic games

Speaker 2 years past, it's by a lot of former Telltale employees in that style, but telling a superhero-themed story.

Speaker 1 Versus the other one is Deadpool VR on MetaQuest 3. I'm hearing amazingly good things about this game as a VR experience.

Speaker 1 Most of the stuff I'm hearing comes from Deadpool VR advertisements. So you've got to be careful.

Speaker 2 Do you think they're biased?

Speaker 1 Yeah, they might might be a little biased on that. But

Speaker 1 I kind of want a good VR thing. So I'm trying to decide, should I play Dispatch or should I play Deadpool?

Speaker 2 Well, it's been a while since you gave yourself a physical injury playing VR. So I think

Speaker 1 I pay over there revealing stuff about people. I hurt my foot playing VR.

Speaker 2 You gave yourself an injury playing Arrow game for like hours at a time, like putting your balance on like one foot in your side stance while you're going

Speaker 1 with your arrows. Hey, form is important.
Had to see

Speaker 2 a podiatrist about it.

Speaker 1 You wouldn't understand it over there with your donkey-kong bazingas or whatever you're doing over there.

Speaker 1 I'm keeping the forces of evil at bay with my bow and arrow.

Speaker 1 Yeah, I got a, I got, I developed,

Speaker 1 I don't think I was full-on planter fasciitis, as it's called. I used to see ads for that all the time in the back of those magazines and airlines.
Yeah, like, do you have planter fasciitis?

Speaker 1 Like, I've never met anybody with this problem. And then I developed it playing Arrow Game,

Speaker 2 which has a name. So you're definitely due some kind of new injury from VR.

Speaker 1 Well, how fortunate that I could play a game where the main character has healing power?

Speaker 2 Do you think you get some of that healing power though?

Speaker 1 No, I doubt it. Not at my age.
I don't. So, the other thing, too, to weigh in this

Speaker 1 is one thing I'm worried about with dispatch: is this dispatch episode one or season one or whatever?

Speaker 2 Or is it a complete game?

Speaker 1 Yeah, I can't do a one anymore. I can't, like, with the hope that something's going to continue and be better and then it never comes.
I don't, I can't. I can't like Wolf Among Us.

Speaker 1 We can't have any more Wolf Among Us, okay? I'm still grieving Subnautica.

Speaker 2 oh god oh i don't even every time i read about subnautica too it's worse and worse i know i know i've been following it loosely and i'm i'm kind of trying not to because everything sounds awful everything sounds more awful than the last thing um

Speaker 2 the main uh the three main developers of the original subnautica all got fired from uh the the studio the uh crafton owns the studio now and uh and they're suing the studio and the studio is suing them back because they're saying they abandoned and they're saying they got fired so they didn't have to pay bonuses.

Speaker 2 And it sounds like a whole mess there. And then Krafton goes, also, we're just asking all our employees to quit and we'll pay them because we're going all in on AI.
Right.

Speaker 2 And I'm like, oh my God, I really want Subnautica 2 to be good.

Speaker 1 That's the headline I read. Did that actually come from the company?

Speaker 2 It came from the company.

Speaker 2 They've announced that they're going all in.

Speaker 2 They want to be an AI first company. And that's the direction that they see themselves going.
And so they're basically offering employees like a year of wage to agree to quit.

Speaker 1 Wow. buyouts.
They're doing buyouts. It sounds like, yeah.

Speaker 2 You know, and it's so I don't think that one is going to make it onto the game of the year nominee list whenever that thing comes out.

Speaker 1 And that'll get bombed when it comes out, right?

Speaker 1 There's enough like blood in the water at this point, enough of a feeding frenzy with people like wanting to report and talk about anything bad about the Subnautica franchise.

Speaker 2 The first game is amazing.

Speaker 2 Which I feel super bad about because I know some of the people on that development team and I've seen how passionate they are about working on it and about like building this incredible world and telling the story in the same sort of like um ambiguous way that you were talking about with uh with um with left 4 dead where there's a lot of it that's it's left for you to discover and decide what things are um a lot of things are intentionally left very vague and that's part of the fun is like puzzling things out and figuring out like what you think is going it's such a like Subnautica is such a great game and I want nothing more than for that game to be great and I just don't think that Grok is gonna build me a great Subnautica 2.

Speaker 1 No, probably not.

Speaker 2 Probably not. So I just, yeah.
So

Speaker 2 I'm feeling real down about that.

Speaker 1 It feels like a lot of companies who are abandoning humans for AI are putting a lot of stock in the fact that AI is going to continue on the growth curve that it is now.

Speaker 1 And that hasn't always been the case with technology, that it's going to improve at the same rate that it has in the past. I think, you know, it's a big bet to make with your entire company.
Yeah.

Speaker 1 Big bet. For anybody, for anybody.

Speaker 2 Make that bet with a franchise that I don't care about, guys.

Speaker 1 So, what is so? When we go back to this game of the year list, the only thing I played on there is Hades 2. I liked it a lot.

Speaker 1 I played it more than Hades, which I also liked a lot. I'm just not good at the diagonal aspect of it.
I don't know how else to put that.

Speaker 1 I'm just not great with that.

Speaker 2 That's going in your review. You're knocking it down for its diagonality.

Speaker 1 No, I'm putting it on myself, Ashley. I got to put something else on myself, too.

Speaker 1 I'm having a

Speaker 1 moment with I'm fighting technology and I've decided to recalibrate the way I approach this problem. Okay.
And let's let's see if you can understand this. So

Speaker 1 there is a classification of technology tools that there's only a few things in this list, but they are things that I use more by accident than I use on purpose.

Speaker 1 Like I accidentally activated, I'm like, I don't want to use this thing, but I can't get rid of it.

Speaker 1 The biggest one on my list, it's been around forever, is there's a thing on Windows called sticky key, which is an accessibility thing.

Speaker 1 And if you hit the shift key five times, it gives you this prompt saying, do you want to activate activate sticky keys?

Speaker 1 It's like, no, the only reason I hit shift is it's like an inert key on the keyboard that will activate, like, take away my screensaver or whatever, help me check to see if like this thing's locked up.

Speaker 1 If I hit space or escape or whatever, I could actually do something in my program that I don't want to happen, right? So I hit shift. And then it says, Do you want to turn on sticky keys? Like, no.

Speaker 1 And I have to go and disable it every time I get like a wipe and a new reinstall of Windows.

Speaker 1 What has recently entered this category of technology improvements that I only use by accident is my new new iPhone has a camera button on it.

Speaker 2 See, you use it too.

Speaker 2 I do. I only use it by accident.

Speaker 2 The thing is, though, I would like to learn to use it intentionally because there are a lot of times where I'm trying to pull my phone out and get the camera up quick because the kids are doing something adorable.

Speaker 2 But the second they see you pull out the phone, they come over and they're like, I want to see pictures of me and mom's tummy. Yeah.
Right.

Speaker 2 Like, like they see the phone and they lock in on the phone and the cute moment is gone.

Speaker 2 And so

Speaker 2 the muscle memory that I have that I've built up over many years is to

Speaker 2 like get the get the screen on, tap and hold the camera button, the camera comes up, and then I can use it.

Speaker 2 It would be much, much faster to just use this camera button that's on the side. But I don't have that muscle memory built in yet.
So I never use it. I always do the long way instead.

Speaker 2 So the only way that this button gets used is when I'm like trying to fumble it out of my pocket to do something else and I accidentally activate the camera.

Speaker 2 I only use it when I don't mean to and I don't think to use it when it would be really handy. And that, once again, that is on me.
That's something that I need to learn.

Speaker 2 I need to break that muscle memory. And I just, I haven't.

Speaker 1 It's so hard. I'm glad to hear you say all of that because that's the recalibration that I'm trying to make, right?

Speaker 1 These engineers know what they're doing, right? And they wouldn't have made a button, an extra button that goes in one of the few places I can hold the phone where there's no button.

Speaker 1 Now there's a button in one of of those places.

Speaker 1 But there's nowhere on the right side of the phone to really kind of put my thumb without thinking about it, without touching some button, the one that either shuts it down or turns on the camera.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 it's tricky now.

Speaker 1 But I'm very ambitching about it. I'm going to learn to use it like you are.
Like I'm going to dedicate myself saying this has to be a reason for this, and I'm going to lean into that.

Speaker 1 So I'm going to do that. We're here.

Speaker 2 to be better people.

Speaker 1 We're going to learn.

Speaker 1 But going back to this list, when I see this list of the game of the year, what I see is a bunch of games that I haven't played, but there's one or two on there, one in particular.

Speaker 1 I think I want to play that game, and I'm kind of sad that I haven't played this game yet. Is there anything on that list for you that's like that?

Speaker 2 Well, for me, it's Donkey Kong Bonanza. What is it for you?

Speaker 1 Kingdom Come. Because I keep reading about this game that it's amazing.
And why don't people make more games like this? Like, everyone likes it that plays it.

Speaker 1 And it's enough to where people criticize the way other games are made and presented. So I'm like, that's enough for me.

Speaker 1 You know, to read that criticism, I'll give it a shot because it seems like a different, unique experience.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I mean, it's a game that the first one I played a little bit of. I never finished it, but it does,

Speaker 2 it goes a long way towards trying to be very like historically faithful.

Speaker 2 And like, it starts off, and you're just like, you're a dude.

Speaker 2 And you can go and you can, you know, you can learn things and you can build skills, but it's, it's a much, it feels like a slower process.

Speaker 2 over time to become like, you know, a great influence, right?

Speaker 2 You can build, you can do that, but it takes like, like it's a lot of effort it's a lot of work it's not easy and it also wants to be very historically faithful as much as it can

Speaker 2 so if you like if you like the allure of that like you want to feel like you're stepping into kind of an historical story it's awesome yeah okay you also really have to like mud because there was a lot of mud historically you know no one has had like paved streets and stuff right there was a lot of lots of mud no no plumbing either which creates a lot of horrible problems hey before we go a little bit of housekeeping.

Speaker 1 This weekend, we're going to do Q ⁇ A for the sponsors because we haven't done one in a long time.

Speaker 1 So on the front page of Rooster Teeth tomorrow, we'll have a place where you can post questions for the Q ⁇ A this weekend.

Speaker 1 In general, though, I want to point out that we're going to be doing more and more things focused on the Rooster Teeth website.

Speaker 1 Like there might come a point pretty soon when we don't even post the daily post for this on Reddit.

Speaker 1 People are free to do that if it doesn't exist, but there's only two of us and we've got to focus our efforts where they're most important.

Speaker 1 The big one I'm dealing with right now is YouTube, because I would just, in general, I haven't embraced YouTube very much with any even like the RTAs and stuff that are coming out now that Red versus Blue is going up there, but I'm running into the music problem that I'm trying to solve this week.

Speaker 1 And I would love to move away from it. But at the same time, I'm getting those calls now from our video provider.
These are calls I haven't gotten since like 2005.

Speaker 1 They're like, what are you, who are you? What are you doing?

Speaker 2 Like, what have you done to our traffic?

Speaker 1 Yeah. There was a huge cloud flare outage yesterday that affected lots of stuff.
Did you see that at all?

Speaker 2 I did. I saw it, but it's, it's one of those things where I was like, oh, another one.
And I start to wonder, like, how

Speaker 2 common these outages need to become before they go from being like

Speaker 2 news to your daily annoyance. Like, what smart part of your life is just not going to work today?

Speaker 1 You're right. You just want to have access to this thing.
And it's like, then, depending on what services are using Cloudflare, you just, that's what it does.

Speaker 1 It like basically gatekeeps you from getting to your own services that you've been subscribed to for years.

Speaker 2 Okay, this could be be a good thing. This could be a good thing.
Here's what we do: we just talk to Cloudflare and we have them take down six, seven.

Speaker 1 Oh, okay, that'd be great. Like, just take that.

Speaker 2 Yeah, just keep that from being accessible to anyone. And then we've sorted the problem.

Speaker 1 She says, Are you a human? And there's seven check boxes. And if you only check six and seven, then you're like, clearly you need more time to evaluate your own humanness here.

Speaker 1 That's what you need to do. All right, Ashley, who is joining us this weekend on the roosterteeth.com QA.

Speaker 2 All right, I want to say a big thank you to Noah Garcia and Cody Artichoker for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com slash morning somewhere and roosterteeth.com.

Speaker 1 We got to get that name right. Is it Cody Artichoker? Artichoker.
Cody Artichoker.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I wanted to call him Cody Artichokie, but realized there is an Er.

Speaker 1 You missed one out. Cody, you missed out.

Speaker 1 And some great, that's not alliteration. What is that? That's just straight up rhyming.
All right, well, that does it for us today. November 19th, 2025.

Speaker 1 We will be back to talk to you tomorrow. We hope you will be here as well.
Bye, everybody.