 Start streaming seems to be streaming people really need to see the side of my head with it. Yeah, they do. It's real important some part Well, we broke the mystique Now you want some box bands Basically now there's a lot of generic board game box bands that are way better than the original box bands I need baggies, but the problem is I only need like maybe 30 50 and they bought a ton of baggies Oh for board game. Yeah, they sell them like in a pack of 500. I'm like hell. No, I don't know. Yeah, I got a lot Well, I'll dig about later, but you know the normal cube holding size Okay, the kind you would use to hold say your colonists Or all of your barrels the only ones I don't have are the ones that are the size of basically opioids No, I just need that. You know the regular board game hold your cube size Yeah, I mean what if it's a serial confluence? I just need a lot, you know One of those bags would not hold all the cubes have even won the promise right now I got my red cubes in my red cylinders in one bag I want to split them up in the cube bag in a cylinder bag. I can see that Nice live treasure Island starting already Oh, you can you can mute and you can basically turn off notifications for individual channels and you can also mute the entire server I only want notifications for like the chats that are like Queen's specific or packs specific Or directly to me. Yeah, I'll make you an admin when I get a chance. Nothing. Oh, look thing is look now I got the old FRC down over here. I'm sorry. You made that one. So no, look at this Look at this. I got I got FRC GN FRC and G I had like three more I'd made a long time ago. I just deleted you can just delete them Great Am I still quieter than Scott? Are you fix that? Ah, I see why just crank it up. I see why now. I'm not quiet Now I'm quite loud. I had changed that because I was doing something. I think we're good. Okay Stream got the biz Let's just do this It's Tuesday December 4th 2018 I'm rim. I'm Scott and this is Geek Nights tonight Treasure Island. Yeah. Yeah Oh You said you had an opening bit so go for it woman Right It is cold yesterday. It was like 50 something degrees like on the way home from packs Like literally I brought a winter coat because on Thursday it was cold and then I come home And it's like 60 degrees outside and now it's winter again I feel like winter started like three times already. It's too cold Also, you know, if you have an iPhone Seven and some other numbers, I guess you have until the end of the year to get a new battery for $30 Instead of $80. It's worth it. I mind my battery didn't have any problems But I just went to get a new battery or anyway because I'm mine because all the iPhones are too big So my plan is to make this iPhone 7 which is still perfectly fine and smaller than all new Further I got my ass as long as humanly possible. So I got myself a $30 brand new battery a year ago I got the last good Android phone the Xperia XC1 compact and the new version of this phone is a piece of shit so I bought because I found one cheap unopened another one of this phone and When this one starts to get battery shitty, I'm just gonna sell it on the only problem is eventually They're gonna have 5g networking on the new radios. The thing is 4g is already five for now for now Yeah, I mean yes, eventually within like five years. I'm gonna have to give up on this Sony phone Right, but the point is I'm gonna make this phone last as long as possible other other notes Just side notes. I might have to finally behind your laptop though The two I have a laptop that will have made it ten years and there's nothing wrong with it except Mini display port is a failed connector type Yeah, so side knows number one if you go and get a new battery the battery they give you is basically empty So bring with you your anchor batteries. You can try. Oh, yeah, otherwise you're however you get home is gonna suck right and be You know you got your iCloud backup or your backup to your hard drive So you can if they because basically what happens if they break your phone Which happened actually to the person next to me that if they break your phone while changing the battery and They didn't it wasn't your phone's fault. They just give you a new phone. That's the exact same phone Yeah, right and you have to restore from backup, which totally works is iCloud backup actually works I've used it several times But the one thing that will not be backed up with an iCloud backup is You know it what the way it works is it basically instead of actually saving your apps in the backup It just remembers which apps you had and where they were on this yeah You gotta type your password and everything and then it re downloads them all from the store all at once And it also saves certain documents and data like photos text messages That's the same way when I like I took the backup from my old phone into this phone. It's actually pretty clever It's a good way to back up when you have such a locked-in OS except I had to type my fucking password into like 20 apps Yes, you have to do that had to do that my new iPad which I restored from a backup of the old ipad Which was annoying because the the password my generic password is really really really long to one thing though is If for some reason you don't you have to get like a new phone and lose the actual data You and your two-factor authentication app Right Uh, you will be in trouble because you will open it and it will not allow you lock into anything No, so make sure you have you should if you use 2fa, which you should be using for anything that uses it Proper 2fa not stupid text message 2fa. Yep Make sure you go spend like sms 2fa is actually minus one modifier to how many factors you have I know but the point is is that If you're using it extensively as you should be Make sure to go through take an hour or two wherever and go down your list of all the things you have 2fa for Print your backup code print out backup codes Now this is important because scott lost a discord account because some things like amazon the only one i've ever lost Amazon if you mess it up like you can do a reset I think and like fix it like most services have a way to like reset it with email This is years ago Yeah, and google is pretty good because if you get a yuba key you can have that and tootp So I have a yuba key and my two factor here and the backup code So i'm good But discord does proper security If you lose your two factor and you don't have the backup codes you are fucked There's that account is gone. Yeah, so I lost my discord account That's associated with my actual email address and that's the one you used to make that old discord I had to use an alias email. I don't know. I have to use an alias email address in order to uh, You know login to discord now. So like when I log into discord, I gotta remember. Oh, right It's not my normal email to log into this. Yep Also, if you use the geek knives forum, I note that we support tootp like google authenticator just works You should use it. Exciting. Yeah so uh My opening bit and I'll tell the short story because it just says A fascinating thing happened to me, but basically I need a new monitor because my monitor is also like 10 years old It's like this ancient ultra sharp And I didn't get your ultra sharp the same ultra sharp. I have two of my desk. It's not ancient. It's perfectly fine Yeah, so it's not enough pixels. It's for it's not 4k. It's way It's not it's 1920 by 1200. Yeah, that's not enough pixels for the adobe stuff. I do it's perfectly fine It's not for adobe. Okay, basically I need I've never had a problem The thing is the only you don't edit that much the only things I need a lot of pixels for are Arguably gaming but not really because like it's fine 1920 by 1200 is fine for overwatch and sieve or whatever But I want those pixels for adobe and also at work. I have like a really nice like super quality like 4k Like new monitor So I didn't really notice that over time This old ultra sharp has gotten less and less color correct and also I want to take this one and make it my secondary monitor Well, also I have two of those you have. Yes. I have one of those my secondary monitor is scott's four by three LCD monitor that was one of the first lcd monitors with a fast enough refresh rate on earth to play games That was affordable by normal humans that monitor is from 2000 single digit. Yep like 2002 Two ish Let me go like it very early and it's still rocking. I paid $500 for those monitors Yeah, totally worth it to kick ass. So I'm going to replace that with my current Almost 20 years those monitors and I'm going to replace my ultra sharp with a new 4k ultra sharp But uh, so I ordered one and of like you do I went to del I figured out which ultra sharp has like the right color Correctness and things that I care about because I don't need the one that costs three times as much That's slightly better colors And I ordered it from amazon so I get the 5 off because of my amazon card I didn't notice until after I ordered it later that while I got it from amazon because I was just clicking through It was like 150 bucks cheaper than what del is selling it for before that discount And it was shipped by someone else not del Which is fine because like amazon's got your back So I order this thing and it says yeah, this will arrive like december 24th, and I'm not in a hurry So yeah, I'll save like multiple hundreds of dollars and just not wait like not being a rush So then like A few days later like four days later a suspicious package shows up at my house The box is an hp pavilion monitor Of the same size as this one And sure and even worse the box has two labels on it the monitor box says it weighs like 14 pounds The shipping label says it should weigh like 18 pounds, but then put it on a scale No, but then the shipping label from the actual shipment said it weighed 24 pounds It was from a turkish name. I didn't recognize And even worse I was like I was like vaguely suspicious like what did my mom like buy me a gift? Does someone buy me a gift? I'm trying to figure out like what this is Did someone just put something in this monitor box? So I pick it up and shake it and I hear metal banging against metal and it's pretty heavy So I'm confident this box contains cellular phones So it's not often that like my Suspicious signs go off. So I do the first thing I take this ups shipping number and I put it into the ups site to see if it was actually shipped to me and where it was shipped from And it was shipped and it weighs as like the weight was weird, but whatever So then I look it up and I figure out that it came from this like cost-co whole sale distribution center So I look it up there And I end up actually like getting on a customer service call with them And I'm like did you ship this package to me and can you tell me what is in it? And what comes back is After many minutes of talking to these people Yes, we shipped that to you. We can't tell you anything else about it or what's in it Weird so finally I'm like all right. Fuck it. I'm just gonna open it. That's what I would have done Yeah, but I did a little bit of due diligence like fuck it. So I open it and sure enough There's this hp pavilion 4k monitor in there. Of course Weird obvious. Yeah, but it was ship naked like it was shipped in the box It was like usually when you buy something like that the monitor box is in our regular cardboard box And like my mom like people I know will just use old monitor boxes to ship stuff like why not so That plot thickened so I go and check like Did someone just ship me the wrong fucking monitor? But no because the mod the ultra sharp I ordered was supposed to arrive like Many weeks from now and sure enough did not show as delivered So I'm like, well, all right weird. I'll deal with this later and I go to packs Uh during packs. I discovered that uh Basically the company some company did in fact ship this hp pavilion monitor to me ostensibly by accident And wants me to ship it back So that seems shady So like I'm gives it seems weird So then I go into amazon to look at the order of my delve ultra sharp and it says delivered Backdated to the date. I got the suspicious package So things starting to line up and I'm assuming scam So I just say fuck it. I want to return this amazon. They ship me some bullshit whatever and amazon, of course It's like all right cool to ship it full refund Then the seller that sent me this monitor Contacts me independently and says hey, we we made a mistake ship it back to us and we'll ship you the right monitor The shipping label they sent me is very different from the shipping label amazon gave me So even more warning signs. So I'm just shipping it back with the amazon label sounds like some scam is going on Yep, so I assume I'm gonna get someone trying to launder money by moving monitors around So I get the shipping label. I get a refund from amazon and I'm just shipping this thing back I'm actually going to drop it off at the ups thing tomorrow. Like everything's fine. Whatever I figure there's some scam where they like ship the wrong monitor. I hope you won't notice or like, I don't know So uh the plot thickened because I got home today And a del ultra sharp is sitting at our house. All right from that same turkish name I don't know how they got to hear that fast so I'm gonna Figure out what to do. I'm gonna see if this box in fact contains the del ultra sharp I ordered or when I'm suspecting a bunch of spiders So something similar not too similar but happened to me where Uh, I ordered stuff in amazon and I ordered this glass mixing bowl And I reneeded a glass mixing bowl because all the mixing bowls I have for baking our metal And I got a cookie recipe that requires brown in the butter first Which means the butter's gonna be hot. I want to put the hot butter in a metal mixing bowl and hurt myself Yeah, yeah I have one big glass mixing bowl for similar purposes. So I went I bought a you know cheapo pyrex glass mixing bowl Whatever, you know nice big one. Oh, and then someone shipped you a weird box of glass No, and then I see I see a message it hasn't shipped yet according to amazon But I get an email from fedex. It's like hey something's on the way from bend bath and beyond I have not shot the bed bath and beyond in a very long time I will not do so because the last time I did they started spamming me with a bunch of garbage And I don't like them and there's stores a mess and I don't know how they're still in business. Fuck them Uh, but so I'm like opinions right big mood. Yeah, so I'm getting this package. I'm like, did someone buy me a gift from bed bath and beyond just coincidentally It's close to holiday season. What's up with that? Yep, that's the that's the thing It's the modifier of it's near the holiday season random package might just be gift Right. So I check I look on amazon and on the the spedex of the tracking numbers of the glass mixing bowl and the bed Bath and beyond right and the tracking info for them was actually the same But the numbers the first four digits of the numbers were shuffled up. So I'm like, huh Maybe I learned something today Maybe I learned the first four digits of a tracking number don't matter Actually, there was something similar with my monitor situation So right but I checked and I tried to shuffle up the first four digits to another configuration That didn't work only these two configurations worked. I'm curious, but anyway, the point is is that I basically got, uh, you know I got shafted because all the place that I bought the glass mixing the reseller on amazon Basically just found out that the glass mixing bowl was cheaper on bed bath and beyond So they bought it there and arbitraged me for a few dollars But it didn't really matter to me because I'd saved the five percent with amazon So it's not like it would have been cheaper for me to go to bed bath and beyond nor would I want to go there because I hate them I just don't like going to stores, but it was yet. Well, I mean I could have bought it from the bed bathroom on website is the point for cheaper The list price was cheaper, but I mean the total cost at this point I buy like hand soap and conditioner on amazon like I don't even want to go to a drug store No, uh, even though amazon is also evil at least they don't spam me. Yeah They're they're evil to everyone but the customer So I will continue to criticize them for being evil to their employees and everyone else they work with But I can't not be their customer because they're too good to the customer So anyway, if you were confused why we're talking about monitors and bed bath and beyond Because you saw us at packs unplugged and wanted to see what this podcast was about welcome to geek nights So now we're going to talk about packs. Now, you know why I told you not to listen. Yeah So, uh packs unplugged just happened. It was the second packs unplugged. It was from the perspective of reasonable attendees and ourselves It was a triumph. It was a fantastic packs. I had a really good time. I played a shit ton of games the they're kind of achieved everything I wanted and Uh, I don't know what else I can say other than packs unplugged Really really great packs to go to the only problem I got with packs unplugged is that I didn't have enough time there because you know, it ain't four days Yeah, I had I was missing a lot of time because like I would go do a panel One of the two panels we do was two hours And then I got prep time before and cleanup time after and even though going back to the room is just a walk through a skywalk We don't have to go outside even I did not play as many games as I wanted to play You know what I think happened to us is that in the old packs is they were only three days But they went until 2 a.m. That's also true So even if we did like three panels like we felt like we got all the time we needed to game And then just as packs started coming into midnight They all went four days or they're packed south where like we just like we have independent free time like pack south It's just got a lot of downtime. It's really easy to play games Packs unplugged we did a bunch of panels and it's only three days and it ends at midnight Yep, and the uh lobby gaming situation I think part of it too is that back in the day We would all go into lobbies of hotels and continue to game for several hours You all went to bed We did not get a lot of prepacks gaming and also because it's so close to home on sunday We just go home immediately. We don't get that sunday next year. We don't get sunday night gaming Yeah, well, I got evening gaming you went to bed like a little baby. So, okay In fact, I played a really good game on uh, friday night And we had some beers the marriott lobby was interesting though because that hotel's lobby is Not great for gaming But it has a bar But the bar is filled with 50 basic people who aren't even staying at the hotel They're just like in philly and want to drink in this marriott bar. I actually did not like the hotel But I will probably book it again next year because Because it's connected to the sky because you don't have to go outside Yep, that is the only reason to stay in that hotel because it had surly staff Surly security it was really big the room was me and the evening and the the bar It wasn't a chile in room, but it was me like the bar wasn't rowdy Like I have no come like it would like dirt packs I was gaming at like after midnight next to basic people drinking But what was annoying about it is that the guards are like super surly And there's this weird cavalcade of like drunk people Like I don't understand why you go to a hotel bar in philly to drink at night As opposed to an actual bar because none of these people can use the bathroom in this bar Because the bathroom requires a room key that they won't give you if you're not staying in the hotel So like all these basic people are like walking past our board game trying to go into this bathroom like all night long It was just a weird situation But the secret is even if you're not staying in home to the other hotel Just go game at home to that has like no security and has a million big tables in the lobby And basically no one will hassle you just like this place to go game And they have free tea and if you're slightly evil you can also get free cereal Okay We were we were there playing gameplay games What's funny about packs unplugged though is that if you look at All the gamers who went to it and like the feedback people have out in the wild like on reddit and the penna arcade forums It seems like there's three kinds of people talking about packs unplugged and what's interesting is that That is more than three kinds. There's three main kinds that I think I would I would say the three main kinds are People who are used to packs who go to packs unplugged because it's another packs The people who are used to shitty board game cons like gen con who expected packs unplugged to be like gen con And thus it wasn't because it's better and now they're mad about it And the people who really don't go to cons at all and this is their first gaming con because it's the first one that's near them That's big And those three groups Have a lot of disagreement over what attributes would make a board gaming con successful There's definitely a clash of cultures at packs unplugged that unlike what is at the other packs Is right the other packs is it's like the cultures don't clash as much because a they're sort of separated Yep, like they streamer kids literally don't interact with the table separated by space, right? It's like, you know those swag hunting people. They're in this giant expo hall Right, you don't really they don't come into the tabletop zone too much Right, you're not seeing them Right, and then the tabletop people they're in a tabletop zone. It's like there's not you know You're not interacting with these other people even though they're also there Uh, also both of those groups get what they wanted and are happy and go away Right, but at packs unplugged you have in this one giant free everyone's there for tabletop It's all tabletop This is one giant free play space and in that free play space You have the same, you know grognard from gen con You know new board gamer type person who's you know fresh, you know You know packs people all in the same place all by the same cookie brigade cookie So like literally I like there are people like we show up like okay panels like you see the packs people They know the drill like they go to the keynote in the q&a and they go to a panel and play the games And then you see the fresh people who are like panels like what's a panel? What's what's what's going on? What are these things? I just want to buy board games. What what? And then the gen gun people are like, how come I have to wait in a line? Why couldn't I buy a ticket to this panel in advance? Because money doesn't get you anything at packs. Yep. It's egalitarian packs But deal with it. I think The packs culture is going to win out in the end because that is because it's packs. Yeah But also because I think it is the superior experience and the people who disagree are welcome to go to gen con instead Well, they go to gen con. They already go to gen con. They want it They want more gen con because there's only one gen con a year Well, you know what maybe if gen con was better, there could be more than one gen con I mean, they you know, there is there is some other gen con type stuff There's like, isn't there european gen con or there was at one point or like there's also those like Regular table top. There are many there are many gen con like con I mean uber con was like that just small and it's you know It's it's also it's mostly like the rpg people who are used to having like schedules and things arranged Yeah, yeah, but it's like they're not used to come to a con They're like what just show up and like try to get into a game What my whole weekend is dependent upon playing this one particular d&d scenario And if I don't know in advance, I can do that. I don't want to go Like I would rather that culture never interact with packs. Yep. Anyway, but yeah, it was a good time So in some other gaming news Fortnite and epic are doing something interesting. They're basically pulling the valve 2.0 Right. So, you know way back in the day steam was created and I have a steam account that is his oldest team My steam account is like three days younger than scott's go look at my steam account Anyone could see my steam profile You'll see that it says that it was created on a day in 2000 something So if you go to if you go to wikipedia, you will see that steam was launched on that very same day So scott, why did you install steam in an era when there were literally no games to download on steam because There were games to download in that year the early 2000s Everyone was playing the very important game that is still around called counter strike Like it was a counter strike released an update what you had to do every time counter strike updated, which was Several frequently. Yep. Like it was once a quarter at rit You had to go to counter dash strike net click on downloads. Hope the site was live There would be a list of mirrors and you had to click on all of those mirrors in your browser that did not yet have tabs The tab browsing was not a thing And all those windows like file zone and two cows and all these different file hosting sites You had to find one that was still live because it was they were all being pummeled by people trying to get the latest version of counter strike even though we were And had like two oc three connections to the internet, which back then was more bandwidth than god We weren't limited on our end. We were limited by these file hosts that were down We were also limited by the fact that at rit there were like 12,000 students 11,500 of them were trying to download this file simultaneously If you got the file though, you could share it directly with your friends because it was the era of pdp Yeah, but fuck you. I'm playing immediately. I'm not like uploading a file to the drug I could put it. I could put it in my hotline folder and then run it and then ride your hotline Anyway, that also had that the uh, try gun fan subs. Yes. Anyway, the point is you Could go and that was how you got counter strike updates. It was a giant pain in the ass steam was like, all right We're putting up steam. Why are they putting up steam? Why did they make this thing steam? It didn't have friends. It didn't have any of those other stuff It was just a way for you to automatically Install and update your valve games without having to do What you said about your valve games It was a way to update counter strike for pretty much also half-life one. Yeah And even by that half-life one things like half-life one Whatever no one was playing like day of defeat. Yeah Uh Whatever and those early days of steam 99.9 repeating percent of people were playing. It was also replacing Juan the world opponent network, which was if you wanted to play counter strike, you had to like find servers You'd bring up this window to browse for servers to join Yep, and that was run by sierra slash Juan the world network Right, if you look at the original box for half-life one it has a sierra logo on it That's why that's the same logo that's on like quest for glory. That's right But that steam was also replacing that valve was running their own servers and their own at some point to browse You know their own Lobby servers to find counter strikes the point is we're old but the other point is that because Valve made steam and steam was the way to update pretty much the most played pc game on earth at the time It meant that when valve wanted to just make these store to sell games and turn steam into that store They had the guaranteed built-in audience and it was guaranteed to succeed Yes steam added all those features like friend chat and a store as they went on and it became to conquer the world It is now basically the pc game store many other companies have been like damn it I want to sell pc games. So I don't want to give valve some of my monies Right, so i'm going to make my own store. There's a there's a ubisoft store. There's a ea origin You all know how those stores worked Yeah, there's all these competing stores because they don't want to give valve a cut and all those stores have not done well Yep, they'd not dominated the scene sometimes you install one of them just because it's a game you want to play But you don't actually buy anything else in that more than once in my life. I have re-bought a game I already own on steam just because it was easier than like dealing with the old store You use the steam store all those other things like battle except for the battle net one maybe because you have to right It's like they're just launchers for a specific subset of games that are not on steam and all the other games you buy on steam But today The fortnight people epic the people who also make the unreal engine are like, hey We got fortnight. We'll make a fucking store Right, we don't want to give valve or whoever a cut of our fortnight monies And we're number we're number one and also valve takes a huge cut We'll just take away less of a cut because fucking right they're like all right Not only are we going to make our own store for fortnight But you know what you want to sell your games on the fortnight store the thing that people probably have installed Just as much as they have steam installed more people are probably we will take less of your money than valve will take More humans are probably playing fortnight right now That have ever played counter strike Maybe like fortnight is the counter strike of this era Which means that epic gets to be the valve of this era starting from a clean slate If they can get if they can get enough people to sell their non fortnight games on the epic fortnight store I would put them on the epic store if I had a game Yeah, if I had a game, why wouldn't I put it on that store? Plus I get access to a fresh audience not these old counter strike nerds who bitch about everything German Scott The point is is that valve has also done something they said, all right We realize our cut which is a flat percentage is too big if your game is too big, right? If you have a small game on steam and you know, they take this percentage It's like, all right, you know, you've got to give valve enough money to pay for the services that are providing you like Delivering your files to everyone who buys your game and handling all the monies Yeah, right. It's it's only fair that you give them some money, right? They're doing all the shit for you, right? But if you have a big big big popular game on steam that percentage cut even though It's a small percentage comes out to an enormous amount of money Which is way worth way more than the services valve is providing you so they said, all right We got a new deal on steam if your game gets real big We will shrink the cut sort of like how if you're a retail store and you order more product from a wholesaler You know, they gave you a better deal. So what this means? I think is a couple of things one It means that valve's monopoly days are numbered Yeah, the steam you know, nothing, you know, you feel like oh, you know, nothing could be affronted my space died Right, all tons of google things have died Someday amazon will die like all things die facebook is vulnerable Even steam is vulnerable, right? I still will go buy things on steam before I buy them anywhere else because steam has been around As long as I've made that account I own so many fucking games on steam steam has been around since before browsers had tabs basically But meanwhile you go to like say the nintendo we shop is gonna die like early next year, right? So that is why if there's a game that is on switch and steam I almost always buy the steam one and not the switch one My oculus oculus has its own store built in really easy to use Can't you also buy oculus games on steam though? Yes, I buy all my games on steam and I go into the steam launcher instead of the oculus launcher I trust that steam even if it is affronted by the epic store will continue to exist for a very long time So here's what I predict is gonna happen. There is now going to be A a real competition on how much of a cut the stores take and how many features the Great great great for game developers. Yeah, it's this is great for game players and customers When I say the only bad for valve and and epic when I say not really bad for epic either They're going from zero to money, but when I say the features that the stores provide I don't mean to you and me they don't give a shit about us I mean to the developers because it sucks ass to put a game up on steam because they knew They didn't have to help you. Yep. Now They're the the the stores are going to compete for the attention of the developers They're going to try to get exclusives like please put your game on the steam and not on the epic Or they're going to reduce friction to make it real easy to manage your game on their platform and deploy it to your Platform to make it more likely for more developers to use the platform out of convenience Much like consoles. They're going to be not only trying to get exclusives But both of the companies that own stores are also developers, right? Oh, that's the other thing They're gonna start making games again, right? Fortnight will fade, right? Artifact hasn't really done great. Yep As as predicted, you know what this means valve might actually have to make fucking half-life right these companies You can expect as fortnight fades. They are go and valve as all of their games fade Uh, they are going to have to develop games to make their Stores things that people must install Right, uh, also expect blizzard activision, you know, they already got, uh, what's the friggin destiny whatever in their store They're in the battle net client You can expect them to maybe be, uh, trying to load up that client with other stuff, right? You know, so stay tuned. This is all good news for us And I I mean You know, most people in the old days like when we were young They'd be like, oh counter strike will be the top game forever And it was until pretty recently actually You'll know that it's you know, that it's a real thing when I have to install the the epic store to install So I won't install fortnight, but there might be something else I need it for We did a panel in like 2010 or 2011 I still have a screenshot of it I took a screenshot of the current simultaneous players of the top 10 games on steam And it was literally number one was like counter strike source. Number two was counter strike one six. Yep So everyone who complains about fortnight because you're old like us Listen fortnight is counter strike. Everything cycles. Yeah, all everything is old is new This is the same thing happening all over again. The question is even though fortnight is obviously huge Right, will it last as long as counter strike has lasted or will it at some point go? Or will it be that the cycle of this will just be faster because in the old days It took a long time for anyone to even try to compete with counter strike Meanwhile, we had like pub g and fortnight are out like within hours of each other It's not obviously there's still plenty people playing pub g But it it it sort of did not win. It's in the win the battle. No pub pub g One that won a battle to lose the war. Yeah, it'll be it's a niche experience that even though I prefer it I'm not going to complain about fortnight because fortnight is very accessible and is going to really fortnight is doing to pc gaming and cross-platform play And when I say cross-platform, I mean like on a pc or on a switch Or in a tablet or on a phone who gives a shit just games everywhere It's going to do to the modern space what counter strike did to earlier pc gaming What quake too did to even earlier pc gaming It's all good news Of course, also, uh, if you're not aware Smash is coming out on the switch the new smash is going to be out this friday So if you're wondering, you know, you want to let me smash I let it smash You want to smash you can smash on friday Uh, I'm going to get ready because your holidays and your magfest are going to be full of smashing Yep, I think the only worry I have is that the local wireless multiplayer I assume will just not work at all because nintendo has never gotten that to work ever on any platform They've ever delivered and i'm not paying for the online service. Nope So it's going to be local one switch multiplayer with a bunch of controllers as per usual Yep, at least they're wireless and of course, uh rostakans rumbles. It just came out in hearthstone Yeah, a new hearthstone expansion came out today like it's out Right now as I speak when I get home. That's probably what I'm gonna do All right. I was like 11 people watching go away But anyway things of the day so Emily shared this video with me and it's a lie It's a stream a curate like of uh, some people playing vr chat if you're not familiar Vr chat is uh is Kind of fascinating. It's basically just people who put on vr things just to chat But it also has a desktop client and you can basically just like it is basically the cyberspace that we all want it in the 90s But it kind of just exists today and people just like interact in this space And it's it's a whole thing on its own But in this space people have also made these games Like you can just play these kind of like lower end games with a lot of people And because most of the people are using it do have like vr rigs like you're capturing all their motion It's pretty immersive and pretty interesting Like this is something that if you have kids like they are in this thing Even if they you don't own vr and you probably don't even realize it. It's real big But this video is a stream with this kid And this guy, I don't know if it's like an older brother or dad But the kid's name is jordan and the kid has been like living in vr chat And this older person is like, let me play with you. I'll come in there and we're gonna we're gonna we're gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna record us playing and we'll see how it goes And this kid is basically cat bug in real life And this kid is just too cute and too innocent for the terrifying world of vr chat Let alone the evil realities of a cruel earth And this is so cute to watch this he's like he's like, okay Here's what we're gonna do and the older guy's like, all right, jordan tell me what to do And he's like, so first you take this bomb. He's like, whoa bomb. Okay, whatever. Let's go. He's like and you run up here Okay, jordan, what do you do then you huck it over the edge? And then it explodes and he's like and maybe it killed someone and the dad's just like, whoa Okay It's it's so cute. You gotta watch this Yeah, like seriously this kid is just cat bug in real life. Okay, kid's gonna be a famous streamer someday I think because of this video So check this out. There was apparently some movie called the art of rhyme or maybe a documentary or something I've never seen it. I've only seen this clip this one minute and 40 second clip that was posted on youtube Because a co-worker shared it on slack. Oh, and this is video footage from Bedford bedsty neighborhood in brooklyn and in this video is the long deceased notorious bi g Freestyle and like oh snap and he's only he's only 17 years old. Oh damn So you can see if you in case you are too young to know about biggie Now you can know like going back and watching, you know, michael jordan dunke or whatever You can see why he was so talented and why he is so missed. Wow. Look at this That video this video gives me life. That's what i'm saying In the meta moment, uh, we're back from backs unplugged. We'll try to get video of our two panels up When we get a chance. Oh, I forgot to bring it. That's fine. I haven't backed up in three places. Just not with me Yeah, that's fine. I'm not gonna have time to edit shit until this weekend So if even if then and also i'm gonna get packs to give me the actual video they took because At the 40 tabletop games you must play we didn't just do the panel in a panel room It was in the big panel room So it was live streamed on the packs twitch So can you go to the packs twitch and is there a vod available to see it right now? I'm not sure because I haven't had a chance to go check Well, go check the twitch.tv slash packs 2 Yeah, I assume it was packs. I assume it's packs 2 but check all the official packs twitch tv channels Geek night is moderately popular. We are not popular enough to be packs 1 right. Look at their vod this main theater Yeah The day we're in the main theater is either the day that something crazy has happened or the day that packs has made a Terrible mistake check these saved videos attached to those twitch channels and see if you can find our panel If you really have nothing better to do Okay, yep, and we will be now upcoming at magfest doing like a bunch of panels Oh, no, you don't have to be on all of them. You don't And we will be at pack south in san Antonio like right after that Oh, yeah Doing at least one panel and that panel is a brand new one that I still have to write Nostalgia versus game design I think we're going to talk about wind jammers at least once in this panel No one wanted to do my no one wanted to accept my panel about The real harm of harmful games. I think we're going to do that one at packs east. Okay. That's a good panel I think packs east is a good place for that one. Uh, maybe a magfest. I might sneak it in into majors. We'll see So stay tuned. Otherwise the booklet book is uh, 2001 in space odyssey I have a lot of downtime over the holidays. I'll probably read it I do not have to go to work from christmas through new year and I'm only not partying until new year. Oh the cold guy says it's pat It was on packs two. It was on packs because packs three was a different room. All right Well verify if the if the video is there or not. It might not, you know, when I get a chance. I've been busy. Okay I've I haven't even unpacked from packs yet. Give me a break God, I it's always hard to like our lives are different now from what they were a decade ago Every year we'd be like, oh, it's time for packs this once a year event So and I get like five packs a year now two of I've got three Four gaming conventions in the span of like two and a half months in other meta moments Even though we're going to be doing eek nights, you know, we might miss them because holidays and shit Right. So, you know how it is next week. There'll be a there'll be a monday wednesday. Hopefully. Yep, hopefully but I do intend to Do some other shows when scott's not around and both of us when shows don't happen We'll probably be live streaming a bunch of stuff and sometime soon We're going to be judging the upcoming season of anime. We have to do that in december Yep, and if you look at our website now, you can see when we judged the previous season of anime the fall season before it came out So you can find out if we were right about tokyo ghoul re2 or whatever. All right, so Uh, we're gonna talk about a game called treasure island the most Oh someone in the stream just linked to the vod of the stream. Good job So yeah, good go to the live stream right now and you can click on this link I hope that link actually goes to it enough to a rickroll. I didn't check it I hope so anyway, so treasure island the most straightforward game name you could possibly think of yes It's just directly based on the book at your there's a long john silver black spot like the monkey It's pirate themed. It's literally just fucking treasure island the game So here's the way it works Is it's a lot like fury of dracula one player is long john silver Y'all I played the first and only time I played this game I was long john silver and holy shit is that stressful and difficult the other four players are Parrots, I don't remember if their characters in the book or not. I assume they were their characters, whatever They all they have slightly different powers But anyway, right. I did I've never read the book all the way through. Oh, I have I read excerpts from it in like Elements, but it was very long time ago. Yeah I saw the the one old movie. I have better memories of muffin treasure island, which I saw several times I remember muffin treasure island better than I remember any other form of treasure island that is true Anyway, uh animal treasure island is also good. Isn't that the is a Miyazaki or Tezuka work? I've never actually seen it. I haven't seen it either But I just know it exists. Anyway, the point is this game at much like fury of dracula has long john silver Hiding a treasure instead of running around Europe like dracula and four player up to four players working together To find the treasure, but They're not really together unlike fury of dracula. They're competing to who gets the treasure first Yep, and the other conceit that's interesting is that long john silver the game is basically Long john silver is being interrogated by the pirate. He's in jail on the island somewhere So first he's just being interrogated and you have to use cards and basically give clues about where the treasure is Right. Well long john is while he's being interrogated gives clues to the interrogators But then at some point during like one of the turns one of the players puts long john in a prison on the island somewhere Right. There are several prisons on the map long john is in one of them at some point you find out which one he's in eventually The end of the game if none of the pirates found the treasure Long john breaks out and now moves around the map with the same rules as the players And if long john gets to his own treasure he wins. Fuck you all right Uh, one other thing is that long john is giving these clues to the players Whether they use their powers or just every turn he has to sort of do something or every so often He has to give information to the interrogators, but he can lie up to two times during the game He doesn't actually have to lie But two of his clues all the clues must be true except up to two of them may or may not be true Yep, and the mayor may not is key because I one of my lie attempt like possibilities of lies I actually told the truth to try to uh double cross the players and it worked on every one but one player Because you basically you tell the truth you put the lying token next to it A player uses their power to look at the token and the other players don't see it They see that player now sees like a question mark, right? But they assume oh that means it's not true and they invert that thing. It's like no actually So get this this happened in the game. So our friend tracy He the he assumed that the first clue I put down was a lie and he was right I thought you're not allowed to lie in the first one the first clue You can't get a lie token until like the first no you get one lie token at the beginning of the game And you get oh, I thought you get one like after turn x or something you get the second one after turn x You're very you have to put one clue out that you can't lie about before the game starts That's right Then you put ones out the first one I put out that I had discretion. I put the lie token and I did lie tracy Said before the game started. I bet ram will put the lie tokens out but not actually lie But then he used his power Immediately to check to see if I lied on the first turn and of course I did and I did lie He then played the beginning of the game Searching and acting as though he thought I was telling the truth trying to trick the other three pirates Into thinking that I had told the truth there when in fact he thought I had lied and in fact I had lied That was really well played The point is uh this game when you see it is a huge ton of fun because you're not just moving around a map Right, you know with little tokens like a normal game You're drawing on the map. Everyone has a personal map that they can draw on The game comes including long john silver right the game comes with like all these dry erase markers and a compass You can draw radiuses radii There's a ruler if you move you like draw on the ruler. How many miles you're gonna move? There are like a ruler rule for the mitt rule much. It's very theme appropriate It's like you're using all these sort of nautical ish simpler much simpler than actual nautical sextants or whatever But you know tools to draw on this map the shared map as well as your personal maps They give you a mini ruler so you can you can use that on your tiny map And the it's at scale to the big ruler you use on the big map right so you can measure things out privately You know and it's like oh you can you can see like so like you'll be like ah Yes, the the treasure is within three of one of these players Stuff like that but then of all the players everyone everyone starts drawing circles and being like okay It's got to be in one of these circles But some of the clues are things that I hand to the other players So each player knows like five sets of information Independently of one another and then collectively they know another set of information But that set of information may or may not be true and different players might have looked at different tokens And the players aren't sharing info with each other hell No, so even though it might be like if all the players shared info They might know exactly where the treasure is right away Because they each have separate info Right, it's like well It's going to take any one player a longer amount of time to figure out where the treasure is This also means that since I was long john silver I was keeping track of as best I could the kinds of information I'd given to different players to try to give individual players worthless information to them If I had the opportunity to give just them information And I successfully gave two players Fucking bullshit because I knew things they knew and I gave them the same information over and over again via different mechanisms So that's basically how this game goes is long john tries to give as little information as possible The players do a scotland yard fury of dracula kind of narrowing down possibilities thing They walk in they walk along the map to the possible areas use their searching ability and attempting to find the treasure So the fun part is that the placement rules for the treasure are literally I just fucking mark an x anywhere. Yep anywhere on this whole the map doesn't really have like a grid or anything It's just a picture of an island with a bunch of features on it And you put a dot on your private map and that's what the treasure and of course what scott was musing that I would do And what I did in fact do is I drew one goddamn pixel That's right I was like it is here at the intersection of the edge of this building and this forest Yep, you're very precise and where the treasure was so if someone came close and someone did Someone came literally within like they were like a millimeter They were they were more like a centimeter less than a centimeter But the point is is they came real close and but their circle clearly was not on the spot you had selected So no treasure for you and the way you search and there's a fun little bit here Is you use this little ring and you literally draw on the big map a circle around where you're searching And the ring has to fit around your character So where you move to like you're really limited and then I have to decide if it's inside or not The rule is if there's any question as to whether or not it's inside it is Hence I literally put a dot on my map and then I used my fingernail To shave off pieces of that dot because the felt like markers only so precise to make it down to like this one pixel And then I took a picture of it in case I accidentally smudged that one pixel off. Yep, but anyway Uh, the one very interesting mechanic in this game is that when players search if they find the treasure Long john takes this little cardboard treasure chest puts the big treasure token. Well, so hands it to the player They open it the big treasures in there. They win when anyone searches What I did is I took the treasure chest this big cardboard box I either put nothing in it. I put one of the mini treasures that I can give out of my own discretion There's reasons why you would or if they got it, right I just would have put the big treasure and announced that anything right That's what you're supposed to do But the what I'm saying is the clever mechanic is those small treasures Yeah, long john has to give out these clues as the game goes on to the players But there's it's like a deck of clues suck you read these clues It's like wow any one of these will just fuck me right the clues if you have to give those clues If you give them Honestly, which you have to do all but two times you're just going to tell them where the treasure is but If you give players these mini treasures when they search right then What you can do is if you've given enough tiny treasures to the players not the big treasure that makes you win the game But the tiny ones that gives you access to these other clues that are weaker clues And using the weaker clues is much easier because now the you won't have to basically give the whole game away with your giant lousy clues But now you've given players Very powerful tools to use Yes, those tiny treasures give the players abilities that they can now use during the game So it's like I can either give them tmi Or I can give them less info but more abilities to make their search easier And you have to sort of figure out what you want to do Meanwhile players know this they know that's how the game works So what players can do which I learned after the first game is don't use your searching ability early in the game And thus long john is forced to give the big clues He can't give the little clues if you haven't searched because then he can't give you the little treasures Then again, you're also not searching You're just walking around using other forms of clues and other actions besides the search action So you got this balancing act going on. That's the cool part of the game What I think is the problem with this game Is that with intelligent players? I do not think long john can win. So I played I was long john the first time ever played the game Two of the people at the table had already played this game multiple times And all three of the pirates were very smart people. Yep I was literally one turn from winning I busted out of prison and I got right next to my fucking treasure. You would have gotten it next turn You were definitely in range I didn't they had narrowed down But by the end of the game like they couldn't find the like I said one person at on that previous turn had searched Less than a centimeter away from the treasure location. They collectively narrowed it down to maybe six square centimeters on the entire map Like they were so close And then I I couldn't get because I hosted myself by my own petard Because I drew my treasure dot as such a precise pixel. I was Literally less than half a centimeter away from being able to just win And then I lost in the last last possible round Yep, I think I mean that's what I think because I think it's it's calibrated in such a way I think if the players are not that good at searching or are less skilled I think a skilled john just wins a skilled long john would just dominate But I think a poor quality long john will lose immediately a poor quality long john will lose immediately and give everything away But amongst all skilled players where everyone is is up on up I think that the long john they can they can take the game into the late stages But I don't think they can get away with it It's you know, I think what would be good is if you just kept exactly the same everything don't change a thing except Make the map just maybe like six inches larger in both directions That way with the same exact clues Right, you're making it a little harder to narrow it down and maybe at the end You know, it might also be a problem But at least the players might have two choices and have to pick one Right, and it's like, okay. Well the game comes down to luck then well Maybe it does but at least it's not just sort of like this locked in thing That's what I also feel like if you get really fine tips dry erase markers You can make the game more interesting because I would love to see a digital version of this game That was pixel perfect with zooming in and zooming out I would play I would play it a lot where you had to literally click the exact pixel I'm like a you know, like you get like a like you do your search radius like a 2000 by 2000 jpeg And you must click that would be what 40 000 pixels Well, you got to search the area around your character That includes some number of right your search must include that pixel specifically if it is what if that pixel is just outside the edge of your radius You didn't get it But the moral is like in the end this game is way fun and worth owning Yeah, if you want to have a searching finding game, I would rather play this than the scotland yard Well, because scotland yard, uh Slash mr. X or whatever you're a computer scientist or even computer science adjacent You can easily determine an algorithm that guarantees mr. X will lose. Yes I would rather play this inferior of dracula because even though I like the hidden card movement and and searching inferior dracula A little bit better than the treasure island. I do not like any other parts of inferior dracula Dude busting out the compass and drawing a giant fucking circle on this map. That's right really Really satisfying. Oh, yeah, especially when the treasure is like a millimeter outside of that circle And you're just like nope stone face. Yep Uh, there is a game I played that you did not play called cryptid Which as a hex map And you're you're trying to find a chupacabra Or or equivalent right and it's and this rule and this clues like a hot like, you know different information than the player's like Okay, I know it's not in a mountain hex I know it's too away from a forest hex that kind of thing and you sort of narrow it down and see who can find it first I played that game once and I won because I narrowed it down to three hexes and guessed and I guessed right uh, but you know, it's it's similar but Uh, cryptid is while perfectly fine It does not have the fun of drawing with the sextant to the compass and all that biz the drawing makes it real fun Yeah, uh, so in terms of while it is not perfect and has some flaws in terms of one versus many Hide and seek games. I think treasure island may be the current number one of ones that I have played