Giant Bombcast Arrow Pointing Down Podcast Beta

[0] All right, so then let's, I guess, I guess the topic at hand.

[1] First topic, top of the show here.

[2] Well, I guess should we introduce it or something?

[3] Yeah, let's introduce it.

[4] I'll let you kick it off.

[5] I'll let you be host man. All right.

[6] Welcome to, we got this podcast.

[7] We started, we're doing this podcast.

[8] Anyway, we just started it.

[9] We literally just started it.

[10] Yeah, like just start, like Ryan was all, hey, I got Skype.

[11] And then I'm all, hey, I got Skype and I got a means with which to record it.

[12] And he's all, well, you should, we should hook this up.

[13] So we're trying this out, doing some podcasting experiments.

[14] It'll come to fruition later.

[15] What are you doing over there?

[16] Is it making a lot of weird noise?

[17] Are you hearing weird background noise?

[18] Are you opening a ketchup packet and squirting it onto something?

[19] Because that's what it sounds like.

[20] No, that's not at all what I'm doing.

[21] I'm rolling this, I guess, topic top of the show here.

[22] Let's just jump into it, right?

[23] Yeah, yeah.

[24] Introduce ourselves, and let's do the thing.

[25] I recently went to the Safeway and bought, I was looking at the Gatorade section, and they have some good novelty Gatorade flavors right now called Gatorade Tiger.

[26] Gatorade Tiger.

[27] And it's got – it's Gatorade Tiger, and it's got a picture of Tiger Woods doing his sweet, you know, uppercut punch celebratory jack move.

[28] Oh, okay.

[29] All right.

[30] Yeah, yeah.

[31] The punch, the – Like from the video game.

[32] Yeah, that one.

[33] Okay, so I figured they would have him holding a golf club or something like that, like have him swinging a golf club, but I guess they probably want to say, this is more, you know, this drink is not just for golf.

[34] No, no, this drink is for winners.

[35] This drink is for whatever occasion you feel the need to do a crazy uppercut with your hand while you're wearing a baseball cap.

[36] That's pretty much.

[37] That's a lot of different things, Jeff.

[38] That's a lot of different things you could be doing.

[39] Why limit it to golf?

[40] Eight or nine times a day I'm doing that.

[41] It's like, oh, tuna sandwich!

[42] Yeah, like, oh man, well, I don't know that I would do it for a tuna sandwich.

[43] Alright, well, bad example for you, but I'm just saying.

[44] Ah, nachos, you would say.

[45] Yeah, I might say that.

[46] Ah, UPS guy!

[47] So, does it taste like golf?

[48] I mean, what does it come in?

[49] Is it just a flavor of Gatorade?

[50] No, it's actually a line.

[51] He's got a line of flavors that, reading the copy, the copy for this is Now that I don't have a regular job, job type job, I'm thinking about going and pitching myself to the Gatorade people because their copywriters are really geniuses.

[52] Well, if they're geniuses, what would they need with a scumbag, jobless scum like you?

[53] Because I want to touch the magic and see the beauty up close.

[54] So there are three different flavors.

[55] I already drank one of them, so that's gone, but it was red in color, and the flavor was described, and I think fairly accurately, as a blend of citrus and cherry.

[56] And I thought that worked, because you know what?

[57] You don't get a lot of stuff that's kind of like predominantly cherry in flavor.

[58] Yeah.

[59] Like, you know, cherry's kind of a tag -along.

[60] It's like, oh, we got this Coke.

[61] We'll throw a little cherry in it for you.

[62] Yeah, it's cherry Coke, not a Coke cherry.

[63] Right, this was primarily cherry, which was interesting, and I enjoyed that.

[64] And so what I also have here is cool fusion.

[65] Also, actually, before I get into the flavors themselves, it's worth noting, probably the thing that drew me to these the most is the fact that...

[66] Tiger Woods, right on it?

[67] No, actually, there's...

[68] Although I do love Mr. Tiger Woods and his exploits, but the top part of the bottle, you know how it's usually got weird...

[69] kind of, like, concave panels to it and stuff.

[70] Right, yeah.

[71] On a regular Gatorade bottle.

[72] On a regular Gatorade bottle, it's textured.

[73] This one's completely smooth and rounded.

[74] Just like Tiger Woods.

[75] Smooth like Tiger.

[76] Yeah.

[77] And, you know, I'm not afraid.

[78] The rest of the bottle, actually, underneath the label, it's the same kind of bumpy mess, but the top part's all weird and smooth.

[79] So back to this first flavor here.

[80] So Cherry Citrus.

[81] Yeah, it actually has a great name.

[82] Let me see if I can...

[83] Find it here while we, uh, while we talk.

[84] Uh, yeah, but your, your, your questions about it.

[85] Yeah.

[86] So, okay.

[87] So it's cherry with a citrus on the back end.

[88] So it's like, uh, like a lemon lime, like a cherry and then a lemon lime on the back or like a cherry.

[89] You know, I'd say it's probably closer to like a lemon orange.

[90] Okay.

[91] Okay.

[92] Like kind of just tart, but not like, like, not that like tart, but still a little bit sweeter.

[93] Like, you know, you can kind of have like almost a sweet lemon.

[94] Sure.

[95] Like that.

[96] All right.

[97] Now, how do these drinks compare to regular Gatorade in terms of texture and consistency?

[98] I mean, these are definitely classic Gatorade products, Jeff.

[99] So it's not a G2 thing, because I don't know if you've drank a lot of G2.

[100] No, I haven't had any G2.

[101] Jeff, tell me about your experiences with the G2.

[102] Gatorade 2, the sequel, The Revenge of Gatorade.

[103] It's out there now, and it's essentially a low -calorie take on Gatorade.

[104] It's kind of their target.

[105] So it's their vitamin water kind of?

[106] It's their vitamin water, exactly.

[107] They couldn't get 50 Cent, but maybe they can get Ludicrous or someone to endorse it.

[108] I don't know.

[109] And it's a much thinner liquid.

[110] It's not thick and syrupy like sometimes a Gatorade can be.

[111] It's a lot thinner and more watery like a vitamin water.

[112] And in that line, I think I only like the fruit punch.

[113] I've tried the orange, and it's just a little too weird.

[114] I think there's one other flavor that I haven't tried.

[115] But I keep getting free cases of – or free, like, eight packs of fruit punch because if you get, like, groceries delivered from Safeway, they just throw that in with everything.

[116] So I keep getting a bunch.

[117] My mom keeps getting a bunch and just giving them to me, and it's just – I'm swimming in G2.

[118] Well, I don't mean to just derail our conversation here too much, but as much as I enjoy talking about the Gatorade, I have been drinking a lot more of the vitamin water.

[119] I do find myself attracted to that product for a lot of different reasons.

[120] Kelly Clarkson, for example.

[121] Kelly Clarkson is a big part of it.

[122] I don't know.

[123] I like it.

[124] I think maybe because it's in some way blander than Gatorade.

[125] Right.

[126] I feel like as I get older, I just need like weaker and like milder drink experiences.

[127] That's kind of like how I started down this path in the first place.

[128] It's like, I don't want to have like a soda.

[129] It's so sweet and it's so kind of on top of you.

[130] It's like sometimes I want a drink that's a little bit more just, you know, not so in my grill about being a drink.

[131] Yeah.

[132] I am a drink.

[133] Carbonated beverages up in your face!

[134] Oh, dude, no, I don't need to experience the rush every time I'm thirsty, bro.

[135] I don't know, yeah, I've been very big on Diet Pepsi lately.

[136] Again, I was pretty much off soda for a while there, and then somehow I decided I would buy several cases of Diet Pepsi, probably because they were bringing it to my house.

[137] Grocery delivery is a really horrible thing.

[138] And you don't live that far from a Safeway either, dude.

[139] No, I don't, but...

[140] You could go, and it wouldn't be far or hard.

[141] Leaving the house, man, why bother?

[142] They'll just bring me the food and along the way get half of my order wrong.

[143] So it's like a fun surprise on top of that.

[144] Like, are they going to get it right?

[145] Like, this time, it's like I ordered Diet Pepsi, they gave me the wrong sizes, but they ended up giving me a free 12 -pack just because they messed up or, I don't know, because they really did.

[146] I don't know.

[147] I don't know what happened, but free stuff, weird stuff.

[148] It's an adventure every time I order.

[149] All right, back on topic here as I'm trying to find what the name of the red flavor of Gatorade Tiger is.

[150] I do find, though, a story about how Tiger Woods and Gatorade signed a $100 million deal, which I have to imagine this is the product of.

[151] Right.

[152] Yeah.

[153] Huh.

[154] That's a lot of money.

[155] Yeah, that is for three flavors of Gatorade.

[156] So the red flavors, cherry, citrus, interesting.

[157] Interesting and unique in flavor.

[158] I think it's worth a look if you enjoy the Gatorade in any kind.

[159] The Gatorade Tiger Cool Fusion.

[160] I'm going to be charitable and call it a limeade flavor.

[161] Okay, all right.

[162] But also, you know, not that far from kind of original yellow Gatorade.

[163] Now, what color is Cool Fusion?

[164] I'm seeing blue.

[165] In my head, it's blue.

[166] No, no, no, it's actually, that's probably the most interesting thing about it is the color of it.

[167] It's almost like a milky light green.

[168] Hmm.

[169] That doesn't sound like a cool fusion to me. No, no, I think it's, I think I'm going to say the name is a little bit at odds with the color, but, you know, yeah, yeah, you know, this goes, marketing not quite on with the name on this one, but.

[170] This one's fairly generic.

[171] You can take a pass on this one.

[172] You're not really missing anything, not having the Gatorade Tiger Cool Fusion.

[173] Now, there's a third flavor.

[174] Although, I will say, though, that like your basic Gatorade, the Gatorade Tiger Cool Fusion mixes well with hard alcohol.

[175] Ah, good, good.

[176] This is always key.

[177] Now, G2 does not, because it is more watery and more vitamin water -like.

[178] The flavor is not strong enough to overpower.

[179] your typical alcohol flavor.

[180] All right, and the third flavor is the Quiet Storm Tiger, the Gatorade Tiger Quiet Storm.

[181] Quiet Storm, okay.

[182] I haven't tried this.

[183] It's purple.

[184] It's a pretty deep purple.

[185] It's kind of a cough syrupy purple.

[186] A dual marketing?

[187] They got deep purple and Tiger Woods on board for this one?

[188] Yeah, you know, the crossover, they figured, they looked at the Venn diagram for the marketing, and there's a huge, huge crossover there.

[189] It's just one big circle.

[190] It's one big circle.

[191] If you love Tiger Woods, you love Deep Purple.

[192] Fact.

[193] Quiet Storm.

[194] Let's read the copy on the back of this.

[195] His focus is legendary, underneath a storm of pressure.

[196] He ignores doubt and pays no attention to failure.

[197] That's because he can only see one thing, the win.

[198] It's why he's not just an athlete.

[199] He's Tiger.

[200] Quiet Storm.

[201] or a freshly focused blend of grape flavors.

[202] It's why it's not just a drink.

[203] It's a great...

[204] It's why it's not just a drink.

[205] It's Gatorade Tiger.

[206] Whoa.

[207] Okay, so they have more than one grape flavor that they're mixing together?

[208] How many grape flavors are there?

[209] Yeah, you know, blend of grape flavors.

[210] Well, you know, they had some artisan grape growers from the Napa Valley come in and consult on the...

[211] on the horrible artificial chemicals that they would then use to simulate flavors in Gatorade Tiger.

[212] So you're saying it tastes like a cross of grape juice, grape soda, and wine?

[213] You know what?

[214] I haven't tried it yet.

[215] This is the one I have not yet tried, so we're going to get a live tasting on the air here.

[216] Oh, man. Okay, bust that open.

[217] I'll be quiet.

[218] It's open.

[219] I'm going to go for the nose first.

[220] This is very classic grape soda in scent.

[221] I'll tell you that right off the bat.

[222] That's like a good Safeway Select grape soda scent right there.

[223] So let's go for a little taste.

[224] Yeah, that's just grape soda.

[225] All right.

[226] Gatorade is just selling grape soda.

[227] It's like flat grape soda, but not in like – because the problem when you tell anyone, oh, it's like flat grape soda or it's like flat anything is that soda that's gone flat tastes way worse than something that was never carbonated in the first place.

[228] True.

[229] So this is like grape soda that has gone flat before it has gone flat.

[230] Awesome.

[231] That sounds pretty good.

[232] So the two flavors to check out are the red one and the grape one.

[233] The red and the grape.

[234] Yeah, the grape is solid, although I can't say that this particular subset, this blend, this artisan blend of grape flavors, if this is any.

[235] Any better than your regular Gatorade grape flavor.

[236] But, you know, it's a dollar each, the same as all the other Gatorades at the Safeway across the street from my house.

[237] So, you know, why not?

[238] Why not go for the glory and go for the bottle that kind of looks like a penis?

[239] Just like Tiger Woods.

[240] I don't know what that means.

[241] Like the tip, if you look at it, it doesn't take a whole lot of imagination, but kind of the way it flares out and the way it's all smooth, it's a little phallic.

[242] Huh, well, got to get those electrolytes back somehow, I guess.

[243] I don't know if that's an intended design feature or not, but there you have it.

[244] So that's, there you go, top story of this podcast, talking about Gatorade, y 'all.

[245] Yeah, so that's pretty much the most important thing.

[246] Second most important thing, and by second most I probably mean least important, is all this HD DVD Blu -ray crap.

[247] Let's talk about the HD DVDs, y 'all.

[248] Have you been following this stuff?

[249] It's basically like, as the HD DVD formats.

[250] Yeah.

[251] But, yeah, I mean, obviously it's...

[252] I'll tell you, I bought a HD DVD drive for the Xbox 360 pretty much when they put them out because they said, that's retarded, I'm going to go buy that.

[253] Yeah, me too.

[254] And it has lived up to that original promise very well.

[255] Of being retarded?

[256] Of being retarded.

[257] But I knew early on...

[258] that Blu -ray was definitely kind of pulling ahead.

[259] The things that tipped me off was when Disney said they were going to do all Blu -ray.

[260] I'm like, well, that's kind of a huge thing because Disney sells mad DVDs.

[261] So that's only going to translate over to this HD stuff totally.

[262] So that was probably the first big thing.

[263] And then when I actually got a PS3 and then started looking at the selection of Blu -ray movies, just at that point, it was pretty apparent that there was just a shitload more Blu -ray stuff out there than there was HD DVD.

[264] So all of this stuff that has come crashing down since CES is not terribly surprising, but it's been dramatic, and I will say it's been faster than I thought it would.

[265] Yeah, and it's been really exciting to watch.

[266] It's like, I mean, I keep saying that the format wars or whatever don't really matter because DVD is still outselling both of them by such a large margin.

[267] Right.

[268] But at the same time, it has been pretty fascinating to watch how fast things fell apart for HD DVD.

[269] I mean, the thing that I've heard from a couple of different people now is that Microsoft was all set to actually announce the internal Xbox 360 with internal HD DVD drive at CES.

[270] Oh, wow.

[271] And that all the stuff with...

[272] Was it Paramount then?

[273] Was that Paramount?

[274] Or was that...

[275] Who was that?

[276] Was that Warner Brothers?

[277] Yeah, the Warner Brothers move right before CES.

[278] That kind of put everyone's HD DVD plans on hold.

[279] And since then, you've just seen the whole format just totally unravel.

[280] Yeah, I know.

[281] Like just the Netflix stuff, Walmart, Best Buy.

[282] Best Buy, yeah.

[283] Like when Best Buy and Walmart say, yeah, we're not going to so much carry your product.

[284] For a retail product like that, you're done.

[285] Of course, I think the thing that's most exciting to you and me, Jeff, amongst all this, are the spoils of the format war, which are ridiculously underpriced high -def video discs.

[286] Exactly, exactly.

[287] Stuff that's going on fire sale because this is about to become beta, y 'all.

[288] So if you're willing to invest in the next mini -disc or perhaps the next Game .com, step right up.

[289] Yeah, which, I mean, since I stepped right up specifically so that I could watch Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift, and it's been great for that so far.

[290] It's a fantastic format for watching the Fast and the Furious Tokyo Drift.

[291] Right, and I never really wanted it to be much more than that.

[292] I think I have, like, three more movies, some of which I bought Clerks 2 and never watched it.

[293] Good move.

[294] Yeah, I bought Enter the Dragon.

[295] Yeah, well, I'm still very good at buying movies and never watching them.

[296] Right on.

[297] So it's lived up to its promise for watching Tokyo Drift.

[298] But now seeing stuff like Transformers, like Amazon's basically starting to get rid of their stock, even if they aren't saying it yet.

[299] They now have a big, long list of discs that has gotten longer since they first announced it, where they have 150 movies up there for basically 50 % off.

[300] And they're selling a lot of stuff now for as low as $14 .95.

[301] I think that's the cheapest they're getting right now.

[302] I did actually know I saw Happy Gilmore for $13 on AC DVD.

[303] I just went through Amazon a little while ago and looked at...

[304] uh, just, just basically anything that I was vaguely interested in, threw it into my, uh, my, my cart.

[305] So now I can watch cause nothing is quite yet at the price where I'm willing to buy it.

[306] Cause I realized that, uh, you know, this is at best a short term investment because, uh, you know, I'm only going to be able to watch HD DVD movies as long as I have my Xbox 360 hooked up.

[307] And while I like to think that it's not that it's further away than it really is, it's only going to be a few years before whatever device replaced the Xbox 360 is out.

[308] And then I don't then I'm like, oh, crap, I still have to keep this stupid old video game system around to watch these old stupid videos that I bought.

[309] Right.

[310] So so at 15 bucks, still not quite where I want to where I want to be.

[311] But once they get nine ninety nine, I will.

[312] I will buy a variety of awful, awful movies.

[313] Definitely.

[314] Once it goes south of $10, I'm willing to pay that for The Last Starfighter, Shooter.

[315] Shooter is big on my list.

[316] Two Fast, Two Furious is on there.

[317] I'll pay $10 for those.

[318] Sure, I guess.

[319] The Mummy.

[320] Yeah.

[321] The Mission Impossible set.

[322] Now, these are actually the ones I'm most excited about.

[323] There are some box sets for the HD DVD.

[324] Mission Impossible, the Oceans films.

[325] You can get the original Star Trek series on HD DVD.

[326] It's actually like a combo HD DVD and regular DVD set.

[327] Oh, weird.

[328] And that's like the first season of the show?

[329] No, that's the whole first original series.

[330] And that's currently going for less than $100, which is kind of a crazy deal for what that is.

[331] Yeah, yeah.

[332] Slither.

[333] I don't know that I would pay $10 for Slither.

[334] I enjoyed Slither.

[335] I thought it was good and stupid.

[336] Let's see here.

[337] Half -baked.

[338] And what's also fun is there's plenty of stuff on here that's like the dual format.

[339] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[340] So it's like regular DVD and HD.

[341] Sure, sure.

[342] Let's see here.

[343] Sneakers.

[344] Sneakers is a good one.

[345] Yeah, that'd be a good one.

[346] Smokey and the Bandit.

[347] I'll pay for an HD copy of Smokey.

[348] Yeah, so, I mean, there are some announced HD DVDs that haven't even been released yet.

[349] Like, I saw that they're planning on releasing Fletch on March 11th.

[350] So you're pre -ordering your copy of Fletch, right?

[351] Pre -order your copy of Fletch.

[352] No, I mean, it's already, it's going to come out for $14 .95.

[353] So maybe by the time March rolls around, they'll just deep discount it at that point.

[354] even cheaper than that.

[355] But I don't know that I'll buy it.

[356] I'm having trouble committing to this whole concept of buying all these movies because I know I will just screw up and rebuy them on Blu -ray down the line.

[357] Yeah.

[358] I don't trust myself.

[359] I don't have those on Blu -ray, so I should just get this on Blu -ray.

[360] It's like, ah, idiot, you already bought it on the other format that you don't watch movies on.

[361] Right.

[362] It's like, if I'm going to keep sealed movies around...

[363] Okay, like I have two sealed copies of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, the movie.

[364] For DJing purposes.

[365] Yeah, for DJing.

[366] You need two so I can cut back and forth between them.

[367] But I have one on regular DVD and one on Blu -ray, neither of which I've opened up and watched.

[368] The only time I've seen that movie was on an airplane.

[369] You know, again, not watching that movie, good call.

[370] I liked it.

[371] I saw it on an airplane.

[372] Liked it quite a bit.

[373] Yeah, that's you.

[374] And, you know, I find honestly, that's that's usually the best way to watch a movie as I find myself just immersed in the film going experience on an airplane.

[375] Yeah, totally.

[376] With no swears in coach.

[377] Yeah.

[378] And half the time, no sound.

[379] Yeah.

[380] I like to make up the story for myself as I go a lot.

[381] My favorite one of those was when I was.

[382] Coming back from Europe, I drank the entire flight from Europe into D .C. I was going into Dulles.

[383] So by the time I got to Dulles, I had the worst hangover in the world from not sleeping and drinking the entire time.

[384] And I get onto the flight from Dulles to San Francisco, and it's totally packed.

[385] I'm in coach and just miserable and hungover, and the movie is Patch Adams.

[386] Perfect.

[387] I got to sit there with no sound watching Patch Adams and just thinking like, oh, this couldn't really be any worse with sound because it's terrible without sound.

[388] Just watching him mug about and sick kids and, oh, look at him.

[389] He's a clown, but he has heart.

[390] I've done a good job of not seeing Patch Adams, I think.

[391] Have you ever seen Patch Adams?

[392] No, no. You're right.

[393] You have done a good job.

[394] All right.

[395] Also on my list of potential HD DVD purchases.

[396] Girls Gone Wild Sexiest Moments Ever Volume 2.

[397] Yeah.

[398] Why not?

[399] Why not?

[400] Yeah, why not get the HD?

[401] Did they even shoot that in HD?

[402] I mean, like, what?

[403] They're running around with like...

[404] Joe Francis spares no expense, sir.

[405] Joe Francis is in jail, man. Joe Francis' people will spare no expense when he's not there.

[406] All right.

[407] Pay for things.

[408] They're spending Joe Francis' money right now.

[409] You know what?

[410] I'm going to use the power of the internet here to send you a link so you can look at the same thing I'm looking at right now.

[411] Wow.

[412] Wow.

[413] So we can both talk about it.

[414] So there it is.

[415] There's the Girls Gone Wild sexiest moments ever.

[416] And look at the girls on the cover of this.

[417] This does not look like the sexiest moments ever.

[418] These girls appear to be damp, and...

[419] This is just, like, scary.

[420] Like, the one on the right is probably the most haunting person I've ever seen.

[421] She just looks like a bundle of problems.

[422] She looks like the personification of daddy issues.

[423] Right, yeah, I was going to say, the look on her face says, Are you my dad?

[424] Will you give me approval, is what that says.

[425] And, yeah, it's...

[426] I don't want to become the anti -porn guy, but seeing stuff like this kind of makes you go, this is also wrong.

[427] Also, Girls Gone Wild is not your typical porn.

[428] I think we can separate the two.

[429] This is exploitative.

[430] This is Joe Francis being a bad person.

[431] Whereas porn, everyone involved in porn knows what's going on.

[432] Everyone involved in porn, they're all animals.

[433] They're all so...

[434] cocaine -fueled.

[435] They know what they're doing.

[436] These are just the amateurs.

[437] So yeah, first Amazon review for this says that it was recorded on standard video cameras so that you'll notice pixels and a lot of grain and it's 4x3.

[438] I will then.

[439] The $15 .95 is money well spent as far as I'm...

[440] An expert use of a high -def disc format, it sounds like.

[441] Fantastic.

[442] So yeah, I think that's...

[443] I guess Toshiba has officially said, yeah, we're done with this.

[444] I think it's still sources inside Toshiba saying, yeah, we're pretty much done.

[445] We're going to close down the factories in Japan that are building this stuff and get about the game.

[446] But I don't know that they have officially come out and said...

[447] Anything about when they're going to cut it off, how their exit's going to work.

[448] Okay, here's another great Girls Gone Wild review from Thomas J. Kunzman of Parma, Ohio, here on Amazon.

[449] I think it might be illegal for you to say all that information, but go ahead.

[450] Dude, it's written right here on Amazon.

[451] Anyone could go look at Amazon and see this.

[452] I'm not privileged.

[453] It does say it's his real name.

[454] It's his real name, and it's trademarked, so you know it's extra real.

[455] What is that?

[456] This title has four different girls, so the producers approach and then get the girls to perform in front of the camera for some shirts or what have you.

[457] Yeah, this is ridiculous.

[458] It's like four out of five stars.

[459] The pull quote is, Girls Gone Wild in HD!

[460] Everything about it reads like totally fake, like Joe Francis' mother wrote this review or something, trying to raise mail money.

[461] I like the idea that Joe Francis' mother would be on Joe Francis' street team.

[462] Yeah, Joe Francis' mother, a .k .a. Thomas J. Kunzman of Parma, Ohio.

[463] Real name.

[464] Oh, fantastic.

[465] So I guess that sums up our take on the current state of HD DVD and what have you.

[466] Yeah, yeah.

[467] So that's happening.

[468] That is ongoing.

[469] Also ongoing, I guess, something I'm pretty excited about is that they finally announced Command & Conquer Red Alert 3.

[470] You know, I've always wanted to like the Red Alert games more, but I guess the actual mechanics...

[471] of the core Command & Conquer games are just slightly different, and I never was able to hook into Red Alert the same way I did with the core CNC games.

[472] I just think that, you know, like, Kane aside, like, obviously Command & Conquer has Kane, so it is obviously better.

[473] But Yuri is a pretty fucking good bad guy.

[474] Yuri is pretty awesome.

[475] There is nothing wrong with Yuri.

[476] I remember Yuri coming by Udo Kier, the actor that plays Yuri.

[477] coming by the GameSpot offices back in the day.

[478] He was a lunatic.

[479] He was out of his goddamn mind.

[480] He was out of his mind, kind of hitting on Joe Fielder, if I remember correctly.

[481] Definitely an experience.

[482] But yeah, I don't know.

[483] Just the fiction of the Red Alert kind of spinoff has always been so much more interesting to me, this whole alternate historical perspective where...

[484] Russia's got mad Tesla coils and every crackpot technology of the last 50 years somehow actually works in this fiction.

[485] I don't know.

[486] It does seem kind of like your pretty basic steampunk aesthetic with a little more of a comic book spin to it.

[487] Oh, yeah.

[488] I'm not saying that they invented this concept or anything.

[489] I'm just saying I like the way they do it.

[490] C &C is basically G .I. Joe, to put it simply.

[491] Yeah, totally.

[492] I'm pretty excited that that's coming out.

[493] They're going to do a PS3 version as well as 360, so I guess the 360 version of CMC3 did well enough for them to keep trying to do real -time strategy games on consoles.

[494] On a personal note, your friend of mine, Greg Sovin, is working on the Red Alert 3.

[495] As is, I believe, your friend of mine, Amir Ajami, also working on it.

[496] Yeah, no, so that's interesting, and also it seems kind of like, I guess, of any person that I know, Greg seems like the person who should be working on a Red Alert game.

[497] Yeah, that seems like a really good fit.

[498] to me. And yeah, I think that they need to get him in some kind of on -camera role or at least doing voiceover work for the Russian soldiers.

[499] He does speak Russian.

[500] If someone did ask me, and I know it's not a common situation, I said, hey, do you know anyone that you'd like to see working on a Red Alert game?

[501] It'd probably have to be Greg.

[502] I'm going to go like 80 -85 % Greg.

[503] Well, there you go.

[504] even if you didn't have them, have been answered.

[505] And I do hope that they make good with lots of...

[506] Not to have any spoilers here, but Ray Weiss, I guess, would not be reprising his role as the president in Red Alert 3.

[507] Yeah, I guess not.

[508] I was thinking, like, oh, they'd get Ray Weiss in there, and that'd be great.

[509] But I guess, yeah, they kind of can't do that, can they?

[510] Well, you know, Kane's back, so...

[511] Right.

[512] Well, no, I guess the whole...

[513] The whole point of this game, like in the press release, they said that Russia goes back in time again.

[514] So it kind of resets everything, I guess, in some way.

[515] Because in this new, different timeline, there is now going to be an Asian power, like an Empire of the Sun Japanese force.

[516] So they're kind of resetting, I guess, everything that's happened so far with the previous Red Alert games.

[517] At least that's kind of how I read that.

[518] So we could see Ray Weiss returning then.

[519] Or he could be the leader of the Russian forces.

[520] Sure, why not?

[521] In this what -if of a what -if scenario.

[522] That's just how it went down.

[523] Well, it definitely sounds like the series is doing a good job of falling up its own ass.

[524] Yeah, which is awesome.

[525] Fiction -wise.

[526] Well, I do hope that they do at least keep with the good live -action video.

[527] cut scenes, because God bless those.

[528] Yeah, and Kari Wur would be nice to bring back, I imagine.

[529] She's got to be at least, what, 60 now?

[530] She's got to be at least 24 years old, and I don't want to hear anything different.

[531] I'm going to go look it up while you deny that Kari Wur ages like the rest of us.

[532] It's impossible for Kari Wur to age.

[533] I don't know if you ever watched a little show called Remote Control, but she was sucking the the youth out of Colin Quinn that whole time, and that's how she managed to stay young, while Colin Quinn now looks like he is about 150 years old and sounds like it when he speaks as well.

[534] Kari Samantha Wurr, born April 28, 1967, is 40 years old.

[535] Man!

[536] There you go.

[537] Your hopes and dreams, Jeff.

[538] Being crushed by time.

[539] That's terrible.

[540] It is indeed.

[541] That's terrible news.

[542] So that's, I guess that's Red Alert 3.

[543] What else?

[544] GDC.

[545] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[546] Do you want to talk about game stuff some more?

[547] Yeah, might as well.

[548] Yeah, Game Developer Conference next week.

[549] You're going, right?

[550] I'm going.

[551] Yeah, I'm going.

[552] I'm registered and I've got no prior engagements at this point, which is exciting.

[553] Nothing better to do.

[554] You might as well go to GDC.

[555] Yeah, that's kind of my perspective on it.

[556] I actually got really excited because at first, for some reason, I thought there was stuff going on Monday and Tuesday also, but now I realize that I can actually sit around slothfully and do absolutely nothing on Monday and Tuesday.

[557] Let me tell you, that is the best part about not having a job.

[558] Is doing absolutely nothing?

[559] Is doing absolutely nothing.

[560] Yeah, I'm going to get into it.

[561] My number one priority here is kicking the nasty sleep habit and kind of getting on a...

[562] really bad like waking up at noon schedule yeah i i'm i'm kind of trying to wean myself off of that because i got stuff i gotta do and places i gotta be and stuff like that that you know when you roll in there at 4 30 and you know people are like hey you know thanks for showing up it's like that just doesn't work out so well um I need it for at least the short term because I have not needed an alarm to wake myself up for a long time.

[563] My head just pops up off the pillow at 745.

[564] Yuck.

[565] So I need it.

[566] Yeah, that's what I need to break at least for a little bit.

[567] Yeah, I've been kind of all over the place.

[568] Lately I've been waking up more like 845, 930, stuff like that.

[569] But for a while there, yeah, I was waking up at 10 .30 if I'm lucky.

[570] And then sometimes I would fall back asleep until noonish and stay up until 4 .30 or 5 in the morning.

[571] Still getting like eight hours sleep, but it's just this nightmare schedule where you can't get anything done.

[572] And you just go further and further down the hole until you're completely useless.

[573] It's awesome.

[574] I highly recommend it.

[575] Well, it's what I'm working on, but I will have to shake at least a little bit of that, or at least postpone it for GDC, because there's going to be some awesome stuff going on at this conference for game developers.

[576] And it's stuff that's happening early in the morning.

[577] Like, some of it.

[578] Like, the very first thing that I...

[579] Basically, I went through the whole list of all the seminars and stuff, and normally...

[580] Let's put your notes here.

[581] I also went through and kind of tagged everything that was of interest to me. Yeah, so I think the first thing is probably what you have, too, is storytelling in Bioshock, where Ken Levine's going to talk about storytelling in Bioshock.

[582] Yes, the subtitle, Empowering Players to Care About Your Stupid Story, is inspiring.

[583] So he's a good public speaker.

[584] I'd be curious to see what he has to say about the storytelling devices of that game, because it's probably one of that game's biggest strengths.

[585] So that's potentially very compelling.

[586] Yeah, totally.

[587] Yeah, most of the stuff that I'm interested in is that kind of behind -the -scenes stuff, because it's normally, I mean, being on kind of the press side of things, you don't really get to hear a lot about that sort of stuff, because most of the push around a game is so focused on very specific elements of it that it's just not the sort of thing that we get to hear until things like this come around.

[588] Right.

[589] And even things like this, this is a talk that is not really intended for folks like you or I. We are just kind of lucky hangers -on that get to go in and see this stuff.

[590] This is meant for developers.

[591] Right, and I still maintain that they should not let the press into this stuff.

[592] Yeah, you're probably right as much as I love seeing it.

[593] Yeah, I mean, the whole reason that there is stuff like...

[594] The Game Developers Conference and stuff like DICE is so that developers can get together without the scrutiny of the press and talk about their trade and actually learn something.

[595] I think having people like us buzzing around there, looking for quotes and looking for people to say controversial stuff, it just makes it a more guarded conversation, and that's kind of probably a bummer for...

[596] Do you think there's a lot of people like that?

[597] Do you think there's a lot of these tabloidy game writers?

[598] I'm looking for a hot scoop here.

[599] Looking for a hot scoop, yeah.

[600] Hey there, you can call me Scoop.

[601] I got my hat with the press card and the band and we're going around trying to make it happen.

[602] Your characterization of the gaming press there is perhaps a little more aggressive than it really is.

[603] Yeah, I think there are segments of it that are that aggressive.

[604] I agree that when you have someone whose living is made by saying things that other people have said to them, yeah, you definitely don't want to – speak necessarily as frankly but still just kind of I think the stuff that's more directly compelling for guys like you and me and for kind of the public is that these are opportunities for these people to talk about games in a non -specific format because whenever you see Ken Levine talking about anything in promotion of a game it all comes back to promotion of the game.

[605] Right, exactly.

[606] So when you get to hear these people talk in this sort of peer -to -peer format, they're talking more of these kind of broader game concepts and these kind of ideals instead of something that the PR person specifically likes as a promotional angle.

[607] Right, exactly, and then hearing more about the kind of the theory that goes into game design, even though I'm not necessarily interested in becoming a game designer or anything like that myself, is still fascinating as someone who plays a lot of games.

[608] Well, whatever, yeah, you appreciate the craft, and it's interesting to see what goes on behind it.

[609] I don't necessarily want to go and make a movie, but I still listen to a good commentary track, so I think this applies.

[610] The next thing I have on my calendar here is also on Wednesday, first day of the show, is Rob Pardo talking about Blizzard's approach to multiplayer game design.

[611] I have no real practical interest in that, but I could see just kind of the – that seems like an interesting thing to go and hear about.

[612] So I'm going to go check that out.

[613] I have advanced dialogue techniques, which I didn't write down.

[614] It's David Freeman, which I think this is a Mass Effect.

[615] I think it's a Mass Effect thing.

[616] Yeah, I think it's David Freeman.

[617] Oh, no, David Freeman is from the Freeman Group.

[618] Oh, yes.

[619] The Freeman Group.

[620] The Freeman Group.

[621] You know that.

[622] Our friends.

[623] Emotion in Games.

[624] You know those guys.

[625] Anyway, it's basically going to be...

[626] I think they sponsor a lot of PPS.

[627] Yeah.

[628] They're going to be talking kind of about how to write better dialogue for games and more believable sounding characters, which I think there are a lot of really wooden...

[629] game characters out there that just are super flat.

[630] Can I tell you about a game that has some really wooden, flat, and generic and awful characters?

[631] No, okay, fine.

[632] It's a game called Lost Odyssey for the Xbox 360.

[633] Oh, yeah, how's that going?

[634] You know, I gotta say I'm not a fan.

[635] Again, though, I should preface that with the fact that I'm not a fan of necessarily that kind of game.

[636] your traditional Japanese RPG, it has to be something really special for me to really even pay attention.

[637] Like, I think Persona 3 was the last game of that type that I was even mildly interested in, and that was mostly because the characters always had to blow their brains out to fight.

[638] Right.

[639] And it sounds like Lost Odyssey is putting a capital T in traditional, right?

[640] Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[641] Achingly so.

[642] It's like a SNES game, but somewhat prettier.

[643] Somewhat, though.

[644] It's still kind of inconsistent on the visuals.

[645] It's not always looking great.

[646] Characters have kind of stiff movement to them, and the dialogue is just so thick with just technical jargon, and it's needlessly obtuse and slow and overly melodramatic, and just basically all the things that kind of define, I guess, a Japanese RPG's storytelling type.

[647] So yeah, those guys I would say could either use a better translator or they might want to go and check out this session that you're talking about.

[648] Yeah, so that sounds like a potentially interesting session.

[649] We'll see.

[650] I mean I should also preface this by saying I wrote down all the sessions that sounded interesting.

[651] I'll consider myself lucky if I make it to half of them.

[652] Oh yeah, I'm going for about a quarter of what I have written down here.

[653] Because I have to imagine some of these you would have to just line up so ridiculously early to get into.

[654] Oh, yeah, yeah, probably.

[655] I have to imagine the push for some of these.

[656] 2 .30, Wednesday, Q &A with Sid Meier, which, you know, there's a dude who's got very lengthy tenure in the game industry and pretty well -regarded and just kind of be interesting to hear what that guy has to say about stuff.

[657] Yeah, the 2 .30 stuff that I wrote down, there's a thing from Chris Butcher from Bungie talking about Halo 3's matchmaking.

[658] I saw that.

[659] And just kind of breaking down, like, I just, I don't know, I find that interesting just in a technical sense of, like, how they go about matching up players of different skills.

[660] And I've read documents about kind of how the, how Microsoft's true skill system works.

[661] But this seems to go beyond that.

[662] And I'm just, I don't know, I'm fascinated to see how they're determining skills and how they're really matching players together.

[663] Because there are a lot of games out there that still don't seem to get that aspect of it right.

[664] And Halo 3 seems pretty good about.

[665] matching up players well, and I'm just interested in hearing about how it all really works.

[666] And that's kind of the end of the day on Wednesday for me. So after 2 .30, so after 3 .30, I'm getting drunk, y 'all.

[667] Nice.

[668] There's also...

[669] Well, there are some other things going on on Wednesday, like how to create an industry where Alan Alcorn and Ralph Baer...

[670] are going to spit game about the old days, and I imagine they'll probably come off as crazy codgers or ridiculous old coots.

[671] I do like the idea of video game old timers, though.

[672] Yeah, like, back in my day when we were making the Odyssey, we didn't have these fancy optical disc technology, and we made KC Munchkin, and then we got sued for it!

[673] You know, whatever.

[674] I think that could be potentially fascinating.

[675] is hearing these guys talk about how they made a Pong machine and then went on to make some of this other stuff.

[676] And then later on that night are going to be the GDC Awards.

[677] I didn't look at those at all.

[678] What's that about?

[679] Well, they have an awards show every year, and it's one of those kind of, as I understand it, it is the recognition from your peers sort of stuff.

[680] So it's more Banquet -y, less Jay Moore?

[681] No, I don't believe it is a Banquet.

[682] I think it is just sit in this hall and they will announce awards.

[683] But unlike the stupid Dice Awards with Jay Moore basically screwing it up, this is also, I believe, open to a lot more developers and publishers, whereas the Dice Awards are only open to people that are members of that organization.

[684] So it's like this subset of the game industry giving itself awards, and then they throw Jay Moore's coked -up ass on the front of it, and it's just pointless.

[685] So this is just a – I guess it's a more relevant award show is my understanding.

[686] And also the IGF awards will be at the same time.

[687] The Independent Games Festival will be giving its awards.

[688] I'll be curious to see – you know, a lot of fun stuff has come out of the IGF before.

[689] We've definitely seen some up -and -comers.

[690] Yeah, and AudioSurf came out last week.

[691] That's a big IGF finalist.

[692] Which I still need to check out, but in the past, the introversion guys, the behemoth guys, these are pretty solid cats that have ended up coming out of those circles, so it's definitely something to watch.

[693] Yeah, for sure.

[694] And that's Wednesday at GDC.

[695] What do you have for Thursday?

[696] Thursday, nothing until 2 .30.

[697] I've got a dialogue production for Bioware's Mass Effect Lessons Learned and Future Plans.

[698] I guess the description goes to talk about how they made like 30 ,000 lines of dialogue were recorded for the game.

[699] And just, you know, how could they have done this better and made this, you know, streamline the process.

[700] And that's, you know, the dialogue is the most interesting thing about Mass Effect far and away.

[701] More than, you know, the setting or the...

[702] Oh, right, yeah.

[703] To me, even the story itself, but how it's told, I think, is much more interesting.

[704] So getting a little bit of insight onto that aspect of that game, I'm very interested in.

[705] Yeah, I have a couple of things written down for earlier in the day.

[706] At 9 a .m., Peter Seidow of World in Conflict fame is going to be talking about that game's development process and basically how they went about it all wrong and still managed to make a really good game.

[707] is sort of what that one's sounding like.

[708] And then Sony is having a session at noon called Creating Content for Home, where they're going to talk about the technical aspects of making stuff for PlayStation Home.

[709] Did you get into the Home beta?

[710] I thought you had applied for it, I remember.

[711] No, I did not.

[712] No, I haven't seen Home in a good long time.

[713] As I understand it, it's undergone some pretty big changes throughout the beta process.

[714] But you actually still give a crap about Home?

[715] I want to see it.

[716] I'm interested in seeing it.

[717] I don't necessarily think it's going to be this great thing because I think that a big part of Sony's push for it is going to be marketing -oriented and making these partnership deals with people to get content into Home that is not necessarily in the...

[718] best interests of the player.

[719] But at the same time, there are going to be developers out there that are able to use home to better enhance their game.

[720] Like Warhawk, I guess, they're patching home support into Warhawk pretty soon here.

[721] And you'll be able to basically be in your living space with a bunch of dudes and launch a Warhawk server from there, and it'll take everybody right into the game and right back out of it, I guess, once you're done or something like that.

[722] So it seems like there's a potential for some interesting integration there, but we'll see.

[723] Well, you know, I agree with you that it definitely seems like there's a big kind of, you know, marketing and sales centric push from Sony for home.

[724] But, you know, that stuff is not inherently bad because you get that in Xbox Live and it's, you know, the key is that balance is, you know, making sure that the stuff that benefits the user doesn't overwhelm or isn't overwhelmed by the stuff that is just blatantly for money, y 'all.

[725] Right.

[726] So like when you say want to have a Grey's Anatomy theme and picture pack on Xbox Live, attaching a price tag to it is like a double slap to the face.

[727] So let's talk about that for a second, because I saw that the other night and that's pretty mind blowing.

[728] They're charging.

[729] There's a Grey's Anatomy picture pack and theme.

[730] on Xbox Live Marketplace that they're charging for.

[731] And the standard up to now has kind of been for any promotional stuff like that for TV shows or movies has always been free.

[732] Well, I think that there's a weird kind of culture line that they have tried to distinguish where it's like, if it's a picture pack that they think that the average Xbox user would be into...

[733] So like, say, the Adult Swim picture packs, like the Tim and Eric pack and that stuff, they've charged for that because they think they can get away with it.

[734] But then when it comes to movies like Shooter, like Axe Body Spray, like the T -Mobile Sidekick, like all this other stuff, all that stuff.

[735] Alpha Dog.

[736] Alpha Dog, yeah.

[737] So your Justin Timberlake picture is free.

[738] And I think that the Grey's Anatomy thing is the first time when I've looked at it and thought...

[739] that they made the wrong decision.

[740] Like, that should be on the other side of the line.

[741] It should be free because who the hell cares about Grey's Anatomy?

[742] Well, it does have a pretty large following, but at the same time, I think you're right about there being that kind of culture line.

[743] Because I think there's the culture at large, but then there's the culture inside of Xbox Live, which is...

[744] You know, a little more insular.

[745] It's maybe a little more fringe.

[746] If you go and look at, you know, what the top 10 movies or top 10 TV shows on Marketplace are, that's not going to necessarily reflect top 10 shows on TV.

[747] Right, exactly.

[748] So like to put something like Grey's Anatomy in front of people and say, here, pay for, you know, the ability to have this woman as your picture.

[749] Sure, whatever.

[750] I totally don't get it.

[751] Like that just seems so backwards.

[752] Like they should be paying me. to advertise Grey's Anatomy to people.

[753] But do you not think that it's weird that the standard on the other side for all of the game picture packs and themes is that those are for pay, even though those are just as promotional and often as niche, if not more niche?

[754] I don't quite know how to articulate the difference, but I paid for the Tim and Eric picture pack and didn't necessarily feel awful about doing so.

[755] I did the same, and I've bought a few other game -focused picture packs in the past as well.

[756] Yeah, I bought a Street Fighter one, and I bought a Mortal Kombat one, and that sort of stuff.

[757] But yeah, the Tim and Eric one, I think, was the first non -game -related one that I had purchased.

[758] I don't know.

[759] I think because it makes sense.

[760] Like, oh, of course they would charge for that, because people might actually want that.

[761] Whereas Grey's Anatomy or Alpha Dog or all that other stuff just seems like, I guess the promotional aspect of it just seems more crass and more upfront with those sort of things kind of intruding into the Xbox Live space.

[762] I guess it's funny because you can kind of read any of these pricing decisions as being Xbox making presumptions about who you are.

[763] Right, and that's the thing, is they've been pretty much right so far.

[764] It's like, oh, like this, will you pay for this?

[765] And you're like, yeah, that's right, I'd pay for that.

[766] Yeah, it's like, oh, you jerk, alright, but yeah, I guess I will pay for that.

[767] But yeah, I'm not going to pay for this Mission Impossible 3 pack as much as I do like this picture of Ving Rhames.

[768] You would have paid for that picture of Ving Rhames.

[769] No, I don't think I would have paid for the picture of Ving Rhames.

[770] I'm going to stick to that.

[771] I really don't think I would have paid for the picture of Ving Rhames.

[772] I might have because I bought the Command & Conquer 3 picture pack for the picture of Billy Dee Williams and – actually, picture of Billy Dee Williams and picture of Michael Ironside.

[773] So that was kind of a twofer.

[774] Yeah, yeah.

[775] I guess I could see that.

[776] I don't know.

[777] I just wish that they would get rid of all this, like, for pay, like, icon stuff and just let everyone – set their own picture and use that as a default picture and just be a little more on the ball when it comes to punishing people that use that to then put porn in or whatever.

[778] Because that's why you can see someone's custom picture, but only if you're on their friends list.

[779] And it requires a camera.

[780] You can't just import a file for your PC or something like that.

[781] Well, I mean, here's kind of the thing about the argument against what we're saying about these pictures is...

[782] The nominal cost for Microsoft to get the assets for these Grey's Anatomy things and to put them up and then to say, all right, it's $2 for this or it's $1 .50 for this is nominal in the face of however much money they would make off of that because that's basically found money.

[783] Right.

[784] Yeah.

[785] It's basically free.

[786] It's like we had these pictures and we put them into the system and now pay us for them.

[787] And they get, you know, I'm sure Microsoft gets.

[788] 10 cents or whatever out of every one of those sales or some some some percentage and i don't know how how huge it is but yeah something something that covers the bandwidth cost for for however much cost to send you those pictures um but i i look at it the same way i look at like aol instant messenger icons like what if they started charging for those and you couldn't you know they tried to for a little bit really like that's crazy and i agree it's totally completely batshit loco it's just unacceptable it's untoward And if they want Xbox Live to be this kind of ubiquitous service that has that sort of appeal, they need to put users in control of more aspects of it.

[789] But they won't because they still want that control.

[790] They still need that to some degree.

[791] Well, at the very least, they need to start letting me import JPEGs as my friends list picture so that I'm not holding up...

[792] my laptop to my Xbox live vision camera so that I can take a sweet ass picture of whatever is on my screen.

[793] But then it would, then it would rob you of that fun, uh, you know, home arts and crafts experience.

[794] Yeah, I guess you're right.

[795] Anyway, four o 'clock.

[796] Yeah.

[797] Do you have anything else after two 30?

[798] My next thing is at four o 'clock on, on Thursday.

[799] Um, no, nothing, nothing until four.

[800] 4 o 'clock, creating Spielberg's Boom Blocks with your friend and mine, Lewis Castle.

[801] Lewis Castle keeping it real about Boom Blocks.

[802] This stuff about Boom Blocks looks crazy, and all the hype about it has been really weird, so I want to see some of that for myself.

[803] I'm very interested, and I guess it's worth disclosing that your friend and mine, Joe Fielder, is working on that game.

[804] Really?

[805] Oh, good for Joe.

[806] Yeah, yeah.

[807] He got himself onto a game that wasn't a World War II first -person shooter.

[808] Right.

[809] Awesome.

[810] I've been talking to him some, and he's been...

[811] It's very difficult to describe this game just because of...

[812] Once you see it, you understand why it's compelling and what's interesting about it.

[813] I think even the trailer, you only kind of get...

[814] You see that first trailer, it's like, okay, I kind of get what you're trying to do.

[815] I get it more than if you had tried to tell me, but I think it's definitely a game that I'm going to need to play to...

[816] To fully grasp.

[817] But I want to hear Louis Castle.

[818] I want to hear my man Louis C. spit some game about boom blocks.

[819] They should get Louis C .K. to do that presentation.

[820] That would be way more interesting.

[821] Devolve into hateful spite about his wife and kids.

[822] Exactly.

[823] That would be that.

[824] Whatever.

[825] They should just get Louis C .K. to make a Pootie Tang game.

[826] That would be pretty good.

[827] Push A to remove belt and whip someone's ass with it.

[828] It'd be a good 8 -bit side -scroller.

[829] Right.

[830] So when we don't show up to the Spielberg thing on time and can't get into it, at 4 o 'clock there is also Matt Hooper from id with a session called From Doom to Rage where they talk about the thought processes behind id's new engine.

[831] And how they're going about making Id Tech 5.

[832] How do you think the Id guys feel about kind of this crazy bum rush that Unreal put on them over the past few years?

[833] I guess more than the past few years.

[834] I guess, you know, for the past five years or so of kind of just dethroning them in this engine -vendoring area.

[835] I think they feel, hey, check it out.

[836] I made this rocket.

[837] You know, like I think that Carmack, I think only now they're realizing what happened.

[838] I think for a while there they took their eye off the ball.

[839] They were charging way too much for a day of Carmack's time if a licensee wanted some help from the guy that actually made the engine.

[840] Like I had heard figures like a million dollars a day or, you know, just like weird, weird, weird stuff like that.

[841] I don't know if that's accurate or not, but that's someone told me that who was close to that whole click for a while.

[842] And apparently, I think the other thing I did here is that as part of the shifts to this new id engine, they are waking up to the licensing stuff and realizing that Unreal has kind of come into their world and taken it all from them.

[843] And that they're going to try to be more reasonable when working with licensees and find a way to make this rage engine more attractive to developers.

[844] Yeah, I guess I don't know.

[845] I wonder if it can even come back in this in this regard.

[846] I feel like, you know, the the real guys just did such an amazing job of it seems like they kind of built this engine from the start.

[847] Like just thinking about like.

[848] How can we be really good at making an engine that other people can use?

[849] I think it's like the back -end support and just how they handle all that stuff just seems like...

[850] In contrast, it seems like id are kind of like...

[851] They are the weird geniuses who've come up with this thing, and they're obtuse and difficult to deal with, but you really want their thing because their thing is really good.

[852] And it seems like Unreal figured out how to make that really good thing without all those weird edges.

[853] Well, I think that Dennis Dyack would probably argue that point with you.

[854] That's fair, but I also think Dennis Diox is probably a little bit difficult to work with himself.

[855] Yeah, probably a little.

[856] Probably, but yeah, it has been a pretty insular company, I guess, and if they are going to try to open up and be better about licensing out this new engine, it'll be interesting to see if they can get back in the game.

[857] So that'll be what we'll actually be going to see at 4 o 'clock when we can't get into sea.

[858] Yeah.

[859] When we're too drunk to get into the boom blocks thing.

[860] Oh, I was talking to Alex, by the way, and he had this great idea when we were at the bar the other night, and that is that we should go to Hank's every single day that we are there.

[861] That's a good call.

[862] I want you to know that I'm going to be going to Hank's every Wednesday for a while anyways.

[863] I'm just going to go and call in my order and drive down and pick up the curry chicken and then out.

[864] That has been one of the most dramatic aspects of this whole not working on Second Street thing is not being able to get to Henry's Hunan.

[865] You know?

[866] It's weird how over time that place became just...

[867] absolutely my favorite Chinese.

[868] I thought it was okay the first few times I went there years and years ago.

[869] But at this point, any other Chinese food is kind of garbage as far as I'm concerned.

[870] I don't know if I'd call all other Chinese food garbage.

[871] I just think I put Henry's on a different level.

[872] There's Chinese food.

[873] And then there's Hank's, so I think that's kind of where I'm at with it.

[874] Well, yeah, I mean, I think we're saying kind of the same thing, is that it doesn't even compete.

[875] It's not even like they're the same thing.

[876] Right, but at the same time, like, I hunger for them differently.

[877] Like, sometimes I just want regular -ass Chinese food.

[878] But sometimes you want the fire of Henry's Hunan.

[879] Exactly, exactly.

[880] Where you clean.

[881] When in San Francisco, enjoy Henry's Hunan with over two locations to serve you.

[882] So that aside, what else do we have on Thursday?

[883] 5 .30 Thursday.

[884] There's a big -ass roundtable called Are Games Essentially Superficial?

[885] Where they kind of are going to debate that point.

[886] But the list of people at this thing, Chris Taylor.

[887] That is the...

[888] Gas Power Games.

[889] Yes.

[890] Subcom.

[891] Of Subcom fame.

[892] Commander in the Dungeon Siege.

[893] Yes.

[894] Lewis Castle.

[895] of Boom Block's fame.

[896] We'll have a half hour break.

[897] Also formerly of Westwood.

[898] Yes, Westwood.

[899] Peter Molyneux, maybe you've heard of him.

[900] He tells lies about Fable.

[901] Yeah, exactly.

[902] He tells Fables about Fable.

[903] I don't know.

[904] Ken Levine will be there.

[905] And Russ DeMaria.

[906] I think he's going to chair it.

[907] That's my guess.

[908] That makes sense.

[909] He seems kind of the odd man out on that list.

[910] But that's a smoking hot list of developers, of minds in the industry, who hearing them kind of talk to each other about this topic would be quite compelling.

[911] Yeah, and I first saw Chris Taylor speak at last year's DICE, where he kind of talked about...

[912] The importance of quality of life and basically, you know, which, you know, every single one of these conferences, someone has to get up and say, you don't need to be in crunch mode.

[913] Here's how.

[914] But usually they're trying to promote their own weird little project management software set or some crap like that.

[915] Whereas Chris Taylor was more talking about, like, you should get into yoga.

[916] And, you know, it just was coming at it from a pretty wild perspective.

[917] It was really fascinating.

[918] to hear basically how they developed Supreme Commander without losing their minds.

[919] Well, I'm definitely interested to hear him talk.

[920] All of my contact with him has been very interesting.

[921] He's a compelling personality at the very least.

[922] Definitely, definitely.

[923] So I'm very interested to hear that.

[924] The same can really be said about everyone else on this panel.

[925] It's a hot lineup.

[926] Right, exactly.

[927] I think that's definitely one of the best ones.

[928] If you're going to GDC, I think you should try to catch that.

[929] So when we don't get into that one...

[930] Yeah, there's Chris Foster from Harmonix, who's going to be talking about Your Music is the Game, which is the development of Phase for the iPod, the other game that Harmonix put out last year.

[931] And I realize that he's no Alex Rogopoulos, but the more glimpses I can get into how they do stuff at Harmonix, the happier I am, because I think that there's a pretty unique mindset there, just by virtue of them doing almost exclusively these rhythm -based games, then also just their roots as a software company that made music software rather than as an out -and -out game developer.

[932] Right.

[933] Yeah, and I wouldn't be surprised if they end up picking up Dylan Fitterer, who is the developer of AudioSurf.

[934] I wouldn't be surprised if they seek that dude out and go, hey, you made something like this stuff what we make, and it's also cool.

[935] We should work on this sort of stuff together, move to Boston.

[936] Do you think that that's something Harmonix would do, or do you think that someone looking to horn in on Harmonix's action would do?

[937] Do you think that...

[938] Someone else out there sees that same potential.

[939] I almost feel like that's more likely because I feel like the Harmonix guys would say, well, yeah, he's good at it, but we basically did that already.

[940] Maybe, maybe.

[941] I don't know.

[942] Yeah, I guess I can see it from that perspective.

[943] But I don't know.

[944] Something about just the way Harmonix operates and kind of how they've been doing business.

[945] I can see them wanting to work with that guy.

[946] You just won't shut up about this AudioSurf thing.

[947] Yeah, dude, AudioSurf is pretty awesome.

[948] I don't have a personal computer.

[949] An IBM PC?

[950] I don't have an IBM clone.

[951] I don't have an IBM clone here, so I can't run any executable files.

[952] 8486?

[953] You don't have any of that stuff?

[954] No, I don't have that chip set, unfortunately.

[955] So I can't replay it, but it does seem very interesting.

[956] It is very cool.

[957] It's not perfect.

[958] Since it launched on Steam last Friday, there have been some people talking about some bugs.

[959] But when you have a game that's made by a dude or four or five people, that's bound to happen.

[960] And they've already been on top of updates.

[961] So it's been pretty awesome.

[962] Very good kind of scoreboard fighting is possible with that game.

[963] And that's pretty cool.

[964] So Friday, final day of...

[965] GDC, the Game Developers Conference.

[966] Yeah, Friday I've got one thing I absolutely positively must see, but it's not until the end of the day.

[967] I've got two things lined up before that, which, I don't know, I didn't see a whole lot on Friday, but maybe you found something I didn't.

[968] Friday morning, 10 .30, there's a...

[969] Prototype.

[970] David Jaffe is going to say something ridiculous.

[971] Oh, really?

[972] Okay.

[973] The session's called From Grunt to God to Startup, Career Lessons from the Edge of Game Development by David Jaffe, which sounds like David Jaffe wrote that himself.

[974] Yeah.

[975] It definitely seems kind of how he regards himself, but if nothing else, David Jaffe is interesting to watch.

[976] Oh, totally, yeah.

[977] definitely has a lot to say.

[978] The thing I had for 10 .30, the thing I found, which I will probably replace with this David Jaffe thing, but keep in mind that we won't be able to get into it because we'll still be too drunk, is Prototype, The Artistic Vision Uncensored.

[979] You know that game from Radical?

[980] I was looking at that session.

[981] I definitely thought about it, but this one superseded it then.

[982] But yeah, Radical is working on this game that's kind of their open -world, ridiculous, high -tech game.

[983] Yeah, and it's called Prototype, and the information out there about it so far has been pretty minimal, but it's looking really cool, so I just want to see more of it.

[984] Something about that game has very much a Force Unleashed feel to it, where the ethic behind the game creation seems to be about just creating these really robust...

[985] environments and tools to then allow stuff to happen rather than actually scripting the thing that's going to happen.

[986] It's like, well, that's not where the action in this game is coming from.

[987] It's from the pieces being there and then seeing how they end up falling.

[988] Emergent gameplay.

[989] But it's emerged.

[990] It's out already.

[991] It came out.

[992] You can't keep calling it emergent.

[993] It's going to continue to emerge all over the place.

[994] I'm going to get a mop.

[995] So what's your next thing?

[996] My next thing is not until 2 .30.

[997] Yeah, 2 .30, which I had one thing I was going to go to, but now I realize I totally want to go to this other thing more.

[998] And the thing that I'm probably not going to go to is the Fable 2 Peter Molyneux thing.

[999] It's called Fable 2, the three...

[1000] the big three features revealed, or as I like to say, Fable 2, Peter Molyneux says three big lies about Fable 2.

[1001] Yeah, it's like, Peter Molyneux says three things about Fable 2, can you guess which two of them will be cut before shipping?

[1002] And I realize that it's popular to rag on Peter Molyneux about this stuff, but he's so reliable about it, is the thing that makes it so much fun.

[1003] I think he's realized that he's maybe...

[1004] perceived that way and i i think at this point but then even like yeah i think he made to a certain degree but then like last year it didn't stop him from talking about the fucking dog right just like that that's the big idea and that he comes out and is just totally committed to it and passionate about it and believes in it all the way that's the thing is like he all of these things that he's going to talk about whether they're making the game or not he totally he believes in it He doesn't think he's lying.

[1005] And it all seems totally possible at this point.

[1006] And then I don't know what happens, whether it's just the realities of the game business of where his publisher is stepping in and saying, you realize that Christmas is coming.

[1007] We have to ship this game.

[1008] We've got to ship this thing.

[1009] Players need to be able to customize their own ham sandwiches.

[1010] All right, well, look, let's cut the ham out of that sandwich and ship it before Thanksgiving.

[1011] This is integral to the experience.

[1012] The player will not be fully immersed in the wonderful magical world of Fable 2 without customized ham sandwiches.

[1013] You can choose from a Varti or a Gouda or a...

[1014] a Colby cheddar for, for your cheeses, or perhaps for the, for the ham itself, you have a, a regular thin sliced deli ham or a black forest ham.

[1015] The, the, the endless, limitless, imaginable possibilities.

[1016] All right.

[1017] Well, maybe you can make that.

[1018] That can, that can be some downloadable content.

[1019] You can put that in after the fact, just cut it out, shift the game.

[1020] And then, and then the ham sandwiches end up becoming the focus for an entirely different.

[1021] Right.

[1022] Fable three.

[1023] Yeah, so there's that, and that does sound interesting, but also at that same time is something called Up Against the Wall, Game Makers Take on the Press.

[1024] Now, what is it?

[1025] Let's talk about what this is and who is in this.

[1026] I don't have the names in front of me here.

[1027] I have the names here.

[1028] Okay, I know it's Andy McNamara from Game Informer.

[1029] I'll start from the top of this list here.

[1030] I've got Brad Crescenti from Kotaku.

[1031] Ngai.

[1032] Is that how you say it?

[1033] Ngai.

[1034] Ngai.

[1035] Is it Ngai?

[1036] Okay.

[1037] Ngai Kroll.

[1038] He's the Newsweek guy.

[1039] Jeff Keighley.

[1040] Garnett Lee.

[1041] He's the managing editor at 1UP.

[1042] Andy McNamara.

[1043] He's the executive editor at Game Informer.

[1044] And Steven Totillo.

[1045] Totillo?

[1046] Totillo?

[1047] I think it's Totillo.

[1048] I don't know.

[1049] Now that I think about it, I don't know that I've ever heard it pronounced.

[1050] Okay, so I'll go with Steven Totillo, who does the MTV News blog.

[1051] So pretty much kind of some of the, I wouldn't necessarily call them mainstream, but these are your kind of fringe enthusiast, fringe mainstream press heavies out there right now.

[1052] Right, yeah, definitely some respected names.

[1053] I think NGuy's one of the best guys out there doing it.

[1054] Right now, I think Steven's been doing really well with the MTV stuff, too.

[1055] I'd agree with that, but definitely both those guys.

[1056] And Andy McNamara, I cannot say enough about...

[1057] You are on a personal level a big fan of Andy Mac.

[1058] If not for Andy McNamara, chances are I would not have done the things that I have done in the world of writing about games.

[1059] Yeah, definitely.

[1060] So, big fan of Andy.

[1061] I think he's one of the all -time greats, and it's good to see him on a panel like this.

[1062] So, I guess the nature of this panel is they're saying that, like, basically they've been soliciting questions from game developers that they perceive to be tough questions, and developers are going to get the chance to kind of grill the press for a change.

[1063] And it'll be interesting to see how that goes.

[1064] So, I mean, I guess what I wonder is, you know, is this going to be kind of big picture philosophical stuff about like what the intent of the of the, you know, the writer is, you know, when approaching a story or a game?

[1065] Or do you think they're going to get like real nitpicky and kind of like get into like the petty shit about like, well, how many hours do you play a game for?

[1066] Blah -de -blah.

[1067] In your review of my game, you said this, and it's not true.

[1068] We spent all this time on the AI, and you said it was bad.

[1069] What are you talking about?

[1070] I just hope it doesn't devolve into that, because, you know, everyone else is going to be at the Fable 2 thing.

[1071] Right.

[1072] Exactly.

[1073] So you're going to have us and all of the drunk developers, everyone else who's loaded at 2 .30 in the afternoon.

[1074] Yeah, it'll just be like us asking them questions.

[1075] It'll be the press asking the press.

[1076] So, you remember that time when your publication wrote that preview of that Team Ninja thing?

[1077] What was that about?

[1078] How did you get that story?

[1079] Yeah, exactly.

[1080] But Jeff, without further ado, let's go to what is probably the most exciting session of all of GDC, 4 o 'clock on a Friday afternoon.

[1081] A Portal Postmortem Integrating Writing and Design.

[1082] So this is all about Portal, and this is featuring Kim Swift and Old Man Murray's own Eric Wolpaw.

[1083] Yeah, so this was the first thing I wrote down on my list of things I want to see, and really it is the only thing that I feel I absolutely must see.

[1084] Yeah, I'm kind of with you.

[1085] There's a lot of that stuff I really would like to see, but...

[1086] Like, I will miss everything else if it means I can go see this.

[1087] Right, totally.

[1088] I would very much like to hear about the process of integrating the writing with Portal's design.

[1089] And Eric Wolpaw, a fascinating individual, to say the least.

[1090] Yeah, a brilliant and hilarious writer.

[1091] You know, his influence on the tone of Portal.

[1092] To anyone that read any of his stuff on Old Man Murray or, you know, saw any of his stuff that would pop up elsewhere, he was a pretty prolific writer for a while there.

[1093] You can taste the Eric Walpaw all over it.

[1094] Ew.

[1095] You can taste it.

[1096] It's palpable.

[1097] Yeah, so that's totally, yeah, I definitely want to see that.

[1098] The description for the talk says that there will be dares involved.

[1099] Plenty of time for questions or dares, so we can maybe dare them to do something.

[1100] That might be fun.

[1101] Yeah, any sort of talking about Portal, especially from the writing side, which is, you know, the game itself, that game is so brilliant, but what really hooks you is the writing in a very surprising way.

[1102] Yeah, for sure.

[1103] Yeah, that one, absolutely thrilled to go see that one.

[1104] And then at the end of all of this, I've got this thing at 5 .30, the Game Design Challenge, the interspecies game, which I've seen video of this from GDC years past.

[1105] They have this Game Design Challenge where basically they'll get these two teams of game designers, and they'll basically just do a quiz game, but with lots of super intense, like game developer focused questions.

[1106] Like you, you have to basically like all the questions go completely over my head, but just kind of watching these guys, you know, kind of have this, this fake, you know, this mock game show in a, in a peer environment is, is kind of interesting.

[1107] Also, I, I wanted to, the, the big draw on this one is, uh, uh, Alexey Pajanov is going to be one on one of the panels.

[1108] So just to see him up there at all, I'm compelled to go and find.

[1109] So he'll answer every question with, like, maybe if there were blocks dropping, that would work.

[1110] Or hats, if you could have hats dropping.

[1111] Match up some different colored hats.

[1112] Some faces.

[1113] Yeah, faces perhaps.

[1114] Oh, Hattress.

[1115] Now that's a game.

[1116] Where is my Xbox Live Arcade port of Hattress?

[1117] The time is now.

[1118] I'd say probably right now my most obscure demand would be...

[1119] I want Sim Tower for Xbox Live Arcade.

[1120] Yeah, exactly.

[1121] Or no, fuck that.

[1122] I want Sim Ant for the Xbox Live Arcade.

[1123] Yes, Sim Ant, certainly.

[1124] So yeah, that's pretty much it for GDC.

[1125] I think the other thing is there's a weird thing that I'm going to get into that's like Will Wright giving a lecture and then...

[1126] I also got an invite for that.

[1127] There was an evening with Will Wright.

[1128] I guess he's not doing anything else actually at the...

[1129] Right.

[1130] I think this is the only thing.

[1131] So yeah, that's a separate kind of deal.

[1132] Are you going to go to that?

[1133] You're going to that?

[1134] Yeah, no, no, I'm going to the Will Wright thing.

[1135] I got an invite for that.

[1136] Terrific.

[1137] We'll go together.

[1138] It'll be fun.

[1139] I believe it's going to start off with a bit of a lecture followed by a Q &A session.

[1140] Like they're inviting people to send in questions now and he'll answer some questions and then after that it'll turn into kind of a party type thing.

[1141] So yeah, that's kind of the week ahead.

[1142] Yeah, I think that's pretty much it.

[1143] That's all that's really going on with me. I mean, what are you playing aside from no longer playing Lost Odyssey?

[1144] Aside from that, I've been playing a fair amount of Carcassonne lately for no good reason.

[1145] And I also have the Tomb Raider anniversary in from the game Fly.

[1146] Oh, yeah.

[1147] Game flew that in.

[1148] Game flew that one in, and Gamefly continues to torture me by leaving the second slot on my account open for days on end without shipping me anything.

[1149] Weird.

[1150] Yeah, right now, I just got the box to the bigs, which I bought from Gamefly, so they sent me the box.

[1151] And I mostly just bought it because I hadn't played too much of it yet and wanted to play more, but still wanted to get more games.

[1152] So right now I have Devil May Cry 4 for the 360, which isn't really doing much of anything for me. Yeah, that's on my list.

[1153] Right now on my list I have pared down to Turok, Devil May Cry 4, and No More Heroes.

[1154] No More Heroes is obviously the one that I want to play the most, but I still feel compelled to stab some dinosaurs, and I don't know.

[1155] cry on a devil.

[1156] Yeah, I mean, I just, I mean, having never really been a big fan of the Devil May Cry series, I feel like a lot of the changes to Devil May Cry 4 are just totally lost on me. It's like, oh, so I'm playing as a different white -haired dude and he has a crazy demon arm I can use to punch guys in addition to the sword and gun?

[1157] Yeah, okay.

[1158] It still sounds like, yeah, that still sounds like Devil May Cry to me. I also just never...

[1159] Devil May Cry is one of those games that always seem like a game I should like.

[1160] Right, yeah, it's a straightforward action game.

[1161] It sounds compelling if you tell me the parts that make up Devil May Cry, but then the way that they are assembled just doesn't quite agree with me. Yeah, I think for me it's some camera stuff, but yeah, I don't know, just thematically it's not really doing anything for me. But the cutscenes are alright, even if they are mad long.

[1162] And the other game I have out right now is Uncharted.

[1163] Have you gotten into that much yet?

[1164] No, not yet.

[1165] I mean, I played bits and pieces of it back around the time it came out, but never really got the time to just kind of sink into it and play it all the way through, and I think I am going to bust that out of the envelope.

[1166] It's a very good game.

[1167] I'd say it's a very, very good game.

[1168] I think I grew tired of the way that it structures the gunfight stuff.

[1169] It feels a little...

[1170] At a certain point in the game, it becomes a little apparent, kind of like the mechanics behind the scene of guys deploying automatically until you reach a certain point and stuff like that.

[1171] Oh, right.

[1172] It's just some kind of gamey aspects to it, but gorgeous game and some nice storytelling and some good voice acting and whatnot.

[1173] I think it's worth going through, and it's not that long either.

[1174] Ah, good, because I want to send both these games back because I really want to get a hold of Jumper and CSI, both for 360.

[1175] I think I've got a copy of Jumper coming to me. Ah, well, the points are apparently quite easy.

[1176] Someone on my list got like 800 points out of it in something like 45 minutes.

[1177] I want to check out the Jumper.

[1178] I'm definitely with you on Jumper, and I've already played through the CSI, so they're kind of soul -deadening, as easy as they are to get.

[1179] I've got a lot of free time these days.

[1180] I don't know if you noticed.

[1181] True.

[1182] I think I'm just going to get a fact that just says exactly what to do and then just do that and just button my way through it in four hours or however long.

[1183] I did that, but there's just so much back and forth between locations and load times that it's still kind of grueling.

[1184] even using a FAQ for it.

[1185] Well, maybe I'll do it over the course of like 10 hours and just like occasionally turn around and input the next command and then turn back around to my computer and play audio surf or do whatever, you know, on that.

[1186] Do something that isn't killing you inside.

[1187] Right, yeah, for a change.

[1188] Well, hot damn, yeah, I guess those are video games today.

[1189] Do we want to talk about...

[1190] Let's talk about new releases.

[1191] Yeah, what's out this week?

[1192] I'm just going to go look it up.

[1193] I'm going to go find out.

[1194] I want to know.

[1195] I'm actually finding these days that I care more about what's on the new release calendar.

[1196] The Club is out this week.

[1197] I've heard different things about The Club, depending on who you talk to.

[1198] From what I played of it, which there is a demo out now if people do want to check it out, it just seems overly clunky.

[1199] It seemed like a really neat idea, but I don't know.

[1200] Not doing it, didn't really do it for me in the way that a shooter should in this day and age, I guess.

[1201] It definitely looks a little throwback.

[1202] In a way, it reminds me of like a late 90s Sega arcade game.

[1203] Totally, totally.

[1204] It's got like a lot of stuff kind of in common with stuff like The Grid.

[1205] Remember that Midway shooter, the arcade game?

[1206] I do remember The Grid.

[1207] Yeah, or it's just like kind of weird arcade -y.

[1208] Or yeah, like Outriggers.

[1209] Outriggers for Dreamcast, that Sega arcade.

[1210] Because it is very much about...

[1211] So it's about keeping a combo going by shooting people in quick succession or doing rolls before you shoot them, making sure you get them in the head, and basically just kind of not stopping for nothing and laying people down fast.

[1212] which on paper sounds really cool, but I don't know.

[1213] The controls just didn't seem like instantly kind of pick up and play for as much as you might want a game like that to be.

[1214] So I guess I'm going to approach it with caution, but it did leave me kind of at least interested enough to want to play more of the final version.

[1215] And the rest of next week is kind of crummy.

[1216] Nothing really else.

[1217] I guess there's Apollo Justice.

[1218] It's turning for the DS more lawyer in action.

[1219] Yeah, get your law on.

[1220] Law it up.

[1221] Everything else next week, nothing else really jumping out at me. Do we know what the Labricade game is?

[1222] I don't think so.

[1223] I don't think they've said, but they did announce the Rock Band stuff early.

[1224] Right.

[1225] I'm done buying Rock Band songs.

[1226] Same here, but only because I'm not playing it.

[1227] Basically, at some point, I'm going to put that game back in because there will be people here at the house.

[1228] and I'll be playing some four -player, and I think when that happens, I'm just going to go through and buy everything I haven't bought yet.

[1229] Yeah, that definitely has become the bottleneck with that game, is people to play with, because playing those new songs by yourself is not really that compelling.

[1230] Right, it's like, oh, the police, okay, well, yeah, I see how that could be fun in a group.

[1231] Maybe one of these days I will have a group together.

[1232] Let's see here.

[1233] All right, I'm not going to blow it here, but week after next, much more interesting, much more compelling release calendar for that.

[1234] But let's, I guess, leave that for then.

[1235] I guess, yeah, if there is a then.

[1236] I guess this is now weekly, I just decided.

[1237] Yeah, you just decided this was weekly, okay.

[1238] I decided we were going to do this more than once.

[1239] All right, fine, be that way if you want to be a jerk about it, I guess.

[1240] This is weekly, deal with it.

[1241] Okay, fine.

[1242] Go produce this.

[1243] There's also not a name.

[1244] So far, this is just the podcast.

[1245] Jeff and Ryan talk about Gatorade and games.

[1246] Yeah.

[1247] So, yeah.

[1248] So, end result of us doing this is I think I'm going to change out of the clothes I slept in and go buy some Gatorade Tiger if I can find it.

[1249] Because I'm now interested.

[1250] Do that, and then I fully recommend that you video blog about that experience to compliment.

[1251] To vlog it?

[1252] You want me to do a vlog?

[1253] I think you should do a vlog.

[1254] Vlog.

[1255] A vlog.

[1256] A vlog?

[1257] Yeah.

[1258] Yeah, I don't know.

[1259] Now that we got the Skype thing going, I'd say we should contact one Rich Gallup, but he went and got a job.

[1260] So he starts work this coming week.

[1261] So congratulations to him for selling out the beautiful dream of me rolling out of bed and discovering that he has been playing Call of Duty 4 for a couple of hours with one Ben Coelho and then playing with them for a couple of hours before Ben has to go play ping pong with his 70 - or 80 -year -old next -door neighbor for an hour.

[1262] That was a good lifestyle.

[1263] I'm a little disappointed that Rich had to go and get a job just as soon as I had quit mine.

[1264] Well, I think this will work out because we can still be a trio.

[1265] We'll just have to get a hold of Ben and say, hey, it's time to shoot dudes.

[1266] And then, you know, we can have a new group.

[1267] Even in his new setup, I'm sure that Rich will still have plenty of free time as he kind of gets going.

[1268] Yeah, yeah.

[1269] So, yeah, we'll see what he has to say about all this, and yeah.

[1270] So next week there will be guests.

[1271] Great.

[1272] All right, yeah.

[1273] Okay, so A, it's weekly, and B, now we have to track down guests.

[1274] Great.

[1275] Do you want to pile this even higher?

[1276] Do you want to, like, raise the expectations for the following show even more so that we just can't possibly meet them and disappoint everyone that ever considers listening to it?

[1277] We've been looking to get a sponsor, so look out for some hot giveaways next week.

[1278] Oh, dude.

[1279] Come on.

[1280] We're going to be doing – be sure to send in any email questions that you might have for us, and we'll answer them on the podcast.

[1281] We'll have a Skype line that you can call into, so you can leave messages on our Skype number, and we'll discuss those here on the air as well.

[1282] So tune in next week for all that.

[1283] Or maybe just come by and be part of our live studio audience.

[1284] Yeah, come here live.

[1285] Come to our party line.

[1286] That's right.

[1287] So, yeah, I guess that's going to do it for this podcast.

[1288] Find more things that we have to say at arrowpointingdown .com.

[1289] And at jeffgerstman .net.

[1290] Yeah, it's your source for...

[1291] For us talking about things.

[1292] For us talking about things, yeah, exactly.

[1293] For these two guys.

[1294] For these two guys that talk about stuff.

[1295] Some boring topics that they're interested in.

[1296] Yeah, that they're only barely interested in that you are almost guaranteed to not be interested in.

[1297] Such as HDDVD, Gatorade, sections at GDC.

[1298] I really want to see the tag cloud for this podcast.

[1299] Gatorade, Tiger Woods, tooth and plaque conspiracy.

[1300] And this will be one where the Venn diagram is three perfectly separate circles.

[1301] None of them touching.

[1302] Exactly.

[1303] All right.

[1304] So that does it for us.

[1305] See us next week.

[1306] We'll have a guest, live audience, email questions, voicemails, prizes, so much more.

[1307] And we're going to have a snake trainer here with some pythons.

[1308] From the San Diego Zoo.

[1309] He's going to give us a little demo.

[1310] It's going to be a lot of fun.

[1311] Please tune in then.