Insider Gaming

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• 0:00Speaker 00

  This is the sound of peace. Peace of mind knowing you're behind the wheel of Consumer Reports' safest new car brand, Mazda. The Mazda CX-50 Hybrid comes standard with a suite of proactive safety features, so you can drive in peace and confidence wherever the road takes you. Mazda, tap the banner to discover how confidence comes standard. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Visit MazdaUSA.com to learn more.

• 0:29Speaker 01

  Good evening, gentle listeners or watchers, and welcome to Distractible. This episode, magical Mark plants hard, owns Pro, then the boys blast the big players, Wheezy Wade invades Minnesota, eats sticky balls, decries disclessness, and trounces Twitch. Zombie bustin' Bob flashes in public, shows the way in Ghost Hospital, doesn't get physical, and dreams of Dreamcast. From Gollum and cans to atomic robo roaches. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha. It's time for Insider Gaming.

• 1:12Speaker 01

  Now, sit back and prepare to be distracted and enjoy the show.

• 1:23Speaker 02

  I tried to tie that up for when it looked like you were about to start.

• 1:26Speaker 03

  Uh huh, you tried, huh? Yeah, yeah. Don't try to cover your disgusting habits with the beginning of this episode. Good evening and welcome to Distractible. My name is Mark. I'm joined by the can-opening man and the coffer.

• 1:40Speaker 02

  Oh, okay. I was like, which one of us is the kid? Oh, okay.

• 1:43Speaker 04

  I don't know what you're talking about.

• 1:45Speaker 03

  Well, this is a disgusting start. We've had a record number of people click off the video immediately, but you know, some are sticking it out. I'm joined by my effervescent guest, Bob, and my also effervescent guest, Wade.

• 1:59Speaker 04

  Hello.

• 2:00Speaker 03

  Hi.

• 2:01Speaker 04

  Mark's already regretting showing up for this.

• 2:03Speaker 03

  They've opted to join me in this wonderful podcast so that they can compete for the luxury of points and the rights to be the host for the very next episode that you will listen to. Unless you don't listen to the next one, you know, if someone's listening to these randomly, like, I'll just pick and choose, they're gonna be really confused.

• 2:22Speaker 04

  I get that someone might come in with that approach, but I feel like after the first couple, you're just completely, you're doing it to yourself if you're not like, ah, maybe I'll listen in order. You know what? These have an order. Maybe I'll follow it. I have no sympathy for you.

• 2:34Speaker 03

  Yeah, we have no sympathy for you, just like, we all have no sympathy for Wade. How's your life?

• 2:40Speaker 02

  Fine. You want details? I can give you details, because I was in Minnesota recently, and I went to the Minnesota State Fair. I've never gone to a state fair. Like, there's the Ohio State Fair, I've been to county fairs before, but never a state fair. I didn't know what to expect. I was like, okay, there's probably like, a few cows, maybe like, two lemonade stands and dirt.

• 2:58Speaker 03

  Take that, Minnesota.

• 2:59Speaker 02

  Turns out there's a lot more. I don't know how big the state fair was, like, space-wise, like, you know, dimensions, but we went and there were just surges of people, like, I don't know that I've really been a part of. Turns out, we went on a record-breaking day. There was a, there, we went on a Friday, and there had never been 200,000 some-odd people on a Friday before. Well, there was the day we went. Our adventure started at like, 9:30 or 10:00 in the morning. We left our hotel, and we're like, okay, well, I guess we'll go try to find parking. An hour and a half later, we found there was no parking within three miles, and the places, we found a list of places, like, oh, park here, you can shuttle to the fair. Okay, great. We found one that had space, and we went over there, we're like, oh, thank God, at least there was one.

• 3:43Speaker 02

  We finally get up there, and everyone that's getting on the bus is like, in a wheelchair, using a cane or a walker, and we're like, huh, that's interesting. I guess, maybe the people that are, and then someone walked up right as we were like, trying to finish this thought, and they're like, did you got, can you guys read? This is handicap accessible only. And we're like, oh, no. We don't qualify for that, I don't think. We turned around, you know, we turned the car around, the car was moping too, it was like, oh, I don't wanna drive anymore. We're like, we don't drive anymore. We ended up driving back to the hotel, so two hours of driving trying to find parking, we gave up, went back to the hotel and just got an Uber. So easy. Taxis, Ubers, lifts, you know how easy and convenient those things are? Oh, man. Pulled us right up to the, to the fair, dropped us off.

• 4:26Speaker 02

  So we got to the fair like, two hours later than everyone else, later than we wanted to, and we walked in, and we spent the first 45 minutes just trying to find our other group of friends that was there. They're like, yeah, we're at the entrance to the skylift, and we looked up, there's a skylift right above us, where people are just sitting like, looking like they really wanna get off the rides, it's a really hot, cloudless day. I swear, we get to the entrance, and we're like, okay, well, this is the entrance, and we look up, and then we see, like, in the distance, there's a second skylift. And we're like, oh, no. Oh, no, how big is this place? What have we done?

• 4:58Speaker 04

  I thought you were gonna say you looked up and your friends were on the skylift just like, sorry, we thought you weren't coming. A second skylift was not even in the cards.

• 5:07Speaker 03

  That's where you go to the second one, and they're like, what are you, stupid? This is the handicap skylift. Get the fuck out of here.

• 5:14Speaker 02

  Well, one of them was covered, one of them was not. The people that were the covered one, I couldn't see their expression. The uncovered one, oh, I hope they were wearing sunscreen, because it was just a very long, slow, sitting in the sun, baking ride.

• 5:26Speaker 04

  It's probably slightly breezier 30 feet in the air, right?

• 5:30Speaker 03

  They got windows cracked, right?

• 5:31Speaker 02

  Well, I guess the ones inside probably were baking.

• 5:33Speaker 04

  Maybe it actually goes faster than it looks like it does, and you get a, you get the breeze from the movement. It's like being in a convertible.

• 5:40Speaker 02

  I love your optimism. I don't think so. But there's food vendors and drink vendors everywhere, and even though there's like, hundreds of thousands of people, what the general vibe was, was, okay, walk, they've got, one going one way, one go the other way, get to whatever stand you wanna get, get food, get drink, and then beeline to the shade. There's just people grouped up, standing still, exactly where the shade is, and I swear as the sun would shift, they'd like, take a step, make sure they're in the shade, and that was kind of the vibe. One of the buildings was literally called Food Building, so we're looking at all these food and drink vendors, and our friend texts us, Bridgie texts us, she's like, yeah, we're by the food building. And we were like, the food building? This building's big and serves food?

• 6:24Speaker 02

  That's gotta be the one. That wasn't the one. Turns out, there actually was just a building called Food Building. Eventually, we found each other, we'd learned what the food building was, and then where all the skylifts were, we got some food, got some drinks, and some of the best salted caramel popcorn I've ever had in my life. Not gonna lie, it was really good. It was like, it's some random root beer stand, I can't remember the name of it, but it was just a place that was like, known for root beer. Like, yeah, you want a bag of our caramel popcorn? I was like, all right. I took a bite of that, and it was heavenly. They had weird shit like pickle pie and...

• 6:56Speaker 04

  Oh, that's what, that's what state fairs are for, man. State, state fairs are for, what's the weirdest thing we can invent and get idiots to try once?

• 7:05Speaker 02

  Everything's on a stick, too.

• 7:08Speaker 04

  Oh, yeah. Hot dog on a stick on a stick is my favorite on a stick food.

• 7:11Speaker 02

  They had like, I don't, it wasn't lasagna on a stick, it was something like, that didn't sound like it should go on a stick. They had spaghetti and meatballs on a stick, I didn't actually see that one, but it boggled my mind how you would do that. Corn on the cob, everyone had a corn on the cob. We didn't get a corn on the cob, because the line was too long, but everyone was walking around with just corn on the cob, must've been very good.

• 7:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, if you had a corn on the cob, it's pretty good.

• 7:31Speaker 02

  I haven't had it at the state fair. I don't know, I lived in salt and butter, I've never put anything else on corn in the cob. Anyway, that was really fun, but we spent like, two and a half hours trying to get there, and then after like, two hours of being there, we were all kinda like, it's really hot, and it takes about 50 minutes to get anywhere in here, because there's so many people. And one of our friends, Patrick, and his fiance, were pushing a stroller, they had their kid, and people would not stop. There was, there was no courtesy, there was no allowing the stroller to get through, they were like, a stroller, I said, it's weakness, cut them off. And then at one point, there's like, a couple people, I don't know if they meant to be at the state fair, there was like, an older lady who stepped in front of us while we were walking, like, in front of the stroller, and just stopped and looked at the sky and smiled,

• 8:13Speaker 02

  and we couldn't go around her, so we just had to wait for this moment to pass of whatever holy moment she was going through, but it was like, I don't know, it was just immensely stressful, I guess, because it was just so busy. If it wasn't so busy, which apparently during the middle of the week, it's not so busy, it would've been a good time, but too many people, 200,000 people at a state fair, all wanting stick on a stick, was a bit much.

• 8:32Speaker 03

  Was it because, it was because it was Labor Day, or what?

• 8:35Speaker 02

  This was the, no, this was a week.

• 8:37Speaker 03

  Oh, this was last week.

• 8:38Speaker 02

  Before Labor Day, it was the Friday, or the, Friday before the weekend before Labor Day?

• 8:43Speaker 03

  Sure.

• 8:44Speaker 02

  Yeah, because that was our first full day in Minnesota. We arrived like, late Thursday night, and we're like, oh, man, sure, we aren't jet-lagged tomorrow, we get up in the morning and try to go to the state fair, and I gotta tell you about our hotel.

• 8:54Speaker 03

  Oh, okay.

• 8:56Speaker 02

  Let me preface this with a question, though. What, what do you think the most consistent fast food chain is? Like, the one that you think of, you're just like, the quality of that one's always pretty good.

• 9:03Speaker 04

  Does it have to be good or consistent? Yeah, no, I...

• 9:05Speaker 02

  One that you would consider to be decent and is always consistent.

• 9:09Speaker 03

  McDonald's.

• 9:10Speaker 04

  Specifically for me, McDonald's Nuggets. The burgers and sandwiches can vary, but if I'm in a strange place, and I'm just like, I need food that I know exactly what it's gonna taste, taste and feel like. McDonald's Nuggets meal.

• 9:23Speaker 02

  I, I, I'm a big fan, I usually prefer them too, but I've found their restaurants to be somewhat inconsistent. I've found bad.

• 9:29Speaker 04

  I've never, I've never been inside of McDonald's, I'd never do that.

• 9:31Speaker 02

  Well, even like, the drive, you've never been to like, a sketchy McDonald's, it's just like, you don't, I don't know, just something about it feels off to you?

• 9:37Speaker 04

  Yeah, but the food always is still pretty much the same.

• 9:40Speaker 02

  For me going in, it was the one that was Wendy's, was my thought. I was like, Wendy's, I've never had, like, Wendy's is not my favorite, but it's always been consistent, I've never had like, a bad Wendy's. Wendy's always seems like it's pretty clean, pretty up kept, and stuff like that. So there was a Wendy's in the area, we were looking for food, that had like, I don't know, a one-star rating on Yelp. It was very, very badly rated, and everyone had consistently the same, like, claims about how bad it was, and we're like, well, that's weird, I thought Wendy's were always usually okay. We're looking at the different food options, because we hadn't really eaten, we got to the hotel, and our hotel was weird. Like, it was, it was fine, there was nothing bad about it, but it felt like The Truman Show, if they were starting to take the set apart while Truman was being filmed there. You'd go in, you'd check in at the lobby, and then you'd go, you know, one hallway leads

• 10:25Speaker 02

  to the elevators, other hallways, rooms, and we get up to our room, we're dropping stuff off, we're texting our friends that are also at the same hotel, they're like, where are you guys at? Where they're like, oh, we're in the courtyard. We're like, courtyard? This hotel has a courtyard?

• 10:37Speaker 04

  By Marriott?

• 10:38Speaker 02

  They're like, we're in the courtyard. I'm like, okay, well, I guess we'll find the courtyard. So we drop our stuff off. Unbeknownst to me, Molly takes our friends our room number. So I opened the door to go to the courtyard and one of our friends is just there and scares the absolute shit out of me because they're standing outside the door as I open it. But they lead us to the courtyard and the courtyard is literally a really nice green area with trees and like a wooden deck, a gazebo. People's rooms have balconies and like walkways facing out into the courtyard where you can just hang out and look out into the courtyard. This is just a hotel, mind you, like a normal hotel. The thing that's weird about it is the ceiling is just stark black metal warehouse ceiling with like little metal hangs and like what looks like filming lights just hanging down,

• 11:20Speaker 02

  pointing at the courtyard and all of the trees are fake. They're just fake trees. And it's a cool hangout area, but there was just something super unsettling about it.

• 11:30Speaker 03

  Did they give you a free tricycle that you had to ride around to get to place to place in the hotel?

• 11:35Speaker 02

  So you're giving me, I forget what it's called. You're giving me like one of those false members like, no, but there was a, but there was a tricycle, but I'm like, no, but there wasn't. Was there? I don't know. Actually now there might've been. There was an abandoned coffee bar nearby. There was no one ever working there. There were like machines partially taken apart, but you could get water there. So there was that under like a little overhang. It was strange. It was a very strange feeling and it did feel like we were being filmed and watched at all times because every room except for the ours apparently faced this courtyard.

• 12:07Speaker 03

  Interesting.

• 12:08Speaker 02

  And people were very loud and animated. I swear someone was doing like construction. You know, those neighbors that are like, oh man, everyone's trying to go to bed or whatever. It's four in the morning when my people are trying to sleep. We should pull out the power drill and work right now. I swear there was something like that going on in one of the rooms, which made no sense. That was the day and a half up in the Twin Cities before we went down and spent time with Molly's family, which was also very nice, but not as weird stories to come from just hanging out with family, thankfully.

• 12:34Speaker 03

  Well, weird hotel and then weird Minnesota. So that's, that's good for you, man. Bob, how's your life?

• 12:40Speaker 04

  Oh, well, actually this morning I caught some of Wade's weirdness. I've been going to this doctor for my foot situation, which I've moaned about previously, which I could moan about endlessly because it's ongoing. But I've been going to this doctor. It's down in Clifton. It's actually Good Samaritan Hospital down by the University of Cincinnati. Today, the power was just out generally in like the Clifton area. So I got off the highway on the Mitchell Avenue exit and sort of was cutting through down on Ludlow, like drove past the skyline down there. All the traffic lights were just off, which is around UC's campus and generally in downtown Cincinnati, a fucking nightmare. And then all the power

• 13:24Speaker 04

  to the part of the hospital I was going to was just off. So I parked in the parking garage, which had open to the outside, but then the rest of that building I never noticed is just a cave. Like, I don't think there's a fucking window in the place. So I get there and I'm like, this was also at seven in the morning. I had to wake up real early today for my appointment. Half awake. I'm standing at the elevator, just like hit the button, like doesn't come. Like eventually I'm like, that's really fucking weird. Like I've been waiting for way too long. I noticed something's weird. I go to the stairs, pitch black, like horror movie pitch black. And I'm, for a minute, I'm like, are there other stairs?

• 14:04Speaker 04

  I had to use my phone flashlight, like just climbing up by myself in the parking garage through pitch black, get to the lobby. All the shit is off in the lobby. And you know, in, in places like hospitals, when the power goes out, there's always like that panel. It's like an alarm panel or something. When the power's out, somehow it has the energy to just make a constant high pitched screeching noise because like, oh, the power's out. So all this whatever is turned off. And so you get to the lobby and it's just like, ah, fuck, where's the fucking? And the inside stairs, same deal, except there's a bunch of people who apparently don't know that you have flashlights on your phone in modern society. There's a bunch of people in the darkness, just like, oh, how do I do stairs?

• 14:49Speaker 04

  Oh, fuck. It was just weird. And then of course I get up to my doctor's office and the receptionist is sort of hanging out like, don't know. Power's out. Like, yeah, it's a doctor here. It's a doctor work without power and they can't see you without power. It's like against policy or whatever. And they're like, yeah, I think they said it might be a couple of hours. And anyway, the power came back on like half an hour later and that worked out, but it was, it was like zombie apocalypse shit. Like I was phone flashlight. There were like empty offices that looked like people had abandoned mid-activity, like it was like a nuclear bomb was going to go off and they were like, fuck this and ran out. There's like shit up. It's super weird.

• 15:29Speaker 02

  I thought hospitals had like emergency power, backup power or something.

• 15:33Speaker 04

  Well, that was the thing too, is it's not in the hospital. There's like, you know, a lot of hospitals will have different buildings that are all connected, but the place I go is in the thing that's called, oh, these are the medical offices tower. It's not like the hospital tower. So I'm sure that the hospital where there were patients in rooms being, you know, who needed machines or whatever. I'm sure that they had emergency backup. The place I was going was much more just like a regular doctor's office. There was no, it's fine. No one was dying because power was out. It's just creepy.

• 16:00Speaker 02

  I don't know. I don't know if I would have gone all the way in. I would have been like, maybe the phones work. Let me call. Are there human beings alive in there? Can we come in?

• 16:07Speaker 04

  I mean, I got, when I got to the lobby with the sound, instead of, I didn't go right to the next stairs. I went outside because there were people huddling outside like we were afraid we were going to get murdered. And everyone was, you know, just when the power goes out, everyone like regresses. We're all huddling and everyone's like, oh, the power's out. Oh, God. Just, it's fine. It's just really fucking creepy. Like I would have expected maybe battery backup lights in the stairwells or something, just something where there's like some illumination. No, literal pitch black caves of nothing, filled with morons who don't know that your phone has a flashlight on it somehow, including one of them was like a EMT who was around, who was just like helping out or something.

• 16:50Speaker 04

  Like I walked in with my phone flashlight and everyone who saw it was like, oh, yeah. Wait a minute. Oh, shit. Guys.

• 16:59Speaker 02

  I mean, I, I, it really does sound like a horror movie if they were all just like dozens of people standing in a remote darkness where they breathing heavily like, like before you showed up and then you.

• 17:12Speaker 04

  Yeah. Like, like I am legend. I come in and they're all in a circle.

• 17:15Speaker 02

  Yeah, exactly. Just like that. Yeah.

• 17:17Speaker 04

  And then my dog gets them.

• 17:19Speaker 03

  Well, that's good because that gets you the segue point. Sam, hit the music.

• 17:24Speaker 05

  Playstation sticks foot in mouth, then shoots foot. Xbox takes advantage of this opening by choosing death. Lists all movie TV rights to its games on Craigslist. Will Mark be going pro in prison? Or is this his come amateur debut? Maybe it's time for the perfectest or crime after all. Chat GPT Astra, because sure, take that artists. Also, cyborg roaches armed with hypodermic needles are sent roaming into the streets for your health. That's a real headline. All that and more on this episode of Insider Gaming.

• 18:09Speaker 02

  That was a lot to take in, man.

• 18:11Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah. It's a good song. It's a good song. Like a news beat, but you know, kind of, kind of intense, sometimes scary, but kind of funny in ways.

• 18:18Speaker 02

  It took me longer than I'd like to admit for me to realize you were reading multiple headlines. I was like, that is a crazy headline.

• 18:24Speaker 00

  This is the sound of peace. Peace of mind knowing you're behind the wheel of Consumer Reports' safest new car brand, Mazda. The Mazda CX-50 Hybrid comes standard with a suite of proactive safety features, so you can drive in peace and confidence wherever the road takes you. Mazda. Tap the banner to discover how confidence comes standard. Consumer Reports does not endorse products or services. Visit MazdaUSA.com to learn more.

• 18:55Speaker 04

  That's all just one story.

• 18:57Speaker 03

  So to start it off, I mean, you guys have your owns, but I'll, I'll kick off one. I'll hand it to one of you guys. I'll, I'll take it over again. I'll kick it to another. Or maybe if you guys have one, you want to jump in, feel free, but those are the ones that I read.

• 19:12Speaker 02

  Oh, there's no, there's one of yours. I really want to hear. So I can't wait.

• 19:15Speaker 03

  All right. Points will be divvied out by who makes me laugh or is interesting, as it always is.

• 19:21Speaker 05

  I win.

• 19:22Speaker 02

  Yeah. I was gonna say, I'm in trouble.

• 19:24Speaker 03

  So PlayStation has doubled down on its stupidity by saying not only are physical DVDs and Blu-rays not going to be sold in the future, but also ownership is a myth and anyone that believed they actually owned the games and movies that they purchased are dumb. Pretty much word for word, what was argued in court by their lawyers.

• 19:44Speaker 04

  I have to hard agree with that one. That's a great take. I love that future that we're headed towards.

• 19:49Speaker 02

  Tangential. I told you guys whenever I worked at the courthouse about Time Warner Cable, their lawsuit, their lawyer came in and was arguing, I forget what happened, but basically they were like, yes, everything you're accusing us of being bad about, we did. But if you find us guilty, all we're going to do is raise the prices and make everyone that's good, all of our consumers pay more. So like, do you really want to find us guilty for it? That was their argument in court. Yeah, we did it, but do you really want to pay more for, do you want to make poor Mrs. Kravitz pay more for her cable? Because that's what's going to happen. If you find us guilty of doing the thing, we are definitely guilty. In fact, we've done more than you've accused us of. To be honest, to be fully transparent, her list of transgressions is huge.

• 20:28Speaker 04

  I can't even fairly say that we don't think we did it. We know we did.

• 20:32Speaker 02

  We did more than that. Like you guys didn't even scratch the surface of what we've done. By the way, we're going to leave this company go work for Sony next.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  I guess I understand it because anything to make more money, but like, I don't, just broadly don't understand the seeming, I don't know, allergy, severe deathly allergy that companies have to even pretending like they give a shit. Like it's, it's a low bar, right? For, and I get that there's facilities, they need manufacturing, they need distribution. I get that there's an expense to making physical things, selling physical media. But even just to pretend on, in a small scale that they give a shit and that they're like, look, we're just scaling back physical media. You'll still be able to, we're going to make 500 copies of each game. You could totally buy it in a store, probably, even if it's

• 21:21Speaker 04

  a lie. I don't understand Sony's, Sony's tone on this whole thing has been like, it's, it's the exact same thing as the Diablo immortal. Like what? You guys don't have phones? Like? Where are they coming from that they think anyone is gonna be cool with this? I get that it's their decision, but fuck.

• 21:42Speaker 03

  Yeah, and it's like, even if they want it, they could be like, yeah, we'll put in physical, but we'll charge more, which is probably the strategy that they're doing. They're like, we're not gonna do it. And then they'll come back like, oh, okay, but it'll cost more. But even so, it's just like, wow, it is.

• 21:55Speaker 02

  What's gonna be really scummy is if they do that, and then it still ends up being a thing where like, yeah, you can get a disc, but there's still a download and they can eventually make it to where the disc won't work.

• 22:04Speaker 04

  Oh, it absolutely, that already is a thing. That's absolutely a thing, yeah.

• 22:08Speaker 02

  Tangentially related to this, I'll kind of segue into one of the things I had because it's, it's very much part of the physical media thing. I saw a study, I don't think this is one of the things you mentioned, but the Video Game History Foundation, along with another group, I forget the name of, did a study where they found that eighty-seven percent of classic video games released in the United States are critically endangered, like you cannot find them or play them anymore. Eighty-seven percent. And I was trying to figure out what they counted as classic, and it looks like nineteen sixty to two thousand nine is the period they're considering. So all games in that range, you just, you cannot find those games to play anymore. Either they've been taken offline, or it's like, they're out of print. Goes to show, like, I don't know, there's times where I want to go back and play like

• 22:51Speaker 02

  an old Sega game, or an old PlayStation game, or you know, whatever have you, and television, Atari. You, I mean, you think about it, like, where do you go to get those things anymore? It's like retro game stores that have them, they refurbish them and stuff. And sometimes you'll go and like, you'll see an old Pokemon game that used to cost, you know, what, thirty, fifty bucks? Like, now it's like, oh, you want this in the box? It's used, but we got the box, we got the game? How about five hundred dollars for this? It's like, it works, right? No, we're pretty sure. And that's the only way you can access these things. And that's still getting physical media. The ones that like, what was the one that, the big one that just went offline not too long ago, the Amazon Studios game, New World?

• 23:27Speaker 04

  New World?

• 23:28Speaker 02

  Yeah.

• 23:28Speaker 03

  Oh.

• 23:29Speaker 02

  Like, there's no way to like, get that or play that anymore. A lot of the licensing games online and stuff, I guess, I'm assuming some of those are included, even though those types of games, I don't think were as big in two thousand nine, were they? Like, most two thousand nine games still, I feel like, had discs of some kind.

• 23:43Speaker 04

  I'm trying to think about the specific time, but yeah, I mean, there were, obviously there were like, MOBA, sort of purely online experiences, but it was not remotely as dominant as it is now, I feel like. Maybe that was just the games I was focusing on.

• 23:57Speaker 03

  It's hard to.

• 23:58Speaker 02

  Yeah, I don't remember whenever I even started using Steam.

• 24:02Speaker 03

  I, I started Steam with Half-Life Two, because that's when it first launched, and so you needed to get Steam for Half-Life Two. And there was a bit of an uproar for that, and they were like, ooh, this, but then they pitched it really well. It's like, it'll be better for managing your game. Since they were first, they kind of, they kind of got some goodwill for that. But yeah, it is, there are so many endangered games, but that's where I do feel like, you know, there's, you know, that one device you can buy that's like a Game Boy, but it's like, twenty thousand games, two hundred and fifteen thousand games. There's a bunch of those, but it's like, yeah, you know, in a way, that's kind of a weird thing, but it's, you know, and maybe probably illegal, but it's like, that's also how these games get preserved. There's no other way to do it, really. And just having people share it and be easier to share.

• 24:44Speaker 03

  Because if a game's been abandoned by its developer, if it's, it's called abandonware, and I believe that that's actually, there's a distinction for abandonware in technology, and it's, it is something where if the developer's given up the thing, then other people can just take it, maybe not sell it, but it's like, hey, you know, people should just be able to, to share. But I don't know what the legality of that is.

• 25:06Speaker 02

  Yeah, the thirteen percent of availability was through legal commercial means. So it's not saying you can't get it in other ways, but this was like, legal commercial means of being able to acquire these things, because I think you should be able to at that point.

• 25:19Speaker 04

  It's a very first world problem, but this is an internal debate I have with myself a lot. I'm not at all a physical media person. I own a few specific things on like Blu-ray or DVD that I very much just want to have, that are not niche, very popular, but like, things I care about. But I, when people talk about like, oh, we gotta preserve physical media, we gotta, I like gloss over, because it doesn't, as a hobby to me, it doesn't appeal. But as like a person who's invested in the gaming industry and who does care about games I've played over my lifetime, and like, the, the idea of preserving all of these things so that we have like, a historical record of where gaming has come from, and all the

• 26:03Speaker 04

  different things that have come out of the art of creating video games. I hope somebody does it, but it's a weird one, right? Because I feel like video games fall, as ever, into that, that weird category where it's like, is it really art? We really, is this Picasso? Do we need to preserve this the same way? Is it really literature? Like, the, the things that get more aggressively preserved and, you know, held as like, the classics. There are entire colleges where that's the whole business of that college, or part of a university where we're preserving the classics, right? And gaming is just in this niche where like, even now, what has popularity is, I feel like, a lot of the mainstream is like, why would we preserve Fortnite? Like, who gives a shit? I, I remember Candy Crush.

• 26:47Speaker 04

  I don't think we need a museum for Candy Crush, right? It falls into that weird space, and I feel like I contribute to that, but, but I do care, but.

• 26:55Speaker 02

  I think it's tricky whenever you're in the moment. Like, we're living in the time periods, we don't really see it as significant, whereas like, in the age of Picasso, if some guy walks, it was like, look at my painting, and there's a face with one eyeball up here and one down there, we're like.

• 27:06Speaker 06

  Oh, cool, you did so good. Yeah, here, I'll give you a.

• 27:11Speaker 04

  If you, if you're thinking that Picasso wasn't popular.

• 27:14Speaker 02

  Most artists, I don't know about Picasso, but don't most artists get more popular after they're dead than is like, in the moment of them making their?

• 27:21Speaker 04

  It's a common trope. I have no idea how prevalent that is.

• 27:24Speaker 03

  You picked the one that wasn't.

• 27:26Speaker 02

  Ah, he might have been, you know. I think we had some revisionist history, because in the moment, who looked at that was like, I want that.

• 27:33Speaker 04

  I love that thing that you do, Wade, where you, you discover on your own a thing that's already a Brian Regan joke, and then you just tell it completely novely. I really appreciate that.

• 27:42Speaker 03

  I've still never seen Brian Regan.

• 27:43Speaker 04

  Brian Regan has a whole bit where he's like, hey, Pablo, look at my face. See, do you see two eyes on one side of my face? No. Maybe take up photography.

• 27:52Speaker 02

  Was there photography back then?

• 27:53Speaker 04

  What, when do you, wait, what do you think?

• 27:56Speaker 03

  Wait, what year do you think Picasso was painting?

• 27:58Speaker 02

  Oh, seventeen forty-five.

• 28:02Speaker 04

  No, Colin, that's wrong.

• 28:09Speaker 04

  What did he, what did Picasso die, the sixties?

• 28:12Speaker 03

  No, seventy-three, nineteen, nineteen seventy-three.

• 28:15Speaker 04

  Nineteen seventy-three, Wade, just to be clear, since we're a couple centuries off there.

• 28:21Speaker 02

  He was born in eighteen eighty-one, that's close to seventeen forty-five.

• 28:24Speaker 04

  That does sound like a long time ago, but Picasso was alive at the same time as my mom, for a lot of, actually, the same time as my mom. Well, that sounds really mean, but anyway, not like for one year, like, there's a bit of overlap there.

• 28:40Speaker 03

  Picasso probably saw the moon landing.

• 28:44Speaker 04

  Nah, he's definitely the kind of guy who's like, I don't even own a TV. We don't do that in my house. Read a book.

• 28:50Speaker 03

  What's the moon? I don't know. This is Pablo Picasso's voice, right? What's the moon?

• 28:56Speaker 04

  That's exactly how he died, yeah, yeah, yeah.

• 28:58Speaker 03

  I'm Picasso.

• 28:59Speaker 02

  Well, maybe I picked the wrong one. Let's go with Howler, a Howler painting.

• 29:05Speaker 04

  I don't even know who that is, they're still not famous.

• 29:06Speaker 03

  I made the name up, see, but they could have been a person we wouldn't have given a shit about, you know?

• 29:10Speaker 04

  I really like that somehow on the exact opposite end of the spectrum of the examples you were trying to hunt for.

• 29:15Speaker 02

  I'm just saying, my, my gaming point was, if we, we were living in the moment of these things, and we're like, yeah, who cares? But like, a hundred years from now, someone will be like, wow, why was there this five year period where Fortnite and Dancing, based on this video game, were so popular? I wonder what the game itself was like? And everyone's like, oh, we'll never know, there's no way to play it at all whatsoever. I guess maybe our videos on YouTube, assuming that that's still a thing, maybe some videos will be preservative, but like, I don't want us as content creators to be the only way people could get to experience games in a hundred years, that's terrible.

• 29:46Speaker 04

  You walk into the Smithsonian Museum of Video Games, and you're, hello, everybody.

• 29:54Speaker 03

  So, moving on from there, plenty of points assigned. Xbox similarly looks at PlayStation doing what they do and says, ha, in addition to all the other stuff they've been doing, good or bad, they've decided to sell all of their games, movie and TV rights as a package. Whether or not this has been sold or not is still up for debate, it hasn't been revealed, but they're trying to get three hundred million dollars for the rights to all of their games. I don't know what that list is comprehensively, but it seems like a relatively low number for what they could potentially get out of it by doing one-off deals for each of them. But who knows if there's any profit sharing for it, if that's just an upfront cost, but yeah, they're, they've been making some bad decisions too.

• 30:40Speaker 04

  Everything Xbox does feels like they are secretly trying to torpedo the company for reasons that are not clear, if you're not inside, whatever insider thing is happening. I don't know what the, what's going on, but man, do I wish I had grown up a PlayStation fanboy, because at least I would still have a console I could buy if I really wanted to. Or PC, man, I wish I'd just been a PC gamer, living the life.

• 31:04Speaker 03

  Yeah, it is nice.

• 31:05Speaker 04

  Literally, the, my first Xbox was like my first big console, I was obsessed with it, I played my three sixty until it read Ring of Death, and then I bought another three sixty. I love, I love Xbox, but what the hell, man?

• 31:19Speaker 02

  I grew up a PlayStation guy. My first console was a Sega, then I got a PlayStation One, and I was PlayStation from then on. I still get like, chills whenever you hear like, the original PlayStation game boot up, like that little like, the noise of like, the PlayStation logo and all that, I cannot replicate it, you just have to look up the sound.

• 31:37Speaker 03

  Stay out of this one. Point two ever can replicate it from memory. Don't look it up.

• 31:43Speaker 03

  You know?

• 31:44Speaker 04

  Yeah, wasn't that the the red, yellow, green PlayStation like?

• 31:50Speaker 03

  Yeah, something like that.

• 31:51Speaker 02

  That was perfectly it. The PlayStation Twilight Zone collab. I had like the three, the 3D logo of the PlayStation.

• 31:58Speaker 03

  Why'd you put it in quotes like that? Why, why 3D? It was 3D.

• 32:01Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was 3D.

• 32:02Speaker 03

  No, it's 3D. I'm unquoting it. 3D.

• 32:06Speaker 02

  I don't know where we're, Sam, are there still quotes or not? Help us. But I, I don't know. I liked having the physical discs. There, there is the thought of like, oh, man, thank God I don't have to like keep all these discs in a box if I want to play them anymore. But then the thought of like, never being able to boot up an old game sucks. But all the companies like, like the streaming companies to like Twitch. I don't know if you, I'm sure you guys remember, but like back in the 20 teens, I feel like it was YouTube. Every year there was like some giant thing YouTube was doing that like creators and everyone was just like, oh, why are you doing this? Come on. And then the next year be like YouTube. All you have to do is not that. We don't want that. And then they probably are still doing shit people don't like, but I swear the last six years it's been Twitch. Every year Twitch were like, just don't do that. I'm gonna do this. Don't do that.

• 32:52Speaker 02

  I'm gonna do this. Even to the point like this year, one of the big things was like the creator who got banned of like two weeks later was given ambassador status. And it's like, that's a weird choice, Twitch. Why are you, why are you doing that one? They're raising like prices of things. They, they made it where like you were, you were opted in to AI. So if you made content, AI would use your stuff to make generative content. You had to opt out. And then in an interview, one of the higher ups was asked like, why'd you guys make it opt out instead of opt in? They're like, well, if we made it opt in, no one would have done it. And we're like, yeah, no shit. So it was intentionally predatory. Cool. Good choices. But Sony, Xbox, streaming platform, I mean, all these big companies, man, I don't know. I don't know if it's because they're publicly traded and all this because, oh God, we've made billions of dollars. How are we going to make trillions this year?

• 33:34Speaker 02

  We gotta do something stupid. Like, I don't know if that's the, it's gotta be the ultimate driving line is whatever they think is going to cut costs and raise income. It's gotta be every decision being made ever in these companies, but at some point the consumers are like, we're gonna find something else. Another company will emerge that does things right until they eventually sell and become the same thing in 20, 30 years. But it's just, it's, I don't know. It's an exhausting ride. It's like drop zone. When you get raised up just to get dropped down, get raised up to get dropped down in every single company, man. It feels like we're converging right now to piss us off.

• 34:04Speaker 04

  This is only tangentially related, but you know what console I wish had really stuck around and, and had subsequent generations? Dreamcast, man. I didn't own a Dreamcast until like seven or eight years after its release. Cause I wasn't bougie like that. I literally bought one secondhand at like Trading Zone, but man, what a console. The little memory cards with the little guy on it.

• 34:26Speaker 02

  I never played Dreamcast either. That was the CDs, like the Sega CD stuff, right?

• 34:30Speaker 04

  Sega, Sega Dreamcast CD drive. It had a, it was, I think it was one of the first with an ethernet port native to it. Or maybe it had a phone, phone jack native to it. So you could get, you could do online stuff without like needing an accessory to plug in.

• 34:45Speaker 03

  One of the biggest problems was Dreamcast did not support DVDs. That was kind of the death blow because PlayStation two did. So not only did PlayStation get bought because it did, but also like it was equivalent enough and game developers were like, oh, more people are buying the PlayStation. Then PlayStation went on to be like the most record breaking, you know, of all time.

• 35:04Speaker 04

  Yeah, it was pretty good. Whatever.

• 35:06Speaker 02

  Was PlayStation two the first one that stood on its side too?

• 35:09Speaker 03

  Yes, I think maybe.

• 35:11Speaker 02

  I don't know why, but as a kid, that was like one of the coolest things. Whenever I got it was like, dude, I could put the discs in.

• 35:18Speaker 03

  Pretty cool, man.

• 35:19Speaker 02

  Cause I feel like I, I quickly jumped from the cartridge to the PlayStation disc. You open the lid, put it in there, close the lid. And then it was all of a sudden like, I press a button and this shit comes to me. Set the disc in, press the button. It goes in on its own and it stands on its side.

• 35:36Speaker 03

  This is what millennial childhood was like. Everybody was really boring. There was really not much to get excited about.

• 35:41Speaker 02

  I, I feel like PlayStation one, PlayStation two jumping graphics was also like insane.

• 35:45Speaker 03

  Yeah, it was. It was significant. It really was. Moving on, speaking of sideways, GoPro and Mark in prison.

• 35:54Speaker 04

  Oops.

• 35:54Speaker 02

  This wasn't one of the ones I really cared about. We don't talk about that one, do we?

• 35:57Speaker 03

  Right. You're right. You're right. You're right.

• 36:00Speaker 02

  I was only in Minnesota reading frantic messages like, what the fuck is happening?

• 36:04Speaker 03

  Who's a frantic messages?

• 36:06Speaker 04

  I would describe the tone of the messages as more like pissed.

• 36:11Speaker 02

  You guys assume it was you two talking. I was getting texts from other people like, hey, what's Mark into?

• 36:17Speaker 02

  Friends, family. I also like open up social media. It's like, oh, Mark, blah, blah, blah, blah, GoPro. And I was like, y'all, I, I can't wait. Now hopefully it's okay. If I guess I'll hire my lawyer if I have to.

• 36:29Speaker 03

  Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's really nothing here. I'm not going to prison. There was no insider trading. It is once again, the most hilarious timing that ever will occur in my life. I've had multiple times where timing has not worked out for me, and this is another one of those times. Uh, for, to recap, last Sunday from where we're recording this, but it was like Sunday. An article came out that I had recorded an interview of almost a week prior. And it came out saying like Mark owns eight and a half percent of, of GoPro and was the largest shareholder. I didn't know I was the largest shareholder. Like I filed that, I started the filing process in July 23rd. And then it only got filed August 20th. Uh, and so that was filed.

• 37:12Speaker 03

  And so that was the public disclosure as required by the SEC. Uh, and then there was an article, some Bloomberg saw the, saw that filing and was like, hey, we want to talk to you about that. So I said, I'll talk about that. And then two days later, less than 48 hours later, GoPro accepts to be sold to Starman Optics, uh, who works in optical connectors for data centers specifically for AI and also possibly defense contracts.

• 37:39Speaker 02

  I can't believe you invested knowing that was gonna happen.

• 37:42Speaker 03

  Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, no, no, no, SEC, please, please. That's a no.

• 37:47Speaker 02

  No, our, our conversation, we were like, Mark, did you know any of this? He's like, no. This is probably why I couldn't even talk to the CEO. Like, so like you had no.

• 37:55Speaker 03

  I had been trying to talk to the CEO just for other reasons. Cause I was like, hey, I have ideas. This camera's cool. Maybe I could help out. Oh, you're busy. Okay.

• 38:06Speaker 03

  Damn, man.

• 38:07Speaker 04

  What a thing to have happen.

• 38:08Speaker 02

  Yeah, that was, um, that was wild. And, um, who they decided to sell to, I could tell by the tone of the text conversation, you were not so thrilled about.

• 38:15Speaker 03

  Nope, not really. Couldn't have been another camera. Cause like Red sold to Nikon, a camera company. And it was like, okay, you know, all right, I get that. They're gonna sell. I wasn't really like in love with Red, but you know, seeing he sold, whatever. It's fine. So I was like, GoPro, even if they're doing bad, you know, the name's good enough that someone would probably buy it. Some camera company. Oh, whoa.

• 38:40Speaker 03

  Whoa, whoa, whoa. Okay. This makes sense. Yeah, sure. Okay. All right. Great. I, I had no idea. And also it's just one of those things where it's like, of course, of course it does.

• 38:52Speaker 02

  But the camera's good.

• 38:54Speaker 04

  The whole discourse, I, this is a thing that is not the first time this has happened to you because you've been very successful at like with the movie and stuff. Where suddenly you're in the spotlight outside of like the normal parts of the internet that you sort of exist within. And the whole discourse around this is insane because there are people who come out and are just like, just out of nowhere, just suddenly he likes GoPro? The guy who's been baking GoPro for months, who's been talking about the like, who was making a movie, talking about like, oh, fully there was. And all, and like people who know, people who are fans on the internet in the comments replying, I mean, like, but this guy won't shut up about GoPro.

• 39:35Speaker 04

  Like he's been, this is not new. Now all of us knew about this already and.

• 39:40Speaker 02

  People who absorb none of our content. Well, we didn't know how, we should have known too.

• 39:44Speaker 04

  You appeared on r slash all and it's always terrible. Of the coincidences that have occurred to you, this is probably the most, at least from where, how I see it, like the funniest thing of, these are two things that do not just happen. Cause a lot of times like things like this, I mean, not that this has ever happened, but things of this level of coincidence happen. Because one thing is happening and it's in the, and then one day something else, like someone makes a snap decision and something happened. And they just happen to collide, right? Both of these things, like you've been talking about, had a lot of lead time. Have, you don't just decide one day to merge with another company or to sell to another company. That doesn't just happen.

• 40:26Speaker 04

  That's like negotiations, lawyers back and forth. And you had to file, like you didn't just decide one day to go on Robin Hood and buy some stock on your phone. Like there are filings happening, there are lawyers talking, there's all this shit. There's an interview that you did about this before it was even really in the public eye, even though it was public record. Cause you had all this shit and they were within, literally within 48 hours.

• 40:53Speaker 03

  For less than 48 hours between each other.

• 40:56Speaker 04

  What a, what a, what a combination of shit to all happen all at once.

• 40:59Speaker 03

  I've got another coincidence that I can almost predict. So I had a jury duty letter, uh, earlier this year. And I postponed it because I was in the midst of doing like, it was like March or something. And I postponed it to September. I was like, September 7th. That sounds great. And that's, I, I think it was like Labor Day. So it's like, okay, it'll be a shorter week. The way it works in LA, you're on call, right? So I, forgetting this, scheduled a trip out where I'm out only the eighth, only the eighth, right? I have to check to see if I'm on call today at 6:00 PM. I get on a plane at, today at 5:00 PM. I guarantee fucking to you.

• 41:43Speaker 03

  When I land in Austin, it'll be. Come to the courthouse, motherfucker. You're up. I guarantee you it'll be like Wednesday, you better be there.

• 41:55Speaker 02

  You're gonna end up in jail for something unrelated to GoPro. Everyone's gonna think it's GoPro related.

• 42:01Speaker 03

  I swear to God, that's what's gonna happen. I'm gonna land in.

• 42:04Speaker 02

  What happened to Mark's investing in AI and skipping jury duty? We used to love this guy.

• 42:11Speaker 03

  I don't even know what the punishment is for missing it, but I'm like, if I get there, I'm gonna call, be like, I'm I'm at Austin's like, you should have known. You should have known you're go, we're coming to get you. And it's like, oh God. So I don't know what I'll have to do, but I imagine it's a fine of some kind.

• 42:28Speaker 04

  Yeah, I actually don't know. It can't be that bad because I'm pretty sure I had a, I've had a couple jury duties in all of the moving around that I've done, going to school and grad school and then cross country moves and stuff. I've definitely had, I think, two jury duties where like the notice got sent to my previous place or sent to the wrong place and it got forwarded. And you know, sometimes mail forwarding shit shows up like weeks later and I got it and it was like, you have jury duty two weeks ago. I'm like,

• 42:58Speaker 04

  I guess they didn't call me because nothing happened, but.

• 43:01Speaker 03

  So I might be in trouble for that, but I don't know how much trouble. So we'll, we'll find out soon. Next on Insider Gaming. All right. What, what, what other news you guys got?

• 43:10Speaker 02

  Have you seen the images of the Ocarina of Time remake?

• 43:13Speaker 03

  I think I've seen something.

• 43:16Speaker 02

  So I wasn't a Zelda person or I wasn't a Nintendo person growing up. I had like the Game Boy, so I played the Pokemon games, but that was about it. But I watched a kid that lived nearby whenever I was, I think he was in like third, he was like a year younger than me. I was in fourth grade. He was in like third grade and I went over to his house and he was playing through Ocarina of Time. I really liked watching him play through it. It was one of my earlier, I guess, let's plays I got to see was him playing through it. It was cool. Like I was like, man, that's a cool game. It looks too stressful for me to play. I'm glad I'm watching you play it. But like, growing up, that's one of those games that you hear people talk about, like Ocarina of Time is their childhood and like, you know, is one of their big games. I've seen a lot of like clips of people that are just really emotional, seeing like the reveal of the remake for it because it's just such an important game to them. So

• 44:00Speaker 02

  I don't know that I'll play it, but I'm excited for everyone who it means something to who wants to play it.

• 44:03Speaker 03

  I mean, same for me. I, me and my brother, we played the crap out of that one because we had Nintendo 64 and it was just like, that was the game to play. You know, there really, there really weren't that many games actually we played on 64. Uh, but it was, it was probably everyone's first experience with like having this big, grand world and an adventure and just like discovering things like that. It's, I don't know. Yeah, I can see it being special.

• 44:26Speaker 04

  I hadn't seen the images. This looks cool. It's, it's one of those where again, I'm kind of in your camp, Wade. I like the game, not that invested in it. I guess you're saying people liked it, but this is such an update because it was such an old game that I, I wouldn't be surprised if uh, fans were like, it's all ruined. It's all different. And they're using the font from the Breath of the Wild. They're like, they're, they're ruining our game. But if people like it, that's good. I.

• 44:52Speaker 03

  I got, my brother got me a Switch two for my birthday, late birthday present, but I got it. And it's like, I've been really enjoying it because there's Factorio on it. The new Elden Ring just came out on it and it looks and plays great. I couldn't play that on the Steam Deck because I just found the Steam Deck too big. Like it was hard to hold and it didn't feel worth it for the screen to control a ratio. But now that the, the Switch two has it, it's like bigger screen than the Switch one. I mean, I'm, I'm, I, Nintendo's also has done some shady shit, but I'm like, hey, at least you know, the gaming experience is good.

• 45:22Speaker 02

  As long as you're not online. I don't know if you remember their Mario Maker two online experience of one frame per three minutes. That was rough, but yeah, otherwise, yeah.

• 45:30Speaker 03

  Stuff and you, you latch on to one bad experience and it's like,

• 45:36Speaker 02

  Well, I even did like some raids like Scarlet and Violet. Their online experience is just always felt a few years behind other consoles online experience.

• 45:43Speaker 04

  It's like two decades behind, but yes. That's not what Nintendo is for.

• 45:47Speaker 02

  The immersion experience of playing an old game, like I guess it was the only thing we had to do. But looking at the graphics of the original Ocarina and then looking at the new one, it's like, how did we get immersed? Look at this blocky, polygonal bitch ass. Like, what is this shit?

• 46:02Speaker 03

  See, that's why comparison is the death of art. When you don't have any comparison, you know, it is the best. And you're just like, this is incredible. But then as soon as a comparison comes by, you know?

• 46:11Speaker 04

  I have one.

• 46:12Speaker 03

  Oh yeah. All right. Hell yeah.

• 46:14Speaker 04

  Well, so are we sticking strictly to video game stuff? Cause this is not video game stuff. This is just a thing that's happening. That's not a sign of good things, maybe in the bigger picture, but I think it's really interesting. Uh, in Rome, that's in Italy, uh, in the Tiber River, near St. Peter's Basilica. Near the Vatican, I guess it would be an accurate way to phrase that. But anyway, in, in the heart of Rome, uh, Nero's Bridge is reemerging from the waters of the Tiber because the water level is so historically low that this bridge that I, I'm actually unclear if it's collapsed and this is like the ruins of it.

• 46:53Speaker 04

  Or if this is just where the bridge was, but the river has gotten much higher in the sense this was originally built. Anyway, this bridge is reemerging. So literally like the water level is getting so low that this bridges again, or the ruins of this bridge are on the surface. It's just fascinating. It's, this is one of those like Roman Empire type things for me where I don't know anything about this. I didn't know anything about it until the news story came out. But to just like look and see the bridge and it's, the waters are revealing it and it's very mysterious. I want to go, I just want to go look at it. It's cool. It, it inspires awe in me for no apparent reason that I can understand, but it's very fascinating.

• 47:33Speaker 03

  That is fascinating.

• 47:34Speaker 04

  I love when stuff, I mean, again, water level being that low, sign of, you know, perhaps larger issues. But I love when things like this happen because you get to little glimpses of stuff that was otherwise just completely lost to time and water and it's neat.

• 47:49Speaker 03

  Speaking of the end times, have you guys seen Chat GPT Astra?

• 47:54Speaker 02

  No.

• 47:55Speaker 04

  Only a bit.

• 47:56Speaker 03

  It's an advancement in there. It can take over your computer. It can open Blender and it can make the back rooms. It's also made, and this relates to gaming. It has made a clone of Rocket League that is very difficult to distinguish from Rocket League, not a video of it.

• 48:11Speaker 04

  Like a playable game?

• 48:13Speaker 03

  A playable Rocket League. Yeah.

• 48:15Speaker 02

  Did it study Rocket League and just copy it and do it? Or did it do it without having?

• 48:19Speaker 03

  Yes, of course. Yeah. It copied from what was already there, but it's a, it exists and it has the ability to do this. And uh, it's just here. I'll, I'll show you guys actually, um, the footage of it.

• 48:32Speaker 04

  Wait, this is the clone?

• 48:34Speaker 03

  This is the clone that it made.

• 48:37Speaker 04

  Like I'm not a Rocket League player, but you could, I can still tell like, oh, this is weird. Like the, the sizing and spacing of things is weird. The dimension of the goal seems weird.

• 48:47Speaker 02

  I've not played Rocket League in a long time. I, if you had showed me this, I would have just thought it was Rocket League.

• 48:51Speaker 04

  Is, it does, doesn't have, I don't know if you know this, does it have online capability?

• 48:55Speaker 03

  I'm not exactly sure what it has. Uh, this is obviously not playable. Someone could have faked this. I have no idea, but also I've seen other demos saying like, it has pretty, pretty intense capabilities. Now, how is this the death of all of us? Going to our resident AI expert, Bob.

• 49:12Speaker 04

  Oh yeah. I guess I'm, I'm sort of behind the news on this Astro stuff. I had heard the hype. I had not seen that. Or I'm sure the other examples, like you said, it could do shit in Blender and whatever. This is the first example of, I think, what a lot of people thought or hoped. This technology would be like three to five years ago, like when, when Chat GPT was first publicly available. And you would hear hype for out of Silicon Valley. If people be like, just gonna revolutionize your life. This, it could do everything and then you use it and it's like a, a chatbot that gives you really inane bullshit back. And you're like, okay, well this isn't, this isn't revolutionizing my life. I assumed it was going to control my computer for me or schedule things or whatever. This is, I think, a big leap towards that.

• 49:55Speaker 04

  I assume they have done nothing to address the, uh, existing concerns about the nature of how they accomplish this in training up the model and, uh, in how it works and how efficient it is and all of those sorts of things. But like, the fact that it can do that is well beyond what I would expect agentic AI to really be able to accomplish on its own. I would also assume that if that is not faked, if that's a real running piece of software that you could play the Rocket League clone thing. It's probably pretty buggy, but I don't know. Like I, the thing I've heard from people who use AI chatbots encoding is like, yeah, it's really useful, right? It's like, if you can,

• 50:36Speaker 04

  because it used to be, you'd have to like Google through whatever, you'd have to Google through repositories or for certain functions you're trying to do and then tweak it. It's like, if you could Google, but also Google fixed it to work for exactly whatever application you're trying to use. It's good, great for remembering snippets or, or building something simple that you're going to integrate. Uh, but you still have to know how to code because it'll just do crazy bullshit. It'll just break your entire code base. If you let it play with too many things, it'll forget what it's doing and put nonsense in or do all kinds of crazy shit. If it literally did this without human intervention, whether however well it works, that's a crazy jump forward in like

• 51:14Speaker 04

  ability of an agentic AI to stay on a task and to complete it without wandering away from what the original task was, or just ending up, you know, getting into a loop where it's, you know, it stops working, goes down a rabbit hole of shit that breaks the whole project. I, that seems crazy to me. I have no understanding of coding or the backend of this, but as far as I understand how AI works, I imagine if a coder, a real game developer looked at that at the backend, at the code of whatever that is and looked at, they would be like, ah, like, I can't believe this functions at all. What the fuck? That is kind of crazy. I would assume that was not possible. Uh, if, when I woke up today, I wouldn't think that was possible.

• 51:54Speaker 03

  For, for the benefit of the doubt, there, it's using a program, I'm assuming Unreal Engine to build it. It's going into that and putting it together.

• 52:02Speaker 04

  What I'm seeing is it, it didn't use an existing engine. It wrote it, oh, what was it called? Wrote it in JS three or so, it wrote in its own language and it wrote the engine that it's using for the whole thing. It did not just like use Unity or something is what I've seen. Again, this is all just internet research, so I'm not vetting these facts or anything, but.

• 52:21Speaker 03

  Who knows if that's. The reality, but you know, it's

• 52:25Speaker 04

  But if that's true, like, god damn, that's crazy.

• 52:28Speaker 03

  Uh, Wade, as Norm L. Man, how do you feel about this development?

• 52:32Speaker 02

  You know, an RP character named Norm L. Guy, right? Like, that was

• 52:35Speaker 04

  I think that's what he was.

• 52:36Speaker 03

  I was trying to go for it. I forgot it was Norm L. Guy.

• 52:39Speaker 02

  Well, I don't know too much about the internet and games and stuff, but if I had to give you some kind of interpretation, I'd say we're all kind of fucked. How soon before they make their own streaming or gaming platform where there's videos and stuff? And then they just have us there and I guess we're all out of the job, right?

• 52:55Speaker 03

  Yep, that's the conclusion. We're all doomed. Or are we? All right, and swoop in mysterious hero to give us the good side.

• 53:05Speaker 00

  This is the sound of confidence. Confidence behind the wheel of the Mazda CX 50 Hybrid. It comes standard with a suite of proactive safety features and lets you explore far and wide with an EPA estimated 38 miles per gallon combined and electronic all wheel drive. Mazda, move and be moved. Tap the banner to discover how confidence comes standard. Mileage will vary based on vehicle condition, driving habits, and other factors. Use for comparison purposes only. Actual results will vary.

• 53:38Speaker 07

  We're fucking cooked.

• 53:40Speaker 03

  The only saving grace I possibly see before everyone gives up their jobs and schooling. Um, is that this still is inflated by billions and trillions of dollars of the likes of which we cannot even comprehend. I cannot imagine the amount of money it costs to run this thing, especially to do that. It definitely doesn't cost the company what the guy claims it costs, which is about a hundred dollars in tokens. There's no fucking way that costs that much. If this is still completely unattainable for someone on their own computer to do, it is is entirely reliant on gigantic data centers with hundreds, if not thousands of GPUs. I don't know how many to run that, but I have a moderate experience or moderate knowledge of how much RAM you need to run something.

• 54:24Speaker 03

  And it's, it's gotta be astronomical what these things cost to do. So I, I don't know what the long-term ability for everyone to be able to use this is. But that doesn't, probably doesn't bode well because that just means the big companies will, who can pay the bill, will be the ones using it. What's so, you know, this is

• 54:42Speaker 02

  It's just a few thousand.

• 54:43Speaker 03

  Yeah, exactly.

• 54:44Speaker 02

  Very cheap.

• 54:45Speaker 03

  All right. So now that we're all in nightmare town, uh, do you guys have more? I got one more.

• 54:50Speaker 02

  I have one more nightmare town related thing.

• 54:52Speaker 03

  Oh, cool. Mine's also a nightmare town. I'm ready.

• 54:55Speaker 02

  All right. Speaking of nightmares, you know what people are, a lot of people are afraid of is death. So in Hungary, they're trying to counter that. They had a grave digging competition where they had 19 teams of two race to see who could dig the most stylish and well dog grave. I don't know what wording they use, but, uh, the quickest dog and most stylish grave. And one team of two managed to accomplish and they, the specific dimensions they had to reach. And one team of two did it in an hour and 20 minutes. Their grand prize, 640 bucks.

• 55:27Speaker 03

  Yeah, all right, that's

• 55:28Speaker 02

  640 bucks to dig for an hour and 20 minutes. That's a lot of digging. Hopefully they were wearing gloves. I don't know if you guys have ever dug a lot, but god, that tears your fucking hands up if you're not wearing gloves. Yeah, I guess they got 19 graves dug in Hungary. So yay.

• 55:42Speaker 03

  Yay. That's good, I think.

• 55:46Speaker 02

  Yeah, there's a video of it and these graves are like in a line that looks like side by side by side. And there's like fences up and people are there like, what? I don't know. They're cheering like, woo, go top, dig it. Grandpa needs his hole.

• 55:57Speaker 04

  I assumed it would be crowd, crowds of pallbearers just holding their caskets waiting. The, the test is they solemnly go over there and see if it fits.

• 56:07Speaker 02

  You save your dead for the grave digging. They're like, hey, you want to bury grandpa for free? If you wait three months, we're gonna have this grave digging competition.

• 56:13Speaker 04

  Look, price, prices are going up across the board. You know what? You gotta be frugal where you can.

• 56:19Speaker 02

  I think on top of it being a competition, it looks like there's like a thing where it's like confronting death and like there's a, there's a bigger overall theme to like, make it less terrifying to confront things like that. It's like, oh, look, we're all getting together and celebrating being together and blah, blah, blah. And also digging graves. I think there's more to it, but from the outside, it's kind of strange feeling, you know?

• 56:37Speaker 03

  You know what else feels strange on the outside?

• 56:41Speaker 03

  Cyborg roaches with hypodermic needles.

• 56:44Speaker 02

  Uh huh. Undo my laugh. Sam, can you undo my laugh?

• 56:47Speaker 03

  Nope, nope. Double it.

• 56:50Speaker 03

  This is a real thing. I said it in the intro, but it's a real thing. Uh, Australian giant burrowing cockroaches are being transformed into cybernetic paraborgs, which can be remote controlled while delivering specialized rescue and medical equipment in disaster areas. Uh, I don't know about the medical equipment, but as far as I know, they have tiny cameras and possibly a needle. And I don't know about you, but I know that medicine is not to the point where we can just inject someone with heel juice. And suddenly they feel better. Uh, but the, the general concept is that they're in two pairs. You have an observer, cyborg cockroach, and you have a drug delivery cyborg cockroach.

• 57:29Speaker 02

  Why would they pick cockroaches of all things?

• 57:31Speaker 03

  They say, kid, they're small and they can go into disaster zones. And they saw that one episode of Rick and Morty where, you know, he controlled the cockroaches. Um, and they were like, yeah, that sounds, that sounds good. Yeah.

• 57:40Speaker 02

  I hope that was not the only, they're like, actually, that is the way we should do it. Cockroaches.

• 57:45Speaker 03

  Man, Rick, he's the smartest man alive.

• 57:48Speaker 02

  I'm gonna interview this. We gotta bring this guy in.

• 57:50Speaker 03

  All right. So anyway, uh, yeah, that's, that's actually a thing. Um, I don't know how far it will actually go, but apparently you can stick a bunch of electrodes to a cockroach's head and send electricity and it will do things. Well, it will move. That's basically the, it's, it's, it will go in a direction that you shock it to go.

• 58:10Speaker 02

  Until we lose control and there's just thousands of indestructible atomic surviving roaches armed with needles. And who knows what kind of cocktails to deliver.

• 58:18Speaker 03

  Yeah. While the paraborgs can be steered remotely, the cockroaches themselves are still very much alive and able to use their skills as bugs to navigate through complex terrain.

• 58:28Speaker 02

  I don't know how I'd feel if I was, I guess maybe if you're going through a whole bunch of shit and you're trapped somewhere, you're already not thinking too much about it. But like the rescue team I want to see is not a herd of cockroaches coming over the rocks with needles at me.

• 58:39Speaker 03

  It's funny you say that because the researchers acknowledge that, quote, for someone who is already trapped or injured, seeing a cyborg insect approaching could understandably be a little surprising or unsettling at first. Perhaps we could have flashing lights, recognizable emergency markings, or quote, a person, a tiny speaker delivering a simple message such as

• 58:59Speaker 07

  Help is on the way.

• 59:01Speaker 03

  People feel comfortable with that. Technology is just as important as making it work.

• 59:06Speaker 04

  Now, I would probably feel pretty freaked out, but my initial thought was how am I supposed to tell that that thing is here to help me? I would not, whether or not it has shit on it, like if I saw a cockroach that had a needle sticking out of it or whatever, I'd be like, whoa, what the hell's up with that cockroach? Anyway, like I would not be in a situation, look, I'm like, oh, it has a syringe or it has a camera. I'm here, save me. Come on, cockroach. Like, how are you supposed to know that that is something you engage with in order to get assistance? Uh, it need, it needs lights. I think that's the good solution. High vis jacket, some lights.

• 59:45Speaker 02

  I hope they each have their own individual tracking so you could tell if someone didn't implant their own version of killer roaches that look the same. They've replaced the juice in the needle. They're like, I'm thinking about the worst of humanity, man.

• 59:56Speaker 03

  Yeah, this company's gonna get sold to Starman injectors and they're just gonna have their cockro, they were working on defense cockroaches at the same time.

• 1:00:03Speaker 02

  We're gonna invest right now. The next thing you know, yeah, it's gonna be a lethal injection company.

• 1:00:07Speaker 03

  Uh, damn, you know, and then, you know, the tiny speaker saying help is on the way. It'll get corrupted and damaged and it'll just, they'll charge going, help, help, help. Just an army of cockroaches coming down.

• 1:00:18Speaker 07

  Hell is on the way.

• 1:00:19Speaker 02

  Wait, it must be help?

• 1:00:21Speaker 04

  I have a feel good story in a world where all cling to literally anything to make me feel better about all this stuff we were just talking about. Honestly, the company doesn't really deserve that much recognition, but I'll say the name anyway. The staff at this restaurant really made one person's day, which you know what is sometimes all it takes. The person's apparently an influencer. I don't know this person. The story is that, uh, this woman was having a date at Fogo de Chao, Brazilian steakhouse, Fogo de Chao. We have been to several of those. This woman got stood up. She was at a table for two and clearly like expecting a date of some sort. And after too much time had passed, like she sort of realized, uh, being stood up.

• 1:01:03Speaker 04

  But also the, her server at the restaurant or the staff at the restaurant realized. And apparently they like took the time to come over and be like, look, we're all your date tonight. Watch you go to drink at the bar and they like encouraged her to like party and were super chill. And just like for no reason other than they saw what was happening, the staff at this restaurant on this evening, like took care of this person and made her night. And she made a post about it. Cause sure. And maybe someone on staff knew that this was an influencer and it's, maybe it's not as good as I feel like it is. But this is the kind of thing that at least allows me to pretend like I still have faith in humanity.

• 1:01:42Speaker 04

  Cause that's just nice. Good on you, staff at Fogo de Chao. And I think this was in Washington DC area. I don't know if there's multiple. And of course the CEO chimed in to be like, I told him to do that. We could still be good to each other, guys. We can still, us humans, the robots don't care. We could just ignore the clankers. We can all just be good to each other. We'd be nice to each other. Remember that? We, when you're not just typing on a keyboard, but you talk to someone face to face like this, but when you can smell their breath. Uh, we could be nice to each other. It's possible. We can do it.

• 1:02:16Speaker 04

  Anyway, I'm just trying to cope because yikes.

• 1:02:19Speaker 02

  As of the time we've recorded this, we are a week away from 50% of all fans of NFL teams being disappointed when their team loses because the season hasn't started yet.

• 1:02:30Speaker 03

  All right.

• 1:02:31Speaker 02

  But soon, pain will sweep over the nation.

• 1:02:36Speaker 03

  Good, good. What an optimistic way to look at the upcoming football season.

• 1:02:40Speaker 02

  I'm a Bengals fan, it's the only way.

• 1:02:43Speaker 03

  All right, that wraps it up. We have gone through the glorious news and it has been wonderful. Let's read out the points. Wade, you went to the Minnesota State Fair. You discovered Uber. That was very brave of you. You went to a weird hotel. Time Warner court case was funny. The endangered games. You're a PlayStation guy. All companies are bad. What a bold, brave statement. Ocarina of Time. All kind of fucked. I don't know why I wrote that down, but it feels pertinent. And then grave digging competition. Bob, you caught Wade's weirdness. You saw some scary stares. The people breathing.

• 1:03:20Speaker 03

  A segue point. You love no ownership. You hate Fortnite and you chose Xbox for better or for worse. The Tiber River with Nero's Bridge. AI scares you and you're kind of skeptical, but also like if that's true, there's whoa. Then the staff at Fogo were very nice. If you calculated that, that was actually 10 points apiece. It is actually tied.

• 1:03:42Speaker 04

  Strong in sync to say the word I'm not supposed to say. I don't know why. That all seemed fine to me. I just want to say it now.

• 1:03:49Speaker 02

  Apparently we missed it in the last one.

• 1:03:51Speaker 04

  Oh yeah. Oh, let me take a second to address the subreddit. Shut up.

• 1:03:57Speaker 04

  Don't tell us about the rules of the show. If you don't know the rules of the show, the rules are if we don't notice it, it doesn't count. Nobody noticed it. We didn't leave it out on purpose. We just don't pay attention. This is why I don't come out there. Can't stand you people. Anyway, what's up subreddit?

• 1:04:12Speaker 03

  Wheel entry is going to be who's the closest to prison and you better not say that's me. You better not say.

• 1:04:19Speaker 04

  Uh, do I put that on this wheel? No, that ain't right.

• 1:04:21Speaker 02

  It'd be a weird one to land on.

• 1:04:23Speaker 04

  How, how many, how many spins are there gonna be?

• 1:04:25Speaker 03

  Who's the closest to prison?

• 1:04:29Speaker 03

  Ah, just one. That's all we're gonna need.

• 1:04:33Speaker 02

  So then death, so then death.

• 1:04:35Speaker 04

  I know I always like put it at the bottom and then scramble them. Why don't I just? And then I'm gonna shuffle them anyway.

• 1:04:41Speaker 03

  And this could be either location wise or going to prison. I'll leave it up to the judge.

• 1:04:47Speaker 04

  We're definitely gonna remember that.

• 1:04:48Speaker 03

  Wordplay counts in all of these.

• 1:04:53Speaker 04

  Live points are absolute. We don't have any live points, do we?

• 1:04:57Speaker 03

  Yeah. Well, it's either a respin or it's, uh, that's it. And we go to the winner's wheel.

• 1:05:02Speaker 04

  I'm fine with that being a respin. I feel like if it, if it doesn't actually apply, a respin makes sense to me.

• 1:05:08Speaker 03

  Hit it again.

• 1:05:10Speaker 04

  And live points absolute number two.

• 1:05:14Speaker 03

  10% just, oh shit. And it's gonna go to the wheel. 10% chance, one man show, and we're going to the wheel.

• 1:05:21Speaker 02

  Oh, this is not a good week for that.

• 1:05:23Speaker 04

  That means we're at 22% one man show.

• 1:05:27Speaker 02

  I liked it better when it was like eight.

• 1:05:29Speaker 04

  It was already 12, but yeah. Um, how awkwardly can I mess this up today? I gotta put my name on there and then I got to turn the weight on and then, oh, I didn't do the math yet. 22% of 360 because I'm sure I could find a better way to do the 79 degrees. Oh, that looks fine.

• 1:05:51Speaker 03

  That's fine. That's not bad at all. That looks terrifying.

• 1:05:55Speaker 04

  Nah, that's fine. That's fine. Let me make sure this math is right. 22. Yeah, that's 22% of 360 degrees. Okay, that's fine. It's gonna be fine.

• 1:06:05Speaker 03

  Ben, that wheel.

• 1:06:08Speaker 04

  Heee. Why am I nervous? I'll probably be fine either way.

• 1:06:12Speaker 02

  Probably fine, probably fine. I'm not nervous.

• 1:06:16Speaker 03

  Right, that's what I'm talking about. Bob, congratulations. By the clutchest of clutch, we'll add 2% to that spin next time, bringing it up to 24%, I believe. All right, congratulations, Bob. But first loser's speech from Wade for the concession.

• 1:06:33Speaker 02

  I was a well-traveled man. I saw the world. I went outside. I experienced things and I'm just, I really thought all of those experiences would come back to give me a win today. Had a tie, had a not 50, but equal chance to win as Bob there at the end and the universe still said. Nope. I'll get it next time.

• 1:06:54Speaker 03

  Uh, fair enough. You might, but also you might not. That is fate. Uh, Bob, winner's speech.

• 1:07:00Speaker 04

  It feels good to win and that sounds very convincing when I say it with that inflection. I know it does, but it feels pretty good to win. I'm definitely looking forward to hosting the next episode. Uh, I'm working on my sincere delivery. And so if this sounds extra sincere compared to how I usually speak, it's cause it is. You're from a sincere place. Uh, I'm better than Wade, so I should have won and I did. The universe is fair and balanced. And, uh, look forward to another banger as always for the next episode because I'm gonna host it, which means it's gonna be good, even if it's bad. That's just science.

• 1:07:34Speaker 03

  Well said. Well said, Bob. And congratulations on the big, big win. That'll really change up the standings, even though you guys tied both points. I think that your skill won you out in this day and thank you to all of our listeners and watchers, I suppose. Uh, for joining us on another episode of Distractible. It's been great to have you and you can follow our podcast on wherever the hell you're listening to it on to make sure you know when a new episode's coming by. Missed an episode? It's your own fault. Thank you to Bob and Wade. You can find them at my screen, LordMinion777 or minion777. My name is Ben Mark. This has been Distractible. Podcast out.

• 1:08:11Speaker 02

  Don't be like prison dude. I hope it's a good time.

• 1:08:13Speaker 04

  Well, you know, I hear the food's good.

• 1:08:15Speaker 02

  I was talking to Bob. Why would you be going to prison?

• 1:08:17Speaker 03

  I was telling him, I hear the food's good.

• 1:08:19Speaker 04

  I've heard that too.

• 1:08:22Speaker 00

  This is the sound of confidence. Confidence behind the wheel of the Mazda CX 50 Hybrid. It comes standard with a suite of proactive safety features and lets you explore far and wide with an EPA estimated 38 miles per gallon combined and electronic all-wheel drive. Mazda, move and be moved. Tap the banner to discover how confidence comes standard. Mileage will vary based on vehicle condition, driving habits and other factors. Use for comparison purposes only. Actual results will vary.