Jeff, Vinny and Dave - 11/18/11

[0] And I'm going to try and start streaming.

[1] Ready?

[2] Three, two, one.

[3] We look tiny.

[4] Is that working?

[5] We look tiny.

[6] Is it working for you?

[7] I don't know.

[8] It's working for me. We're all cramped over here.

[9] Crampy, crampy, crampy, cramp.

[10] Cramp.

[11] Cramp.

[12] The people in the chat say they see people, so I think that's a good sign.

[13] Can they hear us?

[14] That's a good question.

[15] It says the aspect ratio is squashed coming out.

[16] That's what I thought as well.

[17] It does look squished.

[18] But yeah, they can't hear us.

[19] Let me see if I can get the aspect ratio right.

[20] We're going to fix it.

[21] Let's try that.

[22] Hey!

[23] That's a little more like it.

[24] Now we're in widescreen.

[25] You need full width for this.

[26] Are you ready for me to do the Whiskey Media intro song?

[27] I don't know.

[28] Can you hear us?

[29] Should we take a call first and make sure that works before we do our intro song?

[30] I'm going to take a call.

[31] Yeah, take a call.

[32] And then you can sing this intro song to the caller.

[33] Hey, Andy, can you hear us?

[34] Yeah, what's going on?

[35] Hey, how's it going?

[36] Not too bad.

[37] You're our test call.

[38] Andy, are you ready for the theme song to the Whiskey Media Radio Show?

[39] Do I have to sing it?

[40] No, we did that last time.

[41] This time we're singing to you.

[42] I love it.

[43] Okay, go.

[44] You might think you've beat the scene.

[45] You haven't.

[46] The real one's far too mean.

[47] The water down one, the one you know, was made centuries ago.

[48] It made you sound all whack and corny.

[49] Yes, it's awful.

[50] Blasted boring.

[51] Twisted fiction.

[52] Sick addiction.

[53] Well, gather round children, zip and listen.

[54] That was it.

[55] You're listening to Radio Dave.

[56] You guys don't even know the face that my baby just made when she heard that.

[57] Yeah, scary.

[58] It sounds like a witch from the dragon was going to show up.

[59] It's going to be trouble.

[60] When you say your baby, you mean your child or your baby?

[61] I mean my child.

[62] Okay, all right.

[63] Yeah.

[64] Because I've seen Dave talk, and I've seen the babies.

[65] They melt.

[66] All right, well.

[67] Yeah.

[68] Who wants to kick us off?

[69] Well, we may as well ask a question.

[70] What do you got, Andy?

[71] Welcome to the show.

[72] Andy, what do you got?

[73] Hello.

[74] What I have is a pint of this year's Pax beer.

[75] Oh, fantastic.

[76] Oh, yeah.

[77] That Andy.

[78] That Andy.

[79] Hi, Andy.

[80] Brewmaster Andy.

[81] Andy, they got me terribly drunk.

[82] Yeah, sorry about that.

[83] Actually, no, I'm not sorry about that at all.

[84] Yeah, I was.

[85] Not like Brad, though.

[86] Oh, dude.

[87] Oh, Brad.

[88] Dude, I bought Brad that burger, and I'm glad I did, because...

[89] damn brad's a professional he can he can drink harder on an emptier stomach and come out alive but but yeah yeah So, yeah, no, I got that going on.

[90] I'm doing test brews for this year.

[91] And other than that, just getting ready, getting ready and trying to play video games, attempting to play video games.

[92] What are your Thanksgiving plans?

[93] What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

[94] Let's see.

[95] Well, actually, I live in Plymouth, which is Thanksgiving capital of the world.

[96] So like everybody else, I'm eating turkey, except I'm doing it in Plymouth.

[97] That's the only difference.

[98] The turkey tastes better in Plymouth.

[99] Do they dress up there?

[100] I think so.

[101] Do they have weird Ren Faire stuff out there?

[102] Yeah, do you reenact the first Thanksgiving?

[103] You know what?

[104] The closest thing we have to that is a bunch of the local Native Americans protest everything, and that's kind of it.

[105] I think that happens other places, but they definitely go up to – we have a hill downtown.

[106] They go near Plymouth Rock, and they just kind of chill out there and protest, and that's the closest thing to crazy.

[107] Thanksgiving shenanigans that we have.

[108] What's Plymouth Rock like?

[109] It's a rock.

[110] It's really boring.

[111] People like to videotape it.

[112] What does it do?

[113] It sits there.

[114] Is there like a pirate fight at the top of every hour or something like that?

[115] There should be.

[116] That'd be way more exciting than The Rock because right now The Rock is just the rock.

[117] It sits there.

[118] Do they let people climb on it or is it like you can't get near it?

[119] Yeah, it's fenced in in this weird little gazebo -type thing.

[120] Sorry, my wife just informed me it's called a portico, and I should know that, but I don't.

[121] He doesn't like to be called The Rock anymore.

[122] Yeah, it's Dwayne Johnson.

[123] Yeah, it's just kind of there, and people throw coins down there, and I think there's a dude that comes at night and takes all the coins.

[124] I don't know.

[125] It's a thing.

[126] Sounds like a great time.

[127] Yeah, it's really exciting.

[128] Plymouth is the best.

[129] Visit beautiful Plymouth.

[130] Guys, also we have a boat.

[131] You can go on the boat.

[132] Does the boat crash into the rock?

[133] Or does the rock crash into the boat?

[134] No, but all the people on the boat are like Ren Faire X people and they sit there and pretend to be in character all the time.

[135] Creepy.

[136] Yeah, and you can sit there and ask them how they microwave their food and watch them freak out.

[137] It's pretty awesome.

[138] Do people show up there in Star Trek outfits ever to really freak them out?

[139] But they should.

[140] Yeah, that would be pretty awesome.

[141] Andy, how are you enjoying the site so far?

[142] I am enjoying it.

[143] Any recommendations?

[144] I don't know.

[145] Do I have any recommendations?

[146] No, I think it's pretty solid the way it is.

[147] I would like to see probably a more...

[148] quickly rotating selection of headline videos and stuff.

[149] Because I know like for me, I only get to check the site every once in a while and seeing the same major video that you guys are kind of advertising or pushing for a while, it becomes a little tough to manage.

[150] And so I have to kind of dig through archives to see stuff that I missed during the week.

[151] If you log in, if you're logged in, you actually won't see it.

[152] See what?

[153] That's the difference.

[154] If you're logged in, you see latest videos.

[155] But if you aren't logged in at the time when you're on the video page, you see the featured ones.

[156] Oh, see.

[157] Well, there you go.

[158] Because I'm always logged in.

[159] So, all right.

[160] Well, cool.

[161] So forget that then.

[162] Just do your thing.

[163] No. But it's funny.

[164] I was just thinking.

[165] We have like the three people.

[166] Whatever.

[167] Any recommendation anybody's going to have.

[168] It's going to be one of our guys' fault.

[169] Yeah.

[170] I was waiting.

[171] I was going to see which one it was going to be.

[172] I was like, is it Vinny's fault?

[173] It's probably my fault.

[174] Is it my fault?

[175] Nice.

[176] I don't know.

[177] Yeah.

[178] I'm happy to blame all three of you if you want.

[179] Sure.

[180] Great.

[181] Yeah.

[182] Scattershot, shotgun.

[183] All right.

[184] All right.

[185] Well, thanks, Andy.

[186] No problem, guys.

[187] I look forward to the brew.

[188] Oh, it'll be there.

[189] All right, man. Thanks a lot.

[190] See you guys.

[191] That worked out well.

[192] Test complete.

[193] Test call complete.

[194] Great.

[195] Do you like my intro?

[196] Yeah.

[197] It was awesome.

[198] It was really good.

[199] I don't know why I wanted to do that.

[200] I just kind of felt like...

[201] Well, we need some kind of intro to kick it off.

[202] You have got that laptop on a precipice.

[203] That is bad idea jeans right there.

[204] It's okay, dudes.

[205] It's okay.

[206] Oh, my God.

[207] This laptop didn't land on this table.

[208] This table landed on this laptop.

[209] Okay.

[210] All right.

[211] It's going to be fine then.

[212] Hey, baby.

[213] What are you doing here?

[214] I'm here to help you guys talk about all the wonderful and fantastic things going on in the world of Whiskey Media.

[215] That's right.

[216] We're here.

[217] I feel like this is some kind of investor check -in with everybody.

[218] Yeah.

[219] Everybody happy?

[220] Yeah.

[221] That's pretty good.

[222] Let's talk about it.

[223] Here's our earnings call.

[224] I heard they announced they're going to do something.

[225] There's an investor call.

[226] What are you guys doing here?

[227] I gotta be here.

[228] I left my coffee mug in here and then you guys had to sit down.

[229] Come on, Vinny.

[230] Get in here.

[231] And we're going to talk about stuff.

[232] So we'll do our normal, I think we're going to do stuff a little bit different this time.

[233] We'll start it off with like a little just 10 -minute check -in.

[234] Yeah.

[235] Sort of go around the room, what we're sort of working on.

[236] All that kind of stuff.

[237] And then the main thing, too, we want to talk about was sort of our switch to YouTube.

[238] I know we made like some big changes like a month ago.

[239] And so we're going to talk about basically like how that's, what we've seen come out of that.

[240] Like the stats we've seen, what's been good with it, what's been bad with it.

[241] And then just sort of talk it out and take questions from people and see what they're talking about.

[242] Yeah.

[243] So we switched to YouTube, Dave.

[244] We did.

[245] What's up?

[246] Give me your 10 minutes.

[247] My 10 minutes?

[248] It's just got to be me. Give me your elevator pitch.

[249] Oh, man. So as we put in that article, the reason we switched to YouTube was sort of twofold.

[250] We did it to basically offload a lot of our viewing, our hour -long quick looks.

[251] Yeah.

[252] uh onto youtube and the other part was trying to build a bigger audience yeah out of youtube here's the good part both of those things kind of worked yeah so that we've seen it's been up i think like three and a half almost a month at this point so uh we made those changes we to give you guys some background like i'll be like kind of as transparent as we can be like Our Amazon bill that we get.

[253] Which we host our videos through Amazon.

[254] That's not just us buying books.

[255] Has grown exponentially sort of every month for the past two years or so as we've moved stuff over there.

[256] Since we went to HD, since we moved all of our subscriber stuff there, we're obviously putting up these files.

[257] Vinny, how big are those files?

[258] They're big.

[259] That come out of the compressor or that go in?

[260] How big is the Skyrim Marathon that goes up?

[261] The uncompressed?

[262] Give me both.

[263] The version that people would download.

[264] I'm not sure what the version people would download, but it was about a terabyte before we crunched it down.

[265] Yeah.

[266] Pretty funny.

[267] Maybe it was about 600 or 700 gig, and then we crunched it down.

[268] So I'm not 100 % sure what the final high -res download was.

[269] It's big.

[270] So moving that kind of stuff over, we saw I think it's basically close to about a 20 % savings that we're seeing.

[271] out of just our hosting costs just in the last moment but for the youtube change yes yeah for that change by moving the uh non -subscribers over onto that stuff that worked we got tens of thousands of dollars not not not tens close yeah close okay uh and um The other side that we saw is that since we've started switching over, we had such a hard time getting YouTube to actually register, which subscribers won't actually, they wouldn't have seen this.

[272] But the last month, Mike Horn and I have been going back and forth trying to basically make these tweaks to make YouTube recognize our videos as views because we like putting our very nice fanciful images up.

[273] that are things that we pick that we think are funny.

[274] YouTube just likes to auto -pick stuff from video.

[275] And they do that for a couple reasons.

[276] They don't want you to pick your own image for your video because...

[277] You could put up just pics of girls in bikinis.

[278] Okay.

[279] We should start doing that.

[280] I bet that would work.

[281] And it would work, and then that's why they don't allow it to happen because you could change your image to whatever you want.

[282] Now, the funny thing, the irony that I feel about this is that YouTube puts ads on their site in those promoted video spots, which are just exactly that, like the tiniest bikini.

[283] And then you click on it, and then it turns out to be an ad for the thing.

[284] Which I thought was pretty clever.

[285] I thought it was good because you're sitting there like, uh, and then it's like a big monster jumps out at you.

[286] Which to me is pretty clever.

[287] Oh, I didn't see that.

[288] It's like, you got me, you got me, internet.

[289] You understood.

[290] You caught me looking at, yeah.

[291] I was, yeah, I was looking at our stuff, but then I checked out the smallest bikini possible.

[292] But so we've been going back and forth with that kind of stuff, trying to make it.

[293] Basically as pretty as possible.

[294] It ended up where we couldn't necessarily do that.

[295] So now we've got the regular YouTube player sort of in there.

[296] Now for subscribers, we still throw our little cage above it because we just don't care.

[297] It's like we're not going to switch up the experience there too much.

[298] So we lose some video views there.

[299] But we finally got them reporting correctly.

[300] And the good stuff is since we've moved stuff over there, we've...

[301] seen a pretty decent jump, at least on the YouTube side, for videos.

[302] I would say that's probably mostly based on the ability for people to embed videos on other sites, because when they used our embed player, it wasn't...

[303] Sometimes it didn't work all the time.

[304] It was also like a billion things long, because we're building it rather than YouTube.

[305] Where YouTube, you're just throwing in a little iframe with an ID, and most message boards and stuff like that will actually use that.

[306] Right.

[307] So even, like, when you look at, you're looking at me confused.

[308] Like, you didn't even know this.

[309] No, I know all this.

[310] Yeah.

[311] Yeah, right.

[312] But if you looked at that thing, it would basically, that's the embed code that you now pull up.

[313] So it's been pretty cool.

[314] Like, we saw that Skyrim gameplay video got, what, like 150 or something since we put it up last week?

[315] On YouTube.

[316] Yeah.

[317] Yeah.

[318] And that's on our site as well.

[319] So on our site, we probably got 50 ,000 views.

[320] Right.

[321] I'd say.

[322] So 50 ,000 views.

[323] You're looking at, right now it's around 65 -70 % of all of our video views are happening, when they're viewed on our site, are being viewed through the YouTube player.

[324] So the rest are being viewed by subscribers or something along those lines.

[325] Or videos that we haven't converted.

[326] We still haven't converted a large bunch from the back catalog.

[327] But it's pretty cool because for us, normally a very big video is 70 ,000.

[328] I'd say.

[329] That's like a big video for us.

[330] Yeah.

[331] Yeah.

[332] I guess.

[333] Like a quick look goes up.

[334] That's like in a day or two days or what is that?

[335] Like a week?

[336] Yeah.

[337] Over a course of a week.

[338] So we've seen some increase over there.

[339] Yeah.

[340] Which has been kind of cool.

[341] Which is good because I mean, you know, ultimately we want people to see the stuff we do.

[342] Yes.

[343] And with the way the internet has changed, it's not necessarily...

[344] I know when we first started playing around with this stuff and people were like, why would you do this?

[345] Don't you want people coming to your site and page views and blah, blah, blah.

[346] Metrics and the stuff that kind of matters about the internet as a business is totally changing right now.

[347] So we're not just a website.

[348] So we're not just a website anymore.

[349] We need to be everywhere.

[350] We're on Boxee, we're on Roku, all that kind of stuff.

[351] I found out this week we have like 50 ,000 installs across the board for all of our...

[352] set -top box stuff.

[353] Cool.

[354] It's right around there.

[355] Amazingly enough, Tested.

[356] The largest.

[357] On Roku.

[358] That doesn't surprise me that much.

[359] I would have thought you guys would have been bigger on...

[360] Well, but on Roku, I guess those guys own them.

[361] The people that are buying Roku boxes, that's a Tested kind of crowd.

[362] But you and me, boxy kids.

[363] Yeah, boxy kids.

[364] Just horn that stuff out constantly.

[365] Just, you know, flagrant, you know.

[366] I love that stuff, though.

[367] That's been my favorite thing that we've launched.

[368] tech -wise in the last six months or so.

[369] The Boxy app, that sort of stuff?

[370] Yeah, because I love going home and being able to just watch that stuff.

[371] Like, I can even watch the live stream on the Boxy stuff.

[372] Can't do it on Roku, which kind of sucks.

[373] But anyways, we started doing all that stuff.

[374] All that's positive, good news.

[375] The bad news is that pretty much everybody around the board gives a shit for the quality of it.

[376] Yeah.

[377] Would you say that's fairly true?

[378] Yeah, that's pretty true.

[379] It's funny because people are saying things like, I can't believe they're putting 360p video up on YouTube.

[380] So biased.

[381] Which is hilarious.

[382] Which, Vinny, this is your key.

[383] I can't believe we did it either.

[384] I can't believe we went down from 1080p to 360p in one shot.

[385] The videos, if you were not watching the HD video, have always been 640x360.

[386] Always.

[387] Always.

[388] It was one of the things we did when we first launched.

[389] launched the site to kind of cut down on bandwidth and fit it on the page so it was full screen, was make it 640 by 360, which is half of 720.

[390] We've recorded everything in 720, which is why we can go for the HD stuff.

[391] We've never recorded higher than 720, so some stuff, our stuff, everything we have done up to the point we decide to go to 1080 can never be 1080.

[392] We can never go higher than that.

[393] The bit rates can go higher.

[394] Some stuff, like the Persona 4 Endurance run, was SD.

[395] That can never be 720.

[396] Yeah.

[397] You will never see that in HD.

[398] That's just because it was recorded in SD.

[399] It was a PlayStation 2 game.

[400] So, yeah, when we went to YouTube, we were like, well, let's just put up our not HD version, which happens to be 640 by 360.

[401] But Vinny's big butt.

[402] Tell me about your big butt.

[403] We did not realize that YouTube's compression was poop.

[404] Yeah.

[405] It's pretty poop.

[406] YouTube poop.

[407] It's a great series of videos.

[408] It's compressing our compression as well.

[409] Yeah, but it's lower than our compression.

[410] I would agree with that.

[411] The bit rate is lower.

[412] We didn't realize that.

[413] That was news.

[414] Yeah.

[415] And it's not 480p because that doesn't exist.

[416] And then there's the option to put this HD ones through there, which would make them 720.

[417] but the compression would be more than our HD videos.

[418] The bitrate would be lower.

[419] So basically we'd have HD videos on YouTube, but they would be lower quality.

[420] Yeah, and that's one of those things that it's hard to...

[421] tell somebody without getting into technical details.

[422] RHD is better than the 720p.

[423] I'm going to just yell a bunch of numbers at you that I know are right, but you're just going to go, all I know is it looks like crap.

[424] The 720p on YouTube, that's 720p, but our 720p is better than their 720p.

[425] Yeah, but ours is a higher bitrate.

[426] Subscribers are still getting way better video over here.

[427] That being said, I think the stuff on YouTube looks like poop.

[428] Yeah.

[429] It's grimy.

[430] It's a little muddy.

[431] Do you think it has to do with the largeness of our videos, just in general?

[432] You mean the length of them?

[433] If you looked at the trailer stuff versus the regular stuff, do you think it's based upon how long it is?

[434] I have no idea.

[435] I don't think it is.

[436] At least not directly.

[437] One of the things that we...

[438] said all along as we were building this is that we would eventually get to a point where trailers were going up like things that companies were sending us were going up in HD because that's not you know that's That's not our stuff.

[439] That's not the reason why people come.

[440] So I will put you in my shoes for once where you go make those kind of dumb decisions and you say, oh, this is what we're going to do.

[441] We're going to make these switches.

[442] And the good thing is, like we said, we had those two goals.

[443] Both worked.

[444] Yay.

[445] Good decision.

[446] The bad part was that side effect that we were talking about.

[447] Immediately, I think, within day one, I got...

[448] You kind of give me shit.

[449] And you kind of give me shit.

[450] I feel like I was just passing someone else's shit along.

[451] That's true.

[452] And there was a large amount of user base that was giving a shit.

[453] And so I said, let's sit.

[454] Let's wait a month.

[455] Let's see what actually happens.

[456] Let's see before the fire goes down.

[457] So here's the weird thing with YouTube.

[458] There's a lot of weird things with YouTube.

[459] Here's a weird thing with YouTube.

[460] It doesn't matter what your bit rate is.

[461] So if you have a video that is 640 by 360, which our videos have always been at, that is a high bit rate, I think it's just going by frame size when it puts it up there.

[462] So it'll call that video 360p, right?

[463] Right.

[464] You can put up a 720 video frame size, I assume, with a really crappy bit rate, and it'll call that video 720p.

[465] Which is why you'll go and see like fraps -based captures on YouTube that are HD.

[466] I guess.

[467] When you go look at them, they don't look.

[468] The number next there is just the scale of how big the thing is.

[469] It has nothing to do with the quality necessarily of it.

[470] I assume.

[471] I'd call our 640x360 videos their 720p on our site if they would compress them nicely.

[472] There's a chance we put their 720p videos up there and it could look like crap.

[473] We don't know.

[474] We haven't tried it yet.

[475] The takeaway from all this kind of stuff or the decision that we've been sort of fooling around with the last, like, two weeks, I'd say, is basically the idea that potentially we could, because it's a one -line code change for us, we could send our HD video, the compressed one, not the original source, to YouTube as the video, which then means YouTube will show up 720, which gets rid of people.

[476] yelling at us right it uh makes it so that at least the quality of our stuff is at a quality level that you you guys are happy with that we have that lives i haven't seen it yet i don't know rather than yeah that's true we haven't that's what that kind of stuff so um like for example we have that skyrim video that's doing fairly well and it's kind of compressed and we're bummed that the vast majority of us yeah i mean well you know did we Like with any business, you put yourself in a lot of different weird spots with a lot of things.

[477] We made the promise to people when we rolled out the subscription service that one of the features was going to be HD video.

[478] So then thinking about like, okay, well, are we kind of boning those people by putting HD video up on YouTube for everyone?

[479] Is that like going back on a promise we made?

[480] Correct.

[481] Which is why we're presenting it in this format rather than just saying, hey, we did it.

[482] So our thing, I guess, that we wanted to go and bring this stuff up was basically say, what do you guys think about this?

[483] Does this sound like a good idea?

[484] The real facts about it are, yes, we pushed that video over.

[485] All our player stuff, all the stuff for subscribers still exists the same way.

[486] Nobody gets access to our players, any of the boxy.

[487] Yeah, the set -top box stuff is still all that HD stuff.

[488] Yeah, that's still all our level of stuff.

[489] It's basically just that people that view videos in YouTube have access to a 720p.

[490] version of it the frame size at whatever bit rate that ends up being so it's probably going to end up being lower than our actual bit rate so like yeah we can control the bit rate on our side but what we put up on the side we can decide like okay this is the bit rate we're happy with let's go here once we go over to youtube sometimes it's so high that people say that it freaks their computer out and that's a separate issue Yeah, there are a lot of stuff.

[491] I'll just go over quickly.

[492] I'll run down the compression steps.

[493] We get the video, the raw file on our computer, and we try to spit it out from Final Cut in the rawest of formats we can, which is usually the recording format, right?

[494] Which is usually ProRes for most of our stuff.

[495] And then we kick that over to a local compression because that's too big to upload to anywhere.

[496] So we need to make that manageable to upload somewhere.

[497] By local compression, you just mean there's a box.

[498] There's a box.

[499] There's a Mac sitting over in the corner.

[500] And it then compresses it.

[501] With no monitor attached to it.

[502] To our HD version.

[503] Well, I've actually changed that.

[504] So now it compresses to slightly higher than our HD version at a constant bit rate.

[505] So that's pretty much the first step in the compression.

[506] That can take anywhere from 40 minutes to two hours to three hours, depending on the length of the video.

[507] So once that's done, that'll take a video.

[508] What program do we use to do that?

[509] We're using Episode Engine to do that.

[510] So once we do that, we take a file that was once, let's just say, 30 gigs, because we can't upload that, and we take that down to something more manageable, like two or three gigs, let's say, for a longer video.

[511] Once that's done, and I think right now I have that at like 4 ,000.

[512] kilobits per second compression.

[513] That goes off -site to an off -site compression cloud facility, right?

[514] Goes to Zencoder.

[515] Zencoder.

[516] That then takes that 4 ,000 kilobyte file and then makes a 35 kilobit per second version.

[517] That's the HD version.

[518] Makes a 1500 kilobit per second video.

[519] Makes a 750.

[520] And it makes a mobile.

[521] And it makes a mobile, 350.

[522] Yeah.

[523] Yeah.

[524] Yes.

[525] The 3500 is still 128720.

[526] The 1500 is 64360.

[527] The 750 is 64360.

[528] And the mobile is some crazy smaller version.

[529] And it's fun.

[530] PSP screen size.

[531] And you may say, why are we going through all this trouble?

[532] Why wouldn't we just send everything up to YouTube?

[533] And the reason is that we still like to control.

[534] That high -level one, we also like to control what shows up in Boxy and all those types of stuff.

[535] We like to control what's in a mobile version, and we like to provide all of those things downloadable.

[536] Yeah, so that's the reason we do all of those things.

[537] People like choice, and the numbers, I mean, those video types all have their...

[538] And unfortunately, from a UI perspective, that's our bane, because I have built now a video player that has, like, seven goddamn options on it with, like...

[539] a billion combos.

[540] Do you want streaming or progressive?

[541] Or do you want YouTube?

[542] Down that chain of all those things, I don't know, maybe two months ago, three months ago, a while ago, something happened.

[543] I don't know what happened.

[544] Something happened.

[545] Artifacts started popping up on some of our longer videos.

[546] I don't know where in the chain that's happening.

[547] We have to track down the source of where that's happening.

[548] Codecs change.

[549] Stuff changes.

[550] Sometimes that stuff is really expensive.

[551] to monkey around with so to test the video it was happening this is kind of off on a tangent but just so people know to test it was something was happening uh in really long files like hour long ones and about halfway through like artifacting would start showing up and flickering on the screen yeah uh and we were for the last month or two we were trying to nail down exactly what's happening but to run one hour long video through a bunch of tests takes a whole day basically eats up the compressor for like three or four hours to just Try a different compression setting.

[552] Check it out.

[553] So...

[554] Finally, that's where we came down to like, okay, listen, we're going to compress all this stuff again.

[555] Let's do our videos at a constant bit rate.

[556] We're not really that concerned with the local size here.

[557] I don't want to have people want to download a 720p video from our site that's 7 gigs.

[558] That's like too much to ask.

[559] And then we compress it again.

[560] Just wait.

[561] I'm sure we're going to get phone calls.

[562] They'll be like, I want that 7 gig version.

[563] Whatever.

[564] You want the ProRes version.

[565] Mail me a drive.

[566] It's tough.

[567] It's really tough.

[568] Don't do that.

[569] Don't do that.

[570] Because we also get people, I get so many people that, like on our set -top box stuff, that their subscribers, they really like the subscriber videos and stuff.

[571] Yeah.

[572] They don't like the HD.

[573] And like our boxy one, for example, will just automatically give you the HD version as long as you've linked.

[574] But people that are in Australia or in other countries.

[575] Like bandwidth limits.

[576] Yeah, and bandwidth limited places, they don't like those really big files.

[577] And because it's just a progressive download there, it can bite into their thing.

[578] It's tough.

[579] I guess that's the end of it.

[580] Well, that's the YouTube video stuff.

[581] The short of it is we're testing it out, and we test it out with the 360p.

[582] I don't understand what 480p is.

[583] Do you make your frame size 480p?

[584] What is that?

[585] Is that not widescreen?

[586] I don't understand.

[587] 480p is not a format.

[588] It's not real HD.

[589] Try finding capture devices that capture 480p.

[590] Have they gotten any easier to find?

[591] Probably not, right?

[592] No. At one point, Vinny and I were on eBay looking at capture cards that were only available in Japan, thinking this was right around the time that we needed to buy stuff, we needed to capture Wii stuff.

[593] Like, okay, well, if we're going to capture Wii games, we need something that does 480p, right?

[594] And that thing was so crazy and so expensive and so rare because no professional capture gear.

[595] knows what 480p is right so it's not a real format so like natively you're not you have a tough time reaching 480p on a capture i mean you can knock it down in increments right right you can you can take it down to like 720 480 or something like that with weird uh anamorphic pixels and stuff uh for for sd hd i don't know i i would rather have this stuff at 720 or 360 i would not want to go to 485 40 uh yeah in 720 i think that stuff gets kind of weird all right so we don't want to bore people too much we'll move on with the the rest of the regular show here well what are we doing so what what we're doing is we would like if you ask us like well we'd like the decision that we've kind of come up with that we like is that We'd like to put stuff on YouTube from our HD version, push it to YouTube so that they have a 720 version that's up there.

[596] It'll probably still end up being lower bitrate than the stuff on our site.

[597] To be honest, we have no idea.

[598] Hey, guess what?

[599] It won't be higher.

[600] Yeah, it won't be higher.

[601] You guys can watch it.

[602] Anybody else can watch it.

[603] The drawbacks to that is everybody does have access to that file because we have no way to block all that stuff.

[604] And to be honest, we're already terribly worried about blockages and all that kind of stuff because once you start putting stuff up on YouTube, you end up having to deal with all the content rules that are up on YouTube.

[605] So that is another thing that we will not even talk about in this podcast, but that's been fun as well.

[606] There's just a lot of stuff that goes into it.

[607] We're, at the end of the day, trying to make good decisions that benefit the vast majority of our audience at a time.

[608] At the same time, we are super sensitive to our subscriber users, and that's why we do things this way rather than just making blind changes.

[609] Right.

[610] Should we take a call?

[611] Yeah, let's start taking calls.

[612] What's the number?

[613] You guys can call about anything.

[614] You guys know the number?

[615] Should I try and look up the number?

[616] It's usual show type stuff.

[617] Users say it's okay.

[618] They want to talk about the calendar.

[619] What's the calendar?

[620] A calendar.

[621] They want a monthly calendar.

[622] Or a yearly calendar, you guys.

[623] They say HD is good.

[624] What?

[625] A calendar of the...

[626] The environment.

[627] Oh, yeah.

[628] The boys of Whiskey Media.

[629] All right.

[630] That's our trade?

[631] Is that a trade?

[632] I can do that.

[633] I will totally...

[634] I will at least...

[635] Here's a call.

[636] Then you have to tell them that you're going to pick up.

[637] This is a call.

[638] Hello?

[639] Hi.

[640] Hi, who's this?

[641] It's Nicholas.

[642] Hi, Nicholas.

[643] How you doing?

[644] I'm doing great.

[645] How are you?

[646] What you got going on?

[647] How do you feel about it?

[648] Hey, look, he's there.

[649] Oh, my gosh.

[650] This is the first time I think we've ever seen a video call.

[651] Oh, man. Put some clothes on.

[652] T -shirt.

[653] Fantastic.

[654] Can you see us?

[655] Oh, look at that dog!

[656] People can't see the dog.

[657] Go get Rory.

[658] So anyway, I'll bring him to Sam and Fran and introduce him.

[659] So, yeah, I just wanted to say, look, it's really interesting what you've been saying on because I've been a subscriber and I saw that YouTube thing come up and it was a bit confusing.

[660] And listen to you talk.

[661] What I think is really good is, look, the game's changing really quickly.

[662] You've already done something that's really quite out there.

[663] And I think when we did this, having the HD video was like a big selling point, right?

[664] But now if you look at the competition, everything's in HD.

[665] Everything I'm consuming is in HD.

[666] So if people are seeing your stuff for YouTube, your whole content is video -based.

[667] And that's the value in it.

[668] And if people aren't seeing...

[669] If people look at it and say, oh, it looks shitty and moves on, then that's not good for us, right?

[670] And so my thought being is I really don't mind if everybody gets HD now because what you've done in the last month or so since the end of the Whiskey Media Hour is giving us a ton of shit.

[671] Like, just a lot of content that, like, kept me coming back to the site and also kept me really happy about having paid my subscription fee.

[672] Like, I'm just constantly entertained by, you know, things like you've clearly been putting time in, like, you know, with Jeff and Rory's, like, jar time things.

[673] And then just, like, a lot of stuff, like, just say, okay, we're going to play this for the day and...

[674] and share it with subscribers so in terms of my investment in a subscription and what i'm getting out of it i'm getting out of it way more than i was when maybe when i bought it i was like yeah i want hd right um right but you're giving a lot more so personally i it wouldn't even be a blip to me if you said okay hd is for everybody now All right.

[675] That's good to hear.

[676] Decided, Nicholas.

[677] Doing it.

[678] Voice of the people.

[679] Nicholas, you got a general question or anything you want to talk about outside of that?

[680] I mean, really, I wanted to say that because I was listening to what you were talking about.

[681] You know, as a business person, I'm just really interested in what you guys are doing, and it's exciting seeing these things change.

[682] And I would hate for something to get in the way where you couldn't keep up.

[683] Something stupid like this was like a thorn in the foot, right?

[684] So I say keep it up, and I've just really enjoyed all your video content that you've been having and the subscriber stuff, and it's awesome.

[685] And, yeah, loving it.

[686] And so it's good.

[687] Yeah, that's it.

[688] Well, cool.

[689] Awesome.

[690] Thanks a lot, Nicholas.

[691] I appreciate the support, man. And I've just been playing Skyrim, and a dog's talking to me and telling me to go and get a Daedric axe.

[692] Yeah, that's about right, man. But it's got, like, a really awesome, like, Jewish accent, too, doesn't it?

[693] The dog?

[694] Yeah.

[695] I haven't seen the dog yet.

[696] Oh, I know.

[697] I haven't gotten to that part of you guys.

[698] Is there like some kind of piece of paper you have to lick in the box?

[699] Yeah, you lick the back of that map and then the dog starts talking to you.

[700] It'll be fine.

[701] Don't worry about it.

[702] Alright, thanks Nicholas.

[703] Alright, okay, take care.

[704] See ya.

[705] Alright, well.

[706] So that's it.

[707] We're with the media on Skype and then we have a phone number.

[708] We do.

[709] 508 397 That's it.

[710] Are you singing a song over there?

[711] Anybody in the chat know the phone number?

[712] Type it in.

[713] I don't want to say the phone number I think it is because that might be my other Skype number.

[714] You've got another Skype number?

[715] The number on my business card is a Skype number.

[716] What do you use that for?

[717] 508 -3975.

[718] That's the one.

[719] If you see any other number in the chat, don't call that number.

[720] 415 -508 -3975.

[721] What do you have business cards for?

[722] Do you use them?

[723] I don't bring them anywhere.

[724] I do not bring them anywhere.

[725] I remember when I got mine, which I designed at the time, and then I went like this.

[726] Oh, that's nice.

[727] Why did you guys get me business cards?

[728] And then threw them in the trash.

[729] You know how much those business cards cost?

[730] No, our business cards are a little spendy.

[731] Because we needed them right before we went to E3 for the first time.

[732] It was a rush job.

[733] And it has the blue Giant Bomb logo on it.

[734] Our cards.

[735] Remember that?

[736] That was a big change.

[737] Did I make it?

[738] Before it was red, it was blue.

[739] You know, I can't believe that I did any of those logos.

[740] I feel so bad.

[741] And then I get really pissed off when I do stuff like that dragon one.

[742] Because I'm like, oh, that's awesome.

[743] I made that in 30 minutes.

[744] And then the one that took me the longest was the screened one.

[745] It took me like three months.

[746] And I still think it's horrible.

[747] You don't like the eyeball?

[748] Horrible.

[749] Horrible.

[750] Well, hoodie is coming soon, so look forward to buying that horrible logo.

[751] Are they?

[752] No, I don't know.

[753] So what's a calendar?

[754] Calendar is people have always wanted the men of whiskey media calendar.

[755] Oh, boy.

[756] And I'm willing to trade.

[757] I don't know that I can make like a fake calendar.

[758] I don't think anybody would actually buy like a calendar.

[759] Like a 2012 calendar?

[760] I don't know.

[761] Really?

[762] I might.

[763] One per month.

[764] I bet we could make one through Cafe Press.

[765] Yeah, they totally do that.

[766] I'll try and figure out a way to do that as a trade.

[767] That's your barter?

[768] That's my barter.

[769] What would be on the calendar?

[770] Just famous moments.

[771] Famous moments.

[772] You should print projected release dates for games that are a year off.

[773] So you can make up a bunch of stuff.

[774] That would be great, actually.

[775] You could see how far off it was.

[776] Everything's totally inaccurate.

[777] This data was barely accurate as of time of printing.

[778] That's a good idea.

[779] That's a good idea.

[780] Take another call.

[781] Okay, I'm going to take another call.

[782] Yeah, let's keep it going.

[783] Okay, I'm going to click on...

[784] This is how you do it, right, Dave?

[785] Yeah, and tell them who you're picking up on so they can turn off their stuff.

[786] I'll get a couple of seconds.

[787] Okay.

[788] I'm going to click on Robbie.

[789] Hey, Robbie, you're coming in live.

[790] Hi, Robbie.

[791] Hi, Vinny.

[792] There we go.

[793] Hey.

[794] Hey.

[795] How you doing?

[796] Good.

[797] How are you guys?

[798] Good.

[799] We're doing all right.

[800] It's a little hot.

[801] I didn't take my shirt off.

[802] You want me to just open the door?

[803] I mean.

[804] You can do it.

[805] It looks stuffy.

[806] It looks stuffy.

[807] Robbie, what's your icon for Skype?

[808] Because it's really creepy.

[809] You know, I don't know.

[810] I have only used Skype once on this thing.

[811] Some weird Muppet thing.

[812] Is it?

[813] It's like some dark crystal looking dude.

[814] So what's up, Robbie?

[815] Not much.

[816] I just had a question or made a comment for you guys.

[817] My friend and I were talking about the site.

[818] We've both been subscribed since day one.

[819] And we were talking about – no problem.

[820] We were talking about how we got a little worried thinking you guys might get too big at some point.

[821] You guys are signing on different writers all the time.

[822] Not all the time, but you got Kessler doing reviews now and Alex does reviews and Patrick does reviews and stuff.

[823] And it's a little scary thing about you guys might get – too large, you know, have someone doing something for everything.

[824] And I was wondering what you guys think of that.

[825] Yeah, I don't know.

[826] It's a hard problem we've created with this site.

[827] And adding people to it is really difficult because of the kind of specific nature of what people do here.

[828] So, you know, there's a right type of person that I think meshes well with what we do and can kind of add to what we're doing and fit into kind of the overall puzzle and then there there will be plenty of people that that won't um so it it is really hard but yeah i mean you know i would i would like to to grow you know it's uh for as hard as that can be you know it'd be nice to be able to review more games to do you know more of the stuff we do and uh you know even in some cases just free up some of our time for kind of bigger project crazier stuff you know it uh like it'd be great to someday do a video review for every game or something like that you know but the the Required stuff.

[829] Hey, man, how you doing?

[830] Good to see you.

[831] The requirements on an infrastructure side to pull something like that off, I mean, okay, so let's say, like, if we were to do video reviews for every game.

[832] Yeah.

[833] Can we do, like, wish lists?

[834] Like, what we just want to do if we got, like, super...

[835] No more text.

[836] All video all the time.

[837] The wiki is the text.

[838] No more reviews.

[839] Yeah, I know.

[840] Yeah, you just want to do no more reviews.

[841] You just want to review reviews.

[842] I want to review reviews.

[843] Yeah.

[844] Yeah, if we wanted to do video reviews for every game...

[845] We'd probably have to double in size on both sides.

[846] Every game?

[847] On video side.

[848] Every game?

[849] We'd have to triple in size.

[850] Yeah.

[851] To cover every game and do video reviews.

[852] That is everybody.

[853] But reviewing every game isn't really necessarily...

[854] Eastern block division.

[855] Yeah, the Eastern block division.

[856] You could add that up.

[857] Yeah, sure.

[858] That would actually just be you in a room.

[859] But we wouldn't necessarily want to review everything.

[860] That's not really the goal here.

[861] It's a really boring way to run a website.

[862] I mean, a video review, like I've said before, on a producer's time, can take up to two or three days of their time alone.

[863] That means that they're focused and working on that.

[864] They can't do anything else.

[865] They can't do much of anything else.

[866] And on top of that, then that also takes up the time of...

[867] You know, the person that reviewed the game has to go get very specific footage from throughout the game.

[868] You know, I always forget about that because I always, when I walk over to your guy's side of the office and I'll see, like, that Patrick or...

[869] or Brad has, like, they've already put a review out, and I see them playing the game, and I'm like, what the fuck is that guy doing?

[870] And it's like, oh, that's right.

[871] He's still going to capture all the stuff that matches the script.

[872] Right.

[873] Because otherwise you would get just random gameplay footage.

[874] Yeah, and I know, you know, going down to, like, G4 or something like that, where they are just, like, purely video operation, they just have a bank of, like, 12 stations set up with consoles, and then a bunch of interns just getting footage all day.

[875] But that sounds like a really...

[876] That sounds like kind of a crappy way to do it because those interns haven't played that game already.

[877] They're not going to be able to just whip through it and get the specific parts that they need to get and all that.

[878] They might not have the save file.

[879] They might not have the save.

[880] They might not have the skill.

[881] And some games are tough to do that with more than others if you don't have multiple save slots.

[882] When you're talking about like, yeah, this boss at level 7 is really hard.

[883] But I played that 15 hours ago and we can't get back there.

[884] We can't get back there.

[885] It's in the very middle of the game.

[886] They're complicated.

[887] That stuff is a logistical nightmare.

[888] It's the reason why I actually kind of hate video reviews.

[889] Technically speaking, we really only have, I'd say...

[890] We only have really two ways to capture video at a time simultaneously.

[891] Two devices that we can use to capture video at a time simultaneously.

[892] And when one person is using one for video reviews, that means there can only be one other thing going on in all of Whiskey Media.

[893] That's not just Giant Bomb.

[894] That is tested, can't capture anything.

[895] Screen can't capture anything.

[896] And that's eaten up for like half a day.

[897] Or maybe more if somebody has to take it on the road or something like that.

[898] So I wouldn't necessarily worry about us getting too big because your concern is one that I share, I think, of finding the right sort of people to do it and growing intelligently instead of just growing just to grow.

[899] That's across the board.

[900] That's not just engineering.

[901] Not just editorial.

[902] We've got that same sort of problem on engineering and all that stuff.

[903] It's fun.

[904] How have we been doing with it?

[905] I mean, I guess we've grown a little bit here in the last 18 months.

[906] What are your opinions in general?

[907] Just like you said, we have picked up those writers.

[908] How do you feel about the fit of content and has it been worth it?

[909] Me?

[910] Yeah.

[911] Oh, I think it's fine, honestly.

[912] You just kind of think like Jeff was saying.

[913] I've heard him say it before.

[914] It's like you don't want...

[915] the fighting game guy or the racing game guy or the sports guy uh on the site um because then it just it just becomes sort of you know what they're gonna say or uh it just gets to be too much and i think a lot of a big reason why a lot of us sign up is because we like your personalities and you don't want to become some sort of big uh machine just turning out reviews or or videos or So you say that, but if we built a machine that lived completely underneath us of people that were just reviewing games all day, it would theoretically free the five of us up to kind of do whatever.

[916] True.

[917] Yeah.

[918] So there are a lot of different ways you could build that machine that would actually benefit the things that people like about the site.

[919] So there are a lot of different ways to approach the problem.

[920] Yeah, absolutely.

[921] So I'm going to do more reviews next year.

[922] Yeah, so you're just going to review everything at this point.

[923] Just Dave writing reviews.

[924] I'm going to start designing the site.

[925] First thing I'm doing is getting rid of the white version.

[926] It's definitely one of the things when we think about the bigger, crazier things we're going to do.

[927] Like, let's all go off for two weeks trapped in a house and we'll go do some crazy.

[928] And then it's like, well, then there's no content on the site for two weeks other than that.

[929] It gets hard when...

[930] People are like, I don't want a review done by anybody but Jeff, Ryan, Brad, or Patrick or somebody.

[931] And it's like, well, then they can't do all the other things because those games have to get reviewed.

[932] That's a tough compromise.

[933] You have those decisions that are tough across, just not with Giant Bomb, but also Whiskey Media just in general.

[934] Where do we put new people?

[935] We're out of desks.

[936] Remember we only got a bigger space?

[937] It's got full.

[938] It's got to move again one of these days.

[939] Start putting people in the bar.

[940] Oh, well.

[941] Yeah.

[942] Thanks for the call, though, man. I appreciate it.

[943] Yeah.

[944] Thanks for your time.

[945] All right, dude.

[946] No doubt.

[947] No doubt.

[948] No doubt.

[949] No diggity.

[950] No doubt.

[951] No doubt.

[952] Bastard boys.

[953] Hello.

[954] I thought it was set the diction, not sick addiction.

[955] Sick addiction.

[956] I thought it was set the diction, which I think is almost cooler.

[957] Yeah.

[958] That's what it is.

[959] You're setting the diction.

[960] Yeah.

[961] That's why you've got a school teacher talking to me. What's up with the, what happened to the trading cards or the baseball cards?

[962] I haven't made any in a while.

[963] The set's out there?

[964] Set one is done?

[965] Well, I still have to make a bunch more.

[966] Did they all surface?

[967] No. No, there's still plenty of them that were made.

[968] There's the famous ultra rare Ben, intern Ben one.

[969] Oh, wow.

[970] He hasn't shown up yet?

[971] No, it's got my favorite.

[972] That was great.

[973] I don't think yours showed up ever.

[974] It's hidden.

[975] Yours is the best picture I've ever taken in my life.

[976] I try my best.

[977] I almost came and got you to take a photo of me the other day.

[978] Wait, when?

[979] Where?

[980] I'm a judge for the Spike TV Video Game Awards.

[981] Do you get a robe?

[982] No. One year I got a laptop bag, and then the zipper broke on that a couple years later, so I couldn't really use that anymore.

[983] And they wanted a paragraph of text and headshots of people.

[984] And I was like, I have a bunch of headshots.

[985] Nothing recent, though.

[986] I just went and grabbed something out of my iPhoto library and sent them that.

[987] You don't like that one?

[988] You've got all those iconic ones that just show up whenever people put in your name.

[989] That's true.

[990] No, there's got to keep generating new ones.

[991] Mine will just always be me in a tank top.

[992] Yeah.

[993] White beater.

[994] I didn't want to say it.

[995] Yeah.

[996] I don't like being called tank tops anymore.

[997] So what do you use?

[998] You just pulled one out?

[999] Yeah, I pulled out something I had.

[1000] Did you write your own text?

[1001] Yeah, and then I wrote like three sentences that you can see it on the Spike TV site for the VGAs.

[1002] It's in there somewhere.

[1003] It's pretty awesome.

[1004] It's just like, ah.

[1005] Did you have to send in stuff already?

[1006] Is that all locked in?

[1007] No. Nominees are in, and so they announced the nominees.

[1008] So once they didn't tell us the nominees ahead of time, so now we pick winners and send it back to them.

[1009] And then I'm going down there after Thanksgiving for an edition of Bonus Round to talk about the awards or something.

[1010] So that stuff's fun.

[1011] Yeah.

[1012] The broadcast is always a little weird because they have to make it a TV show.

[1013] I always feel bad when people...

[1014] Give them shit about the award show.

[1015] Give Keeley shit about the award show.

[1016] It's a hard show to put on, I'm sure.

[1017] So many masters have to be served.

[1018] Yeah, and I'm sure if he won every single battle, it would be a very different show.

[1019] It would be something much more gaming -focused that people would be into.

[1020] But they've got to put on a show that's got to pull in ratings and advertisers and all that stuff, and then it just becomes a weird thing.

[1021] It's a weird thing, and I'm sure it's a really stressful time of year for him and the people who are producing that show.

[1022] and those guys too it just yeah and like dealing with the celebrities and i'm sure if they didn't have to they wouldn't you know and it'd just be like yeah let's get all our friends and people we want to have on this show but people wouldn't watch that on television not for that long it's like it's the it's the sad not enough people would watch not enough people would watch that on television for it to work and it's kind of why i'm looking forward to television as we know it going away Because I feel like we're in this weird area now where we're putting up video online and more and more people are seeing it and watching it.

[1023] And that's just going to build and build and build as more and more people get their set -top boxes in order and all this stuff.

[1024] But you're still talking magnitudes of viewership.

[1025] Oh, yeah, absolutely.

[1026] With that broadcast stuff.

[1027] Cut the guys some slack.

[1028] I'm sure there's a very tough show to produce.

[1029] Get advertisers, like you said, and clear the channels to get broadcast on TV.

[1030] And it is what it is.

[1031] It's still a lot of work.

[1032] All right, Dave.

[1033] Take another call.

[1034] All right.

[1035] Here we go.

[1036] Chase.

[1037] Chase is coming up.

[1038] Coming up next, Chase on the line.

[1039] Hear what Chase has to say right now.

[1040] Dave, maybe we'd better get the controls because then we're going to have these repeat people.

[1041] Oh, it's okay, Chase.

[1042] No worries.

[1043] Hi, Chase.

[1044] How are you doing?

[1045] I'm doing great.

[1046] I heard you were in my neck of the woods recently.

[1047] I was.

[1048] I was down in New Orleans.

[1049] That's totally true.

[1050] How was that?

[1051] That's pretty good.

[1052] I got engaged.

[1053] Oh, that.

[1054] Damn.

[1055] Damn.

[1056] Damn.

[1057] Exclusive.

[1058] Exclusive.

[1059] Exclusive.

[1060] Look at there, Chad.

[1061] I got y 'all something.

[1062] Y 'all have to bitch at me now.

[1063] See, it's that easy, Chase.

[1064] What's new, man?

[1065] You got any new questions?

[1066] You got something you've been brewing on?

[1067] I was going to ask something on behalf of the community people, but y 'all whole Spike, the awards thing got me thinking it's like, Everybody that bitches about that thing, it's almost like they never look at Spike because you look at the shows on there.

[1068] Right.

[1069] What do you expect?

[1070] That show puts on TNA Impact, which is a god -awful abomination of professional wrestling as it is.

[1071] They do Deadliest Warrior.

[1072] If you look at the overall tone of the network, that VGA show's fine.

[1073] That should just be the tagline.

[1074] You know what?

[1075] It's fine.

[1076] James Bond movies.

[1077] Oh, now the chat's making me laugh.

[1078] Tell them to hold on.

[1079] Make them go away.

[1080] This is us now, man. Come on.

[1081] Before the PC gaming multiplayer game apocalypse of Skyrim happened, I was a big part of the Battlefield 3 thing going on.

[1082] I'm just going to ask this question on their behalf.

[1083] Something that was going on between us on the server is that it's really hard for us to get all the information.

[1084] out there about the server.

[1085] I mean, the forum, the forum post is nice, but it'd be nice if there was, like, a place on the site where it just had, like, a list of, like, every game and every community server out there.

[1086] Like, something like that.

[1087] Because right now it's really hidden.

[1088] Because, like, we'd have people coming on the servers asking, like, oh, it'd be really nice if we had, like, a ventrilo for this when we already had voice set up.

[1089] But, uh...

[1090] So you want that stuff surfaced somewhere on the site that's easier to find?

[1091] Yeah.

[1092] Rather than just the forums where we, like, stick you in or something.

[1093] Yeah.

[1094] You know, the funny thing with that, have you been playing Battlefield lately?

[1095] No, Skyrim.

[1096] Yeah, I know, but that's what I'm going to talk about.

[1097] It's like, I was talking with Mike Horn, who was playing in our TNT, and...

[1098] I've been talking with him, and he's like, yeah, that server cleared.

[1099] So we've had that server, and it was awesome.

[1100] The first two weeks, that was the best server.

[1101] Everybody on it was Giant Bomb Squad, all that type of stuff.

[1102] And then immediately as soon as Skyrim came out, empty.

[1103] Just empty.

[1104] So Battlefield 3 did that to my Trackmania 2 server.

[1105] Yeah.

[1106] So I'll never forgive Battlefield 3.

[1107] Which is really weird, because I would feel that Trackmania...

[1108] Would be eternal?

[1109] Would carry its own.

[1110] Yeah.

[1111] Well, I mean, there's still people playing Trackmania, but they're all crazies, and they all play on, like, there's one other server that was, like, rivaling mine for popularity for a while, and now it's just the one big server.

[1112] Like, people moving from large AAA game to large AAA game does not surprise me. Yeah, exactly.

[1113] Trackmania 2 to Battlefield 3.

[1114] So do you think it would be really, would that be a hard thing to do, Dave, or is it something that's hard to do?

[1115] Well, it's mostly the big part with design, and we're going through, and I'm sure Alexis is listening to this too, but we've been going through now, and we're like, all right, fuck.

[1116] God damn it.

[1117] Every single corner of this website has something on it.

[1118] Yeah, and we're like...

[1119] Damn it, we finally got through all the big kind of crazy parts, and now we have to get to the hardest one, which is do that wiki page.

[1120] We got all the front -end engineers together yesterday, and we were like, all right, what's going to be the best use of our time at the moment?

[1121] Should we work on the forums?

[1122] Should we work on brand -new user experience?

[1123] Should we work on, like, the game pages, the big, large, you know, sort of pages?

[1124] And so we had, like, some really crazy ideas with the forums where we're like, oh, we're going to change the way that people use forums and all that kind of stuff.

[1125] And it scares the shit out of me because, like, people don't, like, change a whole lot.

[1126] No, they do not.

[1127] And it's like, I may think I have these great ideas for forums, but they can be horrible.

[1128] They can be absolutely horrible, and they sound really complicated and really bad.

[1129] And so we're like, oh.

[1130] that's probably bad.

[1131] Let's not do that one.

[1132] And then, so we were like, well, we could do the new user experience.

[1133] And the bad part is we always get, it's so hard to work on those.

[1134] Cause it's like, it's somewhat boring.

[1135] I guess it's like writing the review for games that, you know, you know, nobody's going to play necessarily.

[1136] It's like, you have to write the review, you know, it's like we go through it.

[1137] We know it's really important.

[1138] We should be doing it, but it's really hard to work on.

[1139] So.

[1140] And I imagine it must be weird to take that perspective because you use the site a lot.

[1141] Yes.

[1142] So trying to...

[1143] And so what we always talk about is we're worried about building...

[1144] Is that feature too mature?

[1145] And so this type of thing, this type of sort of thing that Chase is talking about is one of those sort of things that we're talking...

[1146] Is where we kind of get a little scared when we throw stuff on page because we say, is that feature too mature?

[1147] Who does that benefit?

[1148] How many people does it benefit?

[1149] Is it okay?

[1150] Sometimes it's okay to benefit a small amount of people.

[1151] We're benefiting a small amount of people right now versus our large audience.

[1152] So it's like, where do we put that on a page?

[1153] How do we fit it up?

[1154] So it gets tough.

[1155] It's very tough.

[1156] Let's do it.

[1157] Where do you want to put it?

[1158] Where would I put it?

[1159] I would put it under the...

[1160] And then what happens when it goes stale?

[1161] because of these sort of game nights that happen, I can only really think of the Forza one that really has kind of lasted.

[1162] Just that little driving community has been lasting a test of time.

[1163] Everybody else jumps into a game, and it lasts about two or three months, and then it disappears.

[1164] So it's tough.

[1165] Alexis is in charge of it.

[1166] Yeah, good.

[1167] Let him figure it out.

[1168] Chase, there's your answer right there, man. So I got to bug him?

[1169] Yeah.

[1170] Yeah, hit him up.

[1171] He's got the answers.

[1172] He already knows where it's going.

[1173] Don't worry about it.

[1174] I think, in general, we should probably, I mean, I think if we saw, like, more regular community type stuff, it could be something, because we're kind of light on the weekends, but it could be something that we do where we get the community to sort of get the information together, pass it to us, and say, like, look, here are the weekend game nights.

[1175] Here are the servers that they're running.

[1176] And then run that.

[1177] And then we just put that up like Friday night or Friday morning so that people have that information for the weekend.

[1178] Yeah.

[1179] So that it's there and available and say, look, here are the various games that are going on if you want to join them.

[1180] And that way people can kind of submit it every week.

[1181] So that's kind of the way you verify that the server still exists.

[1182] Yes.

[1183] Because the bad part is we don't really have a whole lot of time to sit there and realize whether or not that stuff's going.

[1184] I know my Trackmania server's still up.

[1185] Well, you can see you can see I just reacted for another month chase.

[1186] Does that make sense?

[1187] Yeah, the chat is one like an entire community section to see I wouldn't even that crazy, but uh, yeah, I guess that would work Well, you have it up If somebody wants to put it together I know that we've got it Funny thing is that you have no idea what you just said about because if you ask Mike who's actually been in our mumble, you'll know that's a bad idea.

[1188] Well, let's try it out.

[1189] I think we're all open to that.

[1190] Let's try out.

[1191] Running a news post on the weekend that says here are the games.

[1192] Here are the servers that are running.

[1193] I should be taking notes.

[1194] Who's got a napkin?

[1195] The minutes.

[1196] And we will not promise to put it up because that post could come to us and have horrible grammatical errors and then take us like two hours to actually...

[1197] To fix.

[1198] Yes, exactly.

[1199] But if somebody can put it together and put it in a clean way, we'll look at it and we'll say we'll put it up.

[1200] We'll try to get the word out.

[1201] All right, Chase.

[1202] Sound good, Chase?

[1203] All right.

[1204] Chase has run off.

[1205] All right, Chase.

[1206] Thanks, Chase, buddy.

[1207] Bye.

[1208] You're misclicking.

[1209] Oh, yeah.

[1210] It's hard.

[1211] But that's always the problem with that stuff is that it goes up and down and up and down, and people get really excited about it, and then they don't.

[1212] It's tough because I really want to play more Battlefield, but I also really, really want to play Skyrim and Saints Row 3.

[1213] Right.

[1214] Apparently so do a lot of them.

[1215] They're going to put out that Battlefield map pack, and that'll probably bring a couple of people back in.

[1216] That might be a good time to get back on it.

[1217] But yeah, there were three Battlefield servers running for a while.

[1218] Yeah.

[1219] And I remember a week of release trying to get on any of them, and I couldn't.

[1220] They were all cool.

[1221] It was so hard, yeah.

[1222] So I never did.

[1223] And then all this other stuff started coming out, and I haven't played Battlefield since, and I probably won't.

[1224] So, yeah.

[1225] Should we take another call?

[1226] Take another call?

[1227] Yeah.

[1228] You want to bring up another topic, or just go?

[1229] No. People can do whatever they want.

[1230] All right.

[1231] Let's see.

[1232] Nope.

[1233] I'm sorry, guys.

[1234] I'm trying to pick somebody who's at least somewhat new.

[1235] Let's go.

[1236] Not this guy.

[1237] Let's go with the top one.

[1238] This one?

[1239] No, actually, go with the last one, the bottom one.

[1240] I have no idea who that is.

[1241] Frankie coming at you.

[1242] Frankie.

[1243] Couples skate now.

[1244] Frankie.

[1245] Hi, Frankie.

[1246] Hey, guys.

[1247] How are you guys doing?

[1248] Doing all right.

[1249] How's it going?

[1250] Good.

[1251] All right.

[1252] All right.

[1253] Good.

[1254] Let me turn on the volume on the stream.

[1255] No problem.

[1256] While you're doing that, I'm going to talk about Vinny.

[1257] You're getting great.

[1258] Oh, yeah.

[1259] I'll do it.

[1260] Yeah.

[1261] All right.

[1262] That's it.

[1263] Sorry.

[1264] Yeah.

[1265] Go back to it.

[1266] Just because Dave really isn't on the...

[1267] on the bomb cast that often these days.

[1268] And I just want to know, what are some things, and you can all answer this question, what are some things you're hoping for for the new console generation?

[1269] And what are some things you are expecting from the new console generation?

[1270] Man, hopeful.

[1271] I'm going to start.

[1272] I'm going to start because this is a kind of behind -the -scenes whiskey production.

[1273] I'm going to say I hope there's not a new video format in the new consoles.

[1274] I hope it stays at least HDMI and they don't go to something else super crazy.

[1275] What if they went to SDI?

[1276] If they went to SDI, it would be fantastic.

[1277] But don't introduce some kind of new micro mini HDMI or proprietary something.

[1278] That everybody needs to buy.

[1279] And it's all 480p.

[1280] Yeah.

[1281] That's from a production standpoint.

[1282] You know what I would like?

[1283] Again, this is going to be a selfish thing.

[1284] I really wish we could...

[1285] put our videos.

[1286] I wish it was more set -top boxy where we could build things like the boxy app.

[1287] That's where it's going.

[1288] That's definitely where it's going.

[1289] But whether they're going to actually let people build their own stuff for it and have that kind of app infrastructure.

[1290] Yeah, I don't want to have to talk to Microsoft about it.

[1291] Yeah, because then it'll never happen.

[1292] Yeah.

[1293] But if it's like Boxy or Roku where it's like, hey, you want to put it up here, you submit the stuff and we just build it and then it works.

[1294] It's great.

[1295] I'd love that.

[1296] The things I think I definitely want to see is getting rid of physical media.

[1297] I'd like something closer to Steam.

[1298] I would adore if the game makers could sort of get together and figure out some sort of way, and this is purely hopeful because I know it would never happen, but I'd love to be able to buy a game once, even if they sell prices.

[1299] As much as I like $40 buy on Amazon, move it to Steam prices, I would love to pay a single price and be able to play it.

[1300] regardless of which platform.

[1301] Oh, like a publisher buy instead of at the console level?

[1302] I'd like to buy Saints Row 3 for $60 and be able to play it on my PC.

[1303] And I just like that the consoles themselves are, you know, systems.

[1304] Like you buy the game once and can kind of play it anywhere, that sort of thing.

[1305] Yes.

[1306] Way too...

[1307] That would be beautiful.

[1308] But you know what?

[1309] It kind of fake exists in the PC world right now where you have those CD keys.

[1310] I can buy them on Amazon.

[1311] It works on Steam.

[1312] I can also plug it into Origin.

[1313] And those guys are all making their different amounts of money through their stuff.

[1314] Obviously, there's not the hardware component, but who's really...

[1315] they're not making money off the hardware systems anymore.

[1316] So to me, it seems like it'd be really cool if you could have this more sort of open, you know, sort of thing where you could get that.

[1317] And to be honest, I would love it to be like a PC platform a little bit where they had multiple versions of the consoles.

[1318] I think they have that a little bit now, but it's really just storage.

[1319] Yeah, it's just been storage so far.

[1320] Really?

[1321] Well, I think you're talking about different actual hardware inside?

[1322] Yeah, that it would progress over time so then the game makers could say...

[1323] But I feel like you'd always have to make that game to the lowest common denominator.

[1324] But they're already having to deal with...

[1325] like, those kind of problems now where you're having, like, well, if you install, you get different textures.

[1326] You know, like, there's lots of that kind of stuff.

[1327] This is all stuff that's come on pretty late in this generation, and it's come on, I think, because we're out of this five -year cycle where, you know, like, this late in, you're starting to see people going, like, all right, the Xbox 360 is old.

[1328] There's only so much we can do with it unless we start getting into this optional territory, and we have to get into this optional territory because we don't know that every single user has a hard drive because they...

[1329] They sold so many Xboxes without hard drives.

[1330] So that's why the thing I want to see is guaranteed hard drives, guaranteed mass storage across all devices.

[1331] I'd like to be able to plug my fucking wheel into a console, like all of them, and work because it's a goddamn USB dongle.

[1332] It really pisses me off that I have a $200 wheel sitting at home and I can't put it on 360.

[1333] But a lot of the stuff you're asking about is stuff that then adds exponential time and cost to the QA process for every single game.

[1334] for compatibility testing and stuff like that.

[1335] It's the reason why some PC games ship so broken is because they can't test it on every single configuration and every single video card.

[1336] So I run into my case where Dead Island doesn't run on my machine because I have two monitors hooked up.

[1337] What kind of bullshit is that?

[1338] And if you start getting multiple SKUs of each console out there with different specs...

[1339] You think you really have that trouble with a plug -in USB device?

[1340] Absolutely.

[1341] If you want it to ensure compatibility with every single wheel that's out there.

[1342] I don't want it to be insured.

[1343] You just want yours.

[1344] No, I just want, it's like, it'll, you know, I can put it in.

[1345] I'm okay with it being like, hey, you know, this game, because the same thing happens on the PC.

[1346] It's like, oh, well, you know, it doesn't, it officially supports these three, but yours will probably work.

[1347] But I think that's also Microsoft having a controlled experience to make sure that, you know, if your wheel does work, it has to meet certain guidelines.

[1348] So it's not an open platform of like, this is a crappy product that.

[1349] So the real answer is I will continue to be a PC gamer.

[1350] That's the real answer.

[1351] So I would love, you know, whatever.

[1352] I wish that they had, like, some more set -top boxy stuff, and it sounds like that's the way that they're going, so that's great.

[1353] Yeah, yeah, that services stuff is going to just continue to get bigger.

[1354] But, yeah, for me, it's, like, more, just guarantee hard drives across platform would be great if they were SSDs, because I think that that, you know, creates some interesting benefits for gaming that no one's been able to really exploit just yet.

[1355] And, you know, it'd be nice if they could just come out and say, like, hey, every game on this system is going to be 60 frames a second.

[1356] Like, that'd be cool.

[1357] Yeah.

[1358] I wouldn't mind if they incorporated the voice stuff from Kinect into the system.

[1359] Like, I'd put, like, a microphone on the controller or something like that.

[1360] It's one of my favorite parts of Kinect.

[1361] I think it works.

[1362] I think you're just going to, I mean, with the next Xbox.

[1363] On your iPhone, are you using it that much?

[1364] Siri?

[1365] Yeah, I use it all the time, actually.

[1366] I didn't get one.

[1367] But yeah, I think that stuff, out of the Kinect stuff, I feel like that stuff works fine.

[1368] Well, I think it's not going to be integrated into the console.

[1369] It's just that Kinect is going to end up being packaged in out of the box.

[1370] And I think that'll be where they'll make their split.

[1371] They'll have different hard drive space, but it'll be like, are you going to get the camera thing or not?

[1372] I feel like they need to draw a line in the sand and say, everybody gets a camera thing or they don't.

[1373] Because then you'll just have...

[1374] If it's in there from the start, everybody can take advantage of it, and all games will mess up, and there'll be stupid things, but...

[1375] Developers will know that the functionality is there.

[1376] Everybody has one.

[1377] It just won't be an optional thing.

[1378] That's like a throw -in.

[1379] I'd like to be able to take screenshots and videos directly through the device and that be built through the device and not through the games themselves.

[1380] So then you can pass that up onto the internet and post a video or something.

[1381] That'd be cool.

[1382] Because I think all this stuff is getting super fractured with that kind of stuff.

[1383] And it was kind of neat last night that I was...

[1384] play in Saints Row, and I made that Prince character.

[1385] So I was like, I'm taking screenshots of this.

[1386] And so I took screenshots through Steam, and then it has just upload buttons right there, and it's like, oh, this is great.

[1387] So I wish that the consoles would, and this is a bad wish, because if it came true, it would be bad for us, but I wish they had better fucking websites, just in general, where you could manage a lot of your stuff.

[1388] I think the biggest thing for me is the hard drive stuff, which hopefully would lead to digital releases.

[1389] Not get rid of retail releases, but allow me to download the games I own because I bought them all.

[1390] And then delete them, and if I want it again, I can download it again or something like that.

[1391] Preloading games on release, and then that future of digital releases.

[1392] And then maybe hopefully getting rid of some of the pre -order bonus stuff because the games are all available.

[1393] I mean, retailers will still be able to sell stuff at it.

[1394] Like Amazon kind of does it now where they undercut PC game sale stuff on Steam by like $5 or $10.

[1395] So they'll still be doing fine.

[1396] I also want it to come in a tower, like a giant tower like my PC that has handles and requires two interns to move up the stairs.

[1397] So you want my TV?

[1398] You want to buy my CRT?

[1399] Fuck no. Yeah.

[1400] I love my tower, though.

[1401] That's the best decision I made.

[1402] Yeah, it's pretty awesome.

[1403] I think it's great.

[1404] It's huge.

[1405] It's a tank.

[1406] Don't, let me tell you guys, you're building a PC, don't buy the $50 Antec case that everybody buys.

[1407] Don't buy that.

[1408] No, buy that.

[1409] I was lying, Lee.

[1410] You want a what?

[1411] What was it?

[1412] I bought a, I don't know if I'm pronouncing it right, Lion Lee or Leon Lee.

[1413] It's got like 10 different fans, and I think it cost me $100.

[1414] Yeah, get something like that.

[1415] I got that quiet case.

[1416] Mine's not quiet at all.

[1417] Yeah, yeah.

[1418] And having a quiet case, pretty cool.

[1419] Well, what do you want to see in the next generation?

[1420] Me?

[1421] Frankie, yeah.

[1422] Oh, you know.

[1423] I'm with Dave.

[1424] I'd like to see a lot better integration.

[1425] The racing wheel thing is a good example.

[1426] Guys, if there's going to be another rock band in the future or whatever, please let me just buy one guitar for all platforms.

[1427] Don't make me buy a racing wheel for each system.

[1428] Across the board, that would be pretty cool.

[1429] It's not likely, but it would be nice.

[1430] Also, more to the website thing, I totally agree.

[1431] Sony's website is the worst website in the world.

[1432] I think it's still down in some points, but yeah, that's about it.

[1433] I guess more software.

[1434] Better games.

[1435] Yeah, well, no, not just better games, but I mean software, meaning the way Microsoft develops their next Xbox experience or Sony develops their XMB.

[1436] just better integration with third -party programs and set -top boxes and stuff that you guys were talking about.

[1437] I totally agree.

[1438] Yeah, cool.

[1439] Thanks for calling, Frankie.

[1440] Thanks for taking my question, guys.

[1441] It's one of those things that the lack of a hard drive in Xbox 360 impacts games across all platforms in negative ways.

[1442] Because the PS3, all those come with hard drives, but because they're also developing on 360, it ends up being a lot of weird crutches.

[1443] with regards to how patches work, with regard to downloadable content, like how that stuff works, like the things that they can guarantee, like, okay, yeah, yes, you can put out a one gigabyte patch for a game that includes all your DLC because we know everyone has the space for it as opposed to making it optional.

[1444] It was the thing that broke Mortal Kombat for DLC characters is that people who didn't buy the characters still had to go download something manually to play.

[1445] to allow people who did buy those characters to select those characters.

[1446] And so those people have zero incentive to do it.

[1447] So a lot of people that bought those characters ran into situations where they weren't able to use them.

[1448] It was a shitty experience.

[1449] So clearing that stuff up.

[1450] I feel this year has been a great year for the PC with that kind of stuff.

[1451] The consoles are old, dude.

[1452] We're at that point now where the PC has made the leap.

[1453] And console games are starting to look older and older.

[1454] But I feel like it's a good little middle ground.

[1455] For example, I'm playing Skyrim and I'm playing it with a controller.

[1456] Which I never thought I would do.

[1457] What?

[1458] Why would I do that?

[1459] And then it's because of the two -handed stuff.

[1460] It's just awkward on a mouse.

[1461] And because it's not a multiplayer game, I don't need super crazy precision.

[1462] So it's been pretty cool that I can just plug in.

[1463] And again, it's a device that I can just take from...

[1464] my Xbox, plug it in over here, and that it pops up all the same stuff.

[1465] It's like I was playing there, but it plays a lot better.

[1466] You mean you take it from your Microsoft Xbox onto your Microsoft Windows machine?

[1467] It all works?

[1468] Yeah, but it's built of all kinds of Frankenstein -y parts.

[1469] But it's probably your 360 controller, right?

[1470] Yeah, of course.

[1471] Well, that makes sense.

[1472] But I've got a Logitech mouse and all the headphones.

[1473] It's great.

[1474] I feel that the PC stuff...

[1475] I feel like two years ago I was missing out on games.

[1476] Like the games just weren't being ported.

[1477] To the PC.

[1478] Yeah.

[1479] And so it's like right now the only thing I'm missing on are the pure, pure exclusives.

[1480] Like the Gears of War 3s out there.

[1481] And it's like, you know what?

[1482] Not even made for me. So before it's like I just missed third -party console games in general.

[1483] Right.

[1484] And I feel that Steam.

[1485] prove that you can make enough money on PCs that enough people are porting them over now.

[1486] There's like 200 ,000 people playing Skyrim on Steam every day.

[1487] Oh, wait!

[1488] Did it come back?

[1489] I want a bite of that.

[1490] Can I get a bite of that?

[1491] I didn't get to hold it.

[1492] That's good.

[1493] That's pretty good.

[1494] Oh, man. Is that just straight fried turkey?

[1495] Oh, yeah.

[1496] It's grease.

[1497] I got grease all over my face.

[1498] It's great.

[1499] Let's test it, guys.

[1500] Brian a turkey.

[1501] I told him I wanted that.

[1502] Look for it soon on Tested .com.

[1503] It was still warm.

[1504] There's like three turkeys in this office now?

[1505] No, I took the one home.

[1506] Are you going to eat it?

[1507] Yeah, I was going to.

[1508] It looked weird.

[1509] I'll cut into it and see what's up.

[1510] It's East Texas style.

[1511] You know what I'm saying?

[1512] It's interesting.

[1513] I was thinking about this last night.

[1514] Maybe you guys can fill me in.

[1515] Vinny has a question from this side of the table.

[1516] With the success of Skyrim, do you feel like EA is looking back at their fantasy role -playing franchises like Dragon Age and saying that...

[1517] Complicated games with more depth can be successful instead of streamlining them down to action RPGs.

[1518] Because I remember them saying basically the market won't bear that kind of complication or that kind of depth on a console.

[1519] That kind of RPG experience.

[1520] It needs to be streamlined.

[1521] Do you feel like...

[1522] Well, we don't know the sales, right?

[1523] Of Skyrim?

[1524] They issued some release saying it was a bunch that they pulled in.

[1525] A whole lot.

[1526] And I have to imagine a lot of that's on the console.

[1527] Just assuming.

[1528] Do you feel like the market can bear that, or do you think Skyrim's an exception?

[1529] I think...

[1530] I think with the right game and...

[1531] Well, think about Skyrim.

[1532] These games don't come along every year, or every other year even.

[1533] It's been five years since Oblivion.

[1534] So they've had that time to kind of build up and do other stuff.

[1535] They put out Fallout.

[1536] There's similar stuff, but...

[1537] I feel like they're able to make this release an event in a way that Dragon Age has never been able to be.

[1538] But Dragon Age 1, very well received.

[1539] That was, at least for the crowd, the previous crowd, that was an event.

[1540] It was very well received, but it was not the huge sales success that they felt it should have been.

[1541] And neither is Mass Effect.

[1542] So I feel like they're...

[1543] yeah like that game just didn't do the numbers that maybe it didn't do the numbers that Skyrim did for sure and it didn't do you know the big enough numbers for them to continue down that road in Dragon Age 2.

[1544] But I have to imagine that the reaction of Dragon Age 2 has forced them to be like, okay, well, this is clearly not the direction.

[1545] Do you think if they had taken five years from Dragon Age to Dragon Age 2, it would have been an event?

[1546] Like all the Dragon Age people would have more fondly remembered it and been like, oh man, they're making another Dragon Age.

[1547] Yeah, you'd have that opportunity for nostalgia to kick in, the kind of rose -colored glasses that come with like, oh, I remember I stayed up all night playing Dragon Age.

[1548] Oh, that dude was so bloody by the end of that.

[1549] That is so cool.

[1550] And then you end up with...

[1551] If they had pumped out Skyrim a year after Oblivion...

[1552] Yeah, exactly.

[1553] It wouldn't have been that different of a game.

[1554] Think of how broken that game would have been.

[1555] The other thing, too, about those games is, at least on the PC side, they live for so long.

[1556] Mods and stuff like that.

[1557] When we were playing those games, it's like you realize it.

[1558] I had thrown in Oblivion two months ago and sunk in 20 hours.

[1559] It just got stuck in there.

[1560] It's like, oh, this game is still...

[1561] Totally works and all that kind of fun stuff.

[1562] So I don't know.

[1563] Let's take another call.

[1564] I'm going to go with Dan.

[1565] Dan, you're coming up.

[1566] Oh, crap.

[1567] Oh, geez.

[1568] You've got to be fast on this thing.

[1569] Yeah.

[1570] Coming up.

[1571] Oh.

[1572] There you got him.

[1573] Hey, Dan.

[1574] Hey, Dan.

[1575] I think I hear myself.

[1576] Oh, hey.

[1577] Here it comes.

[1578] Hey, Dan.

[1579] What's up, guys?

[1580] Hey, Dan, you're, uh, sounds like you're talking.

[1581] There you go.

[1582] There you go.

[1583] Hey, Vinny.

[1584] Oh.

[1585] All right.

[1586] Dan, do you have the stream turned down?

[1587] Yeah.

[1588] We can barely hear you on your mic, though.

[1589] It was muted, sorry.

[1590] Oh, there we go.

[1591] I don't know how...

[1592] Man, it's not even muted then.

[1593] That's spooky.

[1594] It's my astro headset, so I don't know.

[1595] Yeah, mute is not really mute on those things.

[1596] Just a heads up.

[1597] Yeah.

[1598] All right.

[1599] What's going on, Dan?

[1600] Oh, nothing.

[1601] I'm just enjoying the stream.

[1602] Pretty good.

[1603] You got a question?

[1604] First of all, I just want to personally thank you for the Medieval Moves quick look.

[1605] That video alone...

[1606] was worth my entire membership this year.

[1607] Oh, wow.

[1608] Well, thank you.

[1609] Thanks for being a member, and thanks for the kind words.

[1610] It was all in good fun.

[1611] Yes, video games are fun.

[1612] All right, so my question is, what are you guys doing for Thanksgiving?

[1613] Do you have any special sort of things that your families do?

[1614] Like, is there a Snyder tradition or a Caravella tradition they do for Thanksgiving?

[1615] Well, most of my family is on the East Coast, so unfortunately, I'm going to miss out on the Caravella tradition of getting a bunch of too much food, a bunch of pasta, and lasagna, and fish, and all that crazy stuff, and too much food, and then all the males over 35 falling asleep, and then all the women screaming into the evening.

[1616] So I'm going to miss out on that.

[1617] Our families are so similar.

[1618] It took me a long time to realize that people just don't have lasagna for Thanksgiving as a staple.

[1619] I've never had lasagna for Thanksgiving.

[1620] I almost made it last night, but I made tons of meatballs.

[1621] I was actually going to bring it in to you.

[1622] They were the best I've ever made.

[1623] This year, my wife and I are actually moving apartments this Tuesday.

[1624] Thanksgiving is going to be in our new apartment.

[1625] We're excited.

[1626] We've got a giant turkey.

[1627] We're going to have too much food.

[1628] It's going to be a lot of fun.

[1629] She and I are going to make way too much food.

[1630] How big is your turkey?

[1631] Oddly enough, we somehow wound up with a 20 -pound turkey for two people.

[1632] How did you end up with a 20 -pound turkey?

[1633] We bought the turkey back when it was a turkey -ling from a local grower from our CSA.

[1634] So when the turkey was just born or hatched, and then it turns out the turkey is...

[1635] 20 pounds.

[1636] Wait, so did you put it on you could have gotten any turkey?

[1637] It's like they just mark it for you?

[1638] What if your turkey died?

[1639] What if it died?

[1640] Hopefully they'll give me some other turkey.

[1641] Early Thanksgiving.

[1642] I don't know.

[1643] That turkey leg was great.

[1644] Thanks, Will.

[1645] That was really good.

[1646] That was Will and Norm.

[1647] I smell fried turkey coming through.

[1648] What am I doing?

[1649] Most of my family is on the East Coast, but my sister's out here, so we're getting together.

[1650] uh doing all the normal stuff but yes same deal we do uh lots of pasta so that's what the italians do yeah just make and it's super loud and then uh yeah and you should be yelling you want you have football kind of on in the background but then there's just the couches of like grown men sleeping on them just it's just passed out yes the kids are running around and they're making too much noise but yeah but we don't yeah yeah just well karen's loud but yes so she fills for part of a large clan of Italians.

[1651] What are you doing?

[1652] I could fit like six people, seven people on my couch for them to fall asleep.

[1653] Just turkey comas across the couch?

[1654] I don't know.

[1655] There's some family stuff going on and maybe I'll go to that.

[1656] Like extended family stuff.

[1657] But usually it's just kind of me and my parents.

[1658] I think we should do drinks and stuff on Wednesday or something.

[1659] Before Thanksgiving?

[1660] Yeah, just kind of like company Thanksgiving.

[1661] It's work Thanksgiving.

[1662] Yeah, it's like everybody hangs out and whatever.

[1663] Well, we're doing the live connect thing so we can get some drinks in us.

[1664] That's totally true.

[1665] Yeah.

[1666] Yeah.

[1667] Oh, man, that's going to be horrible.

[1668] Maybe I'll swing by for that.

[1669] I'll be on vacation.

[1670] Yeah.

[1671] That's right.

[1672] Yeah, you'll be out for a couple weeks.

[1673] So you just can't have fun?

[1674] Just sit on the side?

[1675] Yeah, exactly.

[1676] I'm going to come in with a drink.

[1677] a faker beard and glasses.

[1678] Oh, what do you guys do here?

[1679] I'm going to sit down and watch this production happen.

[1680] How does this work?

[1681] What kind of cameras?

[1682] That camera looks askew.

[1683] But hey, what would I know?

[1684] You probably want to plug that SDI cable into here.

[1685] Why are you putting 360p video up?

[1686] You probably want to set the key pro to SD to get a monitor feed out there, but hell, I don't know.

[1687] What are you doing for Thanksgiving?

[1688] I'm probably going to be working.

[1689] That.

[1690] And I'm going to catch up on my games because I'm so behind.

[1691] Where are you?

[1692] I'm in Florida.

[1693] Ah, Floridian Thanksgiving.

[1694] So is it warm down there?

[1695] Is it like 80 during Thanksgiving?

[1696] It was 84 yesterday.

[1697] Now it's around 70.

[1698] Wow.

[1699] Do you get turkey?

[1700] I love turkey, but my mom makes chicken for some reason.

[1701] I don't know why.

[1702] I like a ham, too.

[1703] Yeah, glazed ham.

[1704] See, that's the thing that I miss is the big family stuff.

[1705] You can make, like, seven different courses.

[1706] Way too much, yeah.

[1707] Yeah, and it's like you get a little bit of mix of everything.

[1708] We're here, you can't do it anymore.

[1709] Yeah.

[1710] Because I'd love to make a ham.

[1711] I'd love to have meatballs.

[1712] I've got amazing meatballs.

[1713] I should have brought them.

[1714] Dave's amazing meatballs.

[1715] Hey, Alexis.

[1716] Turkey's almost gone, so I brought you guys some.

[1717] Oh, wow, thanks.

[1718] Oh, we just get, like, turkey meat?

[1719] Well, there's, like, some.

[1720] I thought there were two whole turkeys.

[1721] I'm telling you, that turkey is pretty good.

[1722] They kept the other turkey at home.

[1723] Wait, what?

[1724] They kept one turkey for themselves?

[1725] Yep.

[1726] Whatever.

[1727] Look at the amount of grease that's on this turkey plate.

[1728] You want some turkey?

[1729] No, I'm okay.

[1730] No, thanks.

[1731] I told you, I've got 20 pounds of turkey coming.

[1732] Dan, do you want some turkey?

[1733] I wish.

[1734] You guys would make me hungry.

[1735] Yeah, it's pretty good.

[1736] It's fried in a deep fryer.

[1737] Oh, it's so good.

[1738] You don't want it?

[1739] You're just scared of it?

[1740] No, no, I think it's fine.

[1741] All right, I'll try it.

[1742] Eating it from a microphone, real professional.

[1743] Yeah.

[1744] People love that.

[1745] But I should get a piece of skin, right?

[1746] It's like a random ass piece of skin.

[1747] Is this just turkey skin or is that like a bone?

[1748] Vinny, did you see that Landalore came out?

[1749] I did.

[1750] Somebody messaged me. It's a little dry.

[1751] The turkey, I mean, not your...

[1752] Landalore?

[1753] Yeah, not Landalore.

[1754] It's amazing.

[1755] It's good.

[1756] I love red turkey.

[1757] I've never had it.

[1758] It's alright.

[1759] It's alright.

[1760] You're crazy.

[1761] Dan, you got anything else?

[1762] That's it.

[1763] Thanks for calling in, dude.

[1764] Appreciate it.

[1765] Dave, are you going to brine your turkey?

[1766] I don't know what I'm going to do.

[1767] I think I'm going to allow my new fiance to take care of that.

[1768] Dan, I'm trying to hang up on you, so hold on a second.

[1769] I can't quite figure this out.

[1770] Hold on.

[1771] Bear with me, Dan.

[1772] All right.

[1773] Yeah, I don't know what I'm going to do with that 20 -pounder.

[1774] It's a lot of brine and bucket.

[1775] It's a lot of turkey.

[1776] Bucket full of allspice and brine and salt.

[1777] That's not what you want to eat.

[1778] That's not food.

[1779] What do you want?

[1780] You want to take two more calls?

[1781] Yeah, sure.

[1782] And we'll call today.

[1783] Yeah, let's take a couple more calls.

[1784] Sorry, I got some text messages over here I gotta deal with.

[1785] I gotta deal with some stuff over here.

[1786] Is somebody editing your bio for the Spike VGA words?

[1787] That won't do.

[1788] If you take the word Smash TV out of this thing, I walk.

[1789] Alright, do you have any choices down here?

[1790] Let's take the phone number one.

[1791] Phone number ones are great because you never know who it is.

[1792] This right here?

[1793] Yeah.

[1794] All right, phone number.

[1795] I'm taking you.

[1796] You talk because I still have turkey hands.

[1797] Hey, it's Whiskey Media.

[1798] Hi, how are you?

[1799] Hey, we're doing pretty good.

[1800] Sounds good for a phone.

[1801] Yeah.

[1802] Well, it is a phone.

[1803] It should be.

[1804] It sounds good for a microphone, and this is a real phone, so it should sound good.

[1805] What's your name?

[1806] Where are you calling from?

[1807] My name is Chad.

[1808] I'm calling from Orange County.

[1809] Yeah.

[1810] OC.

[1811] Are you tired of people?

[1812] Are you tired of people saying the OC every time you say Orange County?

[1813] I'm entirely sick of it, yeah.

[1814] Oh, you mean the OC?

[1815] Yeah, the OC.

[1816] Let's give it a new name.

[1817] The Ocaranya.

[1818] Let's call it like Left Belt.

[1819] Okay.

[1820] Because there's belts and it's kind of like on the left.

[1821] Yep.

[1822] It's like Left Belt.

[1823] It's a new name for the OC.

[1824] All right.

[1825] Yeah.

[1826] Call it from the Left Belt.

[1827] How's it going down there?

[1828] It's going well.

[1829] What's your question?

[1830] My question is probably geared best for...

[1831] Oh ye of little faith.

[1832] Oh ye of little faith.

[1833] I don't know, Dave.

[1834] I mean, you can answer to this, but why don't they set up scripts to basically come up with a new instance of a virtual server as soon as they're maxed out or whatever?

[1835] If Olean was that easy.

[1836] Yeah, what's preventing them from doing that?

[1837] Well, normally it has nothing to do with the actual hardware that's existing.

[1838] It's the software that's written on top of that hardware that's sort of maintaining these connections and all this type of stuff.

[1839] Like, for example, when our sites go down, It's not because we're overloaded on our server.

[1840] It's because we wrote a piece of bad code that is just inefficient.

[1841] So, for example, times when we learn this stuff is any time where something is abnormal.

[1842] So for us, it's like, well, that Skyrim stuff, right?

[1843] It's like we had a lot of traffic, but it was mostly because we had quite a bit of...

[1844] Like chat mode.

[1845] So that's using a sort of separate system that the rest of our sites use.

[1846] So when we see that sort of stuff happening, it's like, oh, God, we need to go fix that.

[1847] And the bad part is that that one little piece may be broken, but it's affecting everything across the board.

[1848] All of our servers.

[1849] The chat dragon is angered.

[1850] Yeah, the chat dragon is angered.

[1851] So, you know, you could say, well, they're just serving the games and stuff.

[1852] The big thing and.

[1853] Sort of the thing that I loved about Battlefield 3, and I think why it will be remembered fairly well, at least from a tech sense, is all the web stuff that they did on top of it was fairly brilliant.

[1854] And it was fairly new from the space of video games, especially on the PC side.

[1855] It was something not a lot of people were doing, and it's just really hard to see how that stuff is, how it's going to play out.

[1856] How is it going to play out where people are talking with their login names here in one spot through a browser, and then we're going to seamlessly move them into a server and keep all their connection info from a plugin that exists in a browser and then moves sort of into an actual video game?

[1857] I was amazed at how well it actually launched, to be honest.

[1858] Like you said, Modern Warfare 3 had it.

[1859] Every game sort of kind of has it.

[1860] I think Modern Warfare 3 kind of has the same stuff.

[1861] They're doing all the elite stuff.

[1862] It's like brand new sort of trailblazing stuff.

[1863] Well, a lot of that stuff is born out of what Bungie did with Halo to some extent.

[1864] From a tech side, though.

[1865] I'm sure that all the code that they wrote has nothing to do with sort of what the Halo guys did.

[1866] And the interesting thing, with the stuff with Battlefield and with Call of Duty Elite is that it's talking back and forth now.

[1867] The Bungie stuff was really just...

[1868] For the most part, it was your data from every game.

[1869] All they were doing is storing data on every game, and then you could view it on the website.

[1870] Now, with Battlefield, you're launching into games, you're maintaining all your lists and stuff like that.

[1871] With Call of Duty Elite, you're building custom classes and then pushing them into a console game, which is kind of crazy.

[1872] And, you know, handling clans and groups and all sorts of stuff on both ends.

[1873] And so it's weird.

[1874] It's tricky.

[1875] And it's like how we've been talking about, oh, well, you know, websites are changing.

[1876] We're not just a website.

[1877] We exist here, here, here, and here.

[1878] It's kind of funny that games are kind of getting that way as well, where it's like, we're just not a video game anymore.

[1879] We are...

[1880] A service.

[1881] Yeah.

[1882] Yeah, that's totally true.

[1883] And so it's whether or not people feel that kind of stuff is valuable.

[1884] But I remember when...

[1885] Seeing all the origin stuff that was coming out, like a VA, I was like, why?

[1886] What do I want that on my computer for in any way?

[1887] I'm so pissed that I have to install that to get Battlefield 3 running.

[1888] And then once I saw...

[1889] the reasoning behind it, what they actually did, that's fine.

[1890] If that thing had come out like dog shit, which I think everybody assumed it was going to be like, then I think you would have had people up in arms and they'd be like, what the hell do I have origin on there?

[1891] And it's like you realize, wow, this is the first time somebody actually has a legitimate gripe against Steam.

[1892] Not that it's like a gripe gripe, but it's like we wanted to do something different that was outside.

[1893] It's not like your DLC practices are different.

[1894] It's like we want to try to build something completely different than Steam, and we need to do this through our own service.

[1895] And props to that.

[1896] I don't know if you saw, but like...

[1897] Origin's going to carry non -EA games.

[1898] They've signed deals with Warner Brothers and THQ and stuff, so they're going to get all the way in, I guess.

[1899] It's pretty crazy.

[1900] And a lot of it transfers, like the keys, like we were talking about.

[1901] You can take those keys and just move them around.

[1902] That's smart.

[1903] That's the way to do stuff right.

[1904] So, you know, who knows what will happen with it.

[1905] Except that now, well, it might not happen in the future too much, because Need for Speed, the run, did not appear on Steam.

[1906] at all, even though I can't imagine the DLC they're going to build for that game is going to be stuff that's going to...

[1907] Based on seeing that game, I could see that just out of not having development time.

[1908] Well, it's on Origin.

[1909] There is a PC version of it out there.

[1910] I don't know.

[1911] Hard to say.

[1912] Who's buying the run on PC?

[1913] That's a super small audience, I'd guess.

[1914] Hot Pursuit was really good on the PC, but the run is not good.

[1915] across the board, so that's kind of a larger problem, I guess.

[1916] Well, does that answer the question?

[1917] Yeah, actually, surprisingly well.

[1918] Thanks a lot.

[1919] Thanks, guys.

[1920] Bye.

[1921] It's been interesting over the last few years, kind of picking up some...

[1922] bits of knowledge about load on websites and how it's distributed and stuff by just kind of working more closely with an engineering team.

[1923] Because as Call of Duty Elite sputters and tries to launch and fails and all this stuff, I see them doing things to the service, and I know why they're doing them now.

[1924] Yeah, and the real thing, too, is the reason we use these cloud -based services like Amazon, it's not...

[1925] necessarily because we all we need all this kind of stuff you talk about scalability scalability really is just the ability to put up a new server fairly quickly right uh and that's it that's the reason that we do it because back in the day uh when giant bomb was hosted on in the closet it was hosted in quebec because that was the cheapest price that i could find yeah i talked to a you know uh French Quebec guy, and he would tell me about all the datas that I could store on his servers, and when we needed a new one, it would take two weeks.

[1926] And that was it.

[1927] It's not like, oh, there was new technology there.

[1928] It's just the process of talking to a person took two weeks to get that hardware in line, and then you had to deploy it and get that server set up, and that would just take time.

[1929] So now it's like you can just clone stuff up, but that's not necessarily going to solve a software problem.

[1930] Right.

[1931] Take another call?

[1932] Yep.

[1933] Final call.

[1934] Final call.

[1935] All right, Dave.

[1936] Guide me. You pick one, Benny.

[1937] Oh, man. That's a lot of callers.

[1938] This guy's got a Jurassic Park.

[1939] Go for it.

[1940] Justin, coming through.

[1941] Justin.

[1942] Justin, you there, buddy?

[1943] Justin.

[1944] Justin.

[1945] He's...

[1946] hey guys scary all right what's up justin oh sorry no problem turn down the stream the velociraptors got him yeah oh sorry sorry there i just uh found that my skype was muted okay all right yeah how you doing justin what's up i'm doing pretty good how about you guys okay i have some turkey friday you know It was alright.

[1947] I don't know what you're talking about.

[1948] What are you talking about?

[1949] Ain't got shit to do.

[1950] Yep.

[1951] Oh, and by the way, Dave, congratulations on your engagement.

[1952] Thank you very much.

[1953] Appreciate it.

[1954] Congratulations, Dave.

[1955] Thank you.

[1956] You're a man now.

[1957] Well, I'm not married yet.

[1958] Let me see your ring.

[1959] Whatever.

[1960] Still.

[1961] Oh.

[1962] You took it off?

[1963] It fell down the sink.

[1964] Oh, you're killing me. Yeah, it was trouble.

[1965] Shh.

[1966] Justin, what's your question?

[1967] Well, I was just kind of wondering.

[1968] My computer just died recently, and along with that, my Mass Effect 1 and 2 saves.

[1969] So in lieu of getting Skyrim, I've decided to play through both of them together.

[1970] I was wondering, what's the most severe game data loss ever, whether it was a save or you just had a whole bunch of hard drives that just died on you?

[1971] I had my MP3 hard drive go.

[1972] I was able to recover most of it.

[1973] iTunes match.

[1974] I can't use iTunes Match.

[1975] I have too many songs.

[1976] What?

[1977] I thought it was unlimited.

[1978] No, it's 25 ,000 that you did not purchase from iTunes.

[1979] You have over 25 ,000 songs?

[1980] I have 37 ,000.

[1981] Holy crap, that's a lot of songs.

[1982] I have a lot of CDs in a box in my garage that I ripped.

[1983] Wow, 25 ,000.

[1984] That's a bummer.

[1985] Yeah, that was a bummer.

[1986] For me, the eternal nightmare about game data loss is when I'm in the middle of a review.

[1987] Because, like, time is a factor, and the last thing you want to have happen is, like, oh, lost everything.

[1988] We had that happen a few times this year, both Brad and Ryan.

[1989] Oh, Will Smith.

[1990] Sorry.

[1991] Yeah, what's up, Will Smith?

[1992] Will Smith's looking feverish.

[1993] No, yeah.

[1994] I fried turkeys.

[1995] No, we're going to close up.

[1996] It's amazing.

[1997] We had it.

[1998] It's really good.

[1999] It's right there.

[2000] Oh, good.

[2001] Did you enjoy it?

[2002] Was it magical?

[2003] Oh, it was really good.

[2004] It's moist and delicious, right?

[2005] Yeah, I thought so.

[2006] Was it safety?

[2007] Was it OSHA safe, everything?

[2008] Did the shoot go well?

[2009] All right, we'll talk later.

[2010] We lost one.

[2011] Let me see the backside of your hands.

[2012] I'm cool.

[2013] Let me see the other hand.

[2014] Norm's yard needs a grass transplant.

[2015] It'll be cool.

[2016] See you guys later.

[2017] Bye, Will.

[2018] Hope you feel better.

[2019] Thanks, man. MP3 hard drive reviews.

[2020] Losing, yeah.

[2021] Brad and I?

[2022] Yeah, Brad lost a USB stick.

[2023] Ryan was reviewing Rise of Nightmares, got close to the end, and then lost the save, and I think that then just didn't end up reviewing it.

[2024] Yeah, that's always the nightmare for me, is being most of the way through a game for a review, and then going, oh, fuck, no. I've never really had any huge data loss.

[2025] I've always regretted right -clicking things on Steam.

[2026] And saying, like, delete local files.

[2027] Yeah.

[2028] My drive fills up.

[2029] I'm bad with that.

[2030] I need a bigger drive.

[2031] That's why I like all the cloud stuff that they're doing, so it'll save a lot of that kind of stuff.

[2032] I don't think it deletes your save, though.

[2033] Some do, some don't.

[2034] A lot of times it does.

[2035] Oh, really?

[2036] A lot of times it does?

[2037] Yeah.

[2038] Does?

[2039] Yes.

[2040] Oh, no. Yeah.

[2041] So, you know, I think...

[2042] Why would it do that?

[2043] Especially with these, like, random...

[2044] PC games and stuff that we run it's like I always wish that it's like oh yeah I really want to play Temple of Elemental Evil but I don't want to play through the first 10 hours of Temple you know it's like you just want to make things like better for people to watch and so I miss having I wish I could have all my save files from all time there's a lot of stuff you can you can find online we did but it's weird we did that for Baldur's Gate 2 and I was like playing somebody else's character yeah it felt like dirties.

[2045] It was just like, oh, they've spent this time, they've made this perfect bow person.

[2046] Well, I remember for Mass Effect specifically, there were cases where if people were switching platforms, like going to 360 to PC and stuff, for Mass Effect 2, they were making a website where you could actually just check boxes for all the different choices in Mass Effect 1 and generate a save to import into the game.

[2047] And Justin, you're playing on PC, Mass Effect?

[2048] Yeah.

[2049] And actually, Steam has this, like, you can back up save game files.

[2050] I'm sure you probably already noticed that.

[2051] And I actually did do that to an external hard drive for both of the Mass Effect games.

[2052] But for some reason, actually, the saves aren't, like, in there.

[2053] They're stored in, like, my documents or somewhere.

[2054] That happened to me with Dragon Age.

[2055] When I lost my boot drive, Dragon Age stored everything in my documents folder, and I lost, like, my 95 hours.

[2056] Luckily...

[2057] I had copied them over to do the first expansion pack quick look onto a USB drive.

[2058] So it's frantically tearing apart.

[2059] We have about a billion thumb drives here.

[2060] Like, oh, I know it's on here somewhere.

[2061] So I had a save from Dragon Age that was before.

[2062] Unfortunately, it was before all this stuff from the expansion and also before Awakenings.

[2063] But at least it was the main game save, which I was able to import.

[2064] I lost my hard drive at the very end of Morrowind.

[2065] Oh, that's tough.

[2066] That was a really sad one.

[2067] And that's a tough one to go back and just play.

[2068] When I was a kid, my older brother and I had rented Rygar.

[2069] Oh.

[2070] And we were playing through that, and we had to leave it on.

[2071] I don't think there was a save for that.

[2072] No, there was no save.

[2073] And we were fighting something, and...

[2074] Rygar, perhaps, the final boss?

[2075] Maybe.

[2076] I can't quite remember.

[2077] Did you make it to the end of Rygar?

[2078] Yeah.

[2079] That was a hard game.

[2080] I finished it multiple times.

[2081] I was telling this story to somebody else and I was like, oh, in the beginning of the game you can farm for stuff.

[2082] We didn't know about that.

[2083] Towards the end, we had left the thing on for eight hours, nine hours.

[2084] It's a rental and we're trying to get through it.

[2085] He died and he took the stick, the NES controller, and wrapped it around his neck.

[2086] And I was, like, fainting, like, oh, I killed myself.

[2087] And yanked the Nintendo off the pedestal.

[2088] So the next thing I saw was just the blinking, you know, gray to black screen.

[2089] And that was some hard data loss.

[2090] Also, Persona episode 50 was some hard.

[2091] Oh, yeah.

[2092] I watched that video recently.

[2093] That's such a good video.

[2094] That was a stressful one.

[2095] Oh, that was a lot of fun.

[2096] Yeah.

[2097] Well, for me. Yeah.

[2098] Yeah.

[2099] Nothing stops the endurance run.

[2100] Almost.

[2101] I think you got a snowball or something.

[2102] I'm still amazed by that.

[2103] That's probably the last snowball you've had.

[2104] Oh, when you guys walked to the snowball.

[2105] Could not have been a snowball.

[2106] Because I don't eat snowballs.

[2107] They have coconut embers.

[2108] They're gross.

[2109] Maybe it was one of those things.

[2110] It's it or something?

[2111] Some ice cream?

[2112] I still keep episode 50 on my hard drive.

[2113] Just in case.

[2114] For some reason.

[2115] It's a weird one.

[2116] Data loss sucks.

[2117] Yep.

[2118] It's a bad...

[2119] It's a terrible, terrible thing.

[2120] Yeah, we have that more with just video stuff than anything else.

[2121] Yeah, it's rough.

[2122] That's why we...

[2123] Yeah.

[2124] And we have so much data.

[2125] How's your stacks of hard drives down?

[2126] It's incredible.

[2127] I think we're up to 40s now.

[2128] We're in the 40s.

[2129] And hard drives are super expensive now, too.

[2130] Yeah.

[2131] I hate data loss.

[2132] Any kind of data loss is a bad kind of loss, in my opinion.

[2133] And I never came up with a good backup solution.

[2134] They always seem...

[2135] clunky include stack of bear drives perfect yeah they're terrible so justin hope that answers your question uh entertainment through our misery yeah day loss is the worst it's the worst especially save game stuff too where you're just like i don't want to put 40 hours back in but you know mass effect at least it's fun yeah i'm i'm i'm glad that you know if it had to be mass effect at least i could play through it again and play through with a different character this time yeah you know mass effect one and two i went through and i played through mass effect one uh before mass effect 2 came out because i wanted an evil character or whatever it was you can kind of get through those games pretty quickly if you know what you're doing and you skip the cut scenes it's actually only like five maybe six seven hours yeah it took me a lot shorter this time than the first time i played it yeah it's a quick run well thanks justin yeah thank you guys and uh keep up the great work i love giant bomb thanks thank you dude we'll try no guarantees i got a little cut off at the end there that's about it Is that it?

[2136] That's a long one.

[2137] I felt that was a good one.

[2138] We did a good job this time.

[2139] Took some calls.

[2140] Talked some business stuff.

[2141] Got some turkey.

[2142] Talking turkey.

[2143] That's right.

[2144] I sent some texts.

[2145] Anyways.

[2146] My little brother saved over Final Fantasy Game Boy save.

[2147] Yeah.

[2148] I think that was the one where you can beat the end boss with a chainsaw in one head.

[2149] Do you remember that?

[2150] I can't remember.

[2151] Legends?

[2152] Is that a Game Boy game?

[2153] Yeah.

[2154] Okay.

[2155] We will put an archive of this up.

[2156] It's been recorded.

[2157] If I hit stop and it all works.

[2158] We'll put...

[2159] It might be a data loss.

[2160] Speaking of data loss.

[2161] You know, we didn't get a lot of time to take questions and stuff on that YouTube stuff, but if anybody has any, it sounds like people were kind of okay with it, but if there...

[2162] You know, does anything anybody want to say?

[2163] anything anybody wants to say, you know, go to this archive, and that's just a subscriber -only comment area, so you guys can sort of talk with us sort of directly through that, and we'll watch over it the next couple days and stuff.

[2164] Yeah, and so the topic is moving to 720 stuff over to YouTube.

[2165] Moving 720 onto YouTube, and, you know, I think we covered all of it.

[2166] Yeah.

[2167] All right.

[2168] Yeah.

[2169] Thanks, guys.

[2170] Thanks for being here.

[2171] Yeah, thanks, everybody.

[2172] Thanks for having us.

[2173] All right.

[2174] Here we go.

[2175] The first ending.

[2176] Thanks, everybody.