 Ba ba ba All right It's Tuesday August 25th 2020. I'm rim. I'm Scott and this is geek night tonight We are talking about Pax Pamir second edition not the convention Though it's the kind of game we'd play at a convention So as you know, we had to set up a bunch of pipelines to record panels at home remotely We're gonna use this pipeline to do a bunch of other projects probably Wow, we we're getting close to being in for the long haul in terms of content creation when we're stuck at home And that's continuing But one of the problems of us being in separate places is that I owed a bunch of technology and Scott owns a bunch of technology But there were pieces of technology that we didn't both have a good version of like I have the really good mixer Scott has like a one input device to use Scott has the live wedge. I don't really have a Like video switcher device streaming thing like that. So I actually bought I was gonna buy an HDMI input card Just to use better cameras for all these pipelines when I needed to but I Didn't want to get one that goes in my PC even though those are extremely high quality like a black magic like PC IE card for that. It's just like a plus quality I mean, I just have a USB A for one and it's extremely high quality. Yep, right I just wonder if I'm I can use more than one on the same computer at the same time or if that will mess up Yeah, that depends on I've heard yeah, I've heard it causes a lot of problems to do that And that's why you need this switcher thing. Yeah, some of those things have a bunch of lanes Or also if you know what the problem is usually you'll have the same problem You have if you plug in two sound cards. Yeah, they can't ever like really be in sync with each other So I was looking around and I wanted like a high-quality device and I had all these parameters But then I saw that black magic sells that they're at M devices Which I've seen pros use like they're really good video switchers and like video input devices But they have a mini version. That's relatively new. That's way cheap Like the pro version that does a bunch of crazy stuff is over a thousand dollars. This mini version was I got it for under 300 the Mid-range to upper-range like prosumer capture USB C devices I was looking at we're only like 80 to 100 bucks less than that so I figured I'll just get like this real device and I'm not gonna like review this device This isn't a Monday show But the reason I'm bringing this up is black magic did something cool that I haven't seen a lot of other companies do the hardware is Basically the same as the pro version like the the same like the pro version has more chips inside it But the outside of it like the case and the buttons and the inputs and outputs I think one of the higher-level ones had more a few more buttons Yeah, but yeah, it's I it looks you would you would have to like put a sticker to tell them apart or look closely Exactly, so this one won't live stream itself like I can't encode in live stream or anything the live wedge can do that Yes, but it can take four HDMI ends and send HDMI out So I could use this as a switcher for a better capture device And it's designed to just appear as a webcam, but a super high-quality webcam But and that's all cool But the cool thing about this is that the documentation for the pro version and the mini version is actually the same documentation and the mini for the cheap version can do Almost everything the pro version can accept the live streaming So if you want to say expensive part because that you need a CPU that can encode video That's a relatively I mean, it's not a super expensive CPU But it still adds a significant expense to the device it adds more power requirements of the device The device needs more memory to hold the video data in memory, right? So do it the ability to encode video just a video encoder just a hardware video encoder is already a Somewhat expensive device on its own for a good one that can do high res in real time, right? You know, it's like yeah That's kind of an expensive thing like a real desktop computer kind of does Uses a significant CPU percentage doing that kind of work. Yep, so you remove that the red HDMI switching That's like it's like that's just signal switching. It's like you know, it's way cheap But all the features that you would normally use the pro for other than streaming are still in there Like it'll do all it'll do chroma keying and hardware It has all the transition stuff picture-in-picture stuff like it has all the things that you would use if you were Like the person who was doing the live stream like in the production trailer somewhere And I guess that the point I want to make the cool thing here is that the interface for this the buttons It's the professional layout instead of doing what most companies do where you have like the prosumer the prosumer or like low-end professional versions and then you have like the consumer versions that just like have a simplified baby interface This has the real interface so if someone wanted to say learn how to be the person who sits in the control room and like Switches between cameras and monitors feeds and does transitions and all that stuff This will actually if you use this device It'll teach you like what all the buttons do on a professional device in the same way that if you buy a real mixer You will learn what all the buttons do on a professional mixer I mean, yes a black magic is not a company that is meant that it serves an audience of like, you know consumers Yeah, they serve prosumer and upright right so if you look at like, you know like the capture card that I bought from like Aver It's like a gamer capture card, but that doesn't matter just the branding on it Right, but it's it's meant for gamers like stream on Twitch all it does is convert HDMI to USB 3 and also output HDMI with no delay right everything else is nonsense right so it's like Yeah, you know they tried to make it easy because they knew the people using it might just be a gamer who's streaming on Twitch Yeah does everything I needed to do I don't care, but you know, it's like yeah, they have a different they have different audiences They have some products. They're trying to sell to professionals that wouldn't have all this gamer crap all over it But it would be mostly the same device. Yeah You know, but black magic is only serving people doing real work, right? They're not serving any other audiences Yep, but that's it like even though I don't need to you like I'm not gonna use these buttons I basically bought it because it's a video capture device that I can plug into any of my like Computers anywhere even my laptop take HMI in HMI inputs. It'll synchronize them all at ingest and like do all that stuff but It's got all the buttons for a professional trailer rig and I just think that's neat Like I don't see that often with hardware of the lowest tier Having at least the same user interface as the highest tier Yeah, I mean it was that's a way to learn there. It's they're saving money They could make one set of plastic shells and one set of buttons for all this while they're like, oh, no We got to make a lower-end model. Let's make a whole different plastic shell for it A whole different mold at the factory Right, you know, they don't want to do that. Yep. So anyway in news There actually is some big gaming news and it's having pretty big Reverberations through the game industry already like this is it's bad news and basically nobody on earth seems happy about it All right Well, so the the original news came what a week or two ago Yeah, I was like look all our Oculus headsets as of this day like now If you buy a new Oculus VR headset like a Quest or an s You have to use a Facebook account or you just can't use your hardware. Fuck you Hmm, is that what it is or is it just you can't go to the Oculus? If you buy a new one now, it can't get firmware updates If I give you if I gave you my Oculus and you wanted to make an account you cannot make an account Except by a Facebook account, but couldn't I just use it without no because there's no way to even set the device up from the software Do anything? Okay, so you're basically unless you are willing to have a Facebook Into a computer and get recognized as like a new device is the driver go go go and games None of this stuff works. You can't do anything. Okay. How about that? So Everyone before that date because as far as I can tell almost everyone who has an Oculus device does not link it to their Facebook account Yeah, why would you buy you anything? It just makes your device worse basically wouldn't it let you buy things from the Oculus store No, you can do that with the regular Oculus account up to this point Oh, so there's a regular Oculus account that predates Facebook buying them so when Facebook bought Oculus as a company Already Oculus accounts. Yep So you needed to make but you needed to make an Oculus account to set up the device and do all that stuff Yep, and then you could use that or a Facebook account now. It's Facebook only so that was the first thing that happened and Basically, that's the thing that since the day of that purchase The entire developer community has just constantly been afraid that Facebook would do this and was ready to bail on Facebook overall because no one who works with Oculus hardware was cool with Facebook owning it for a lot of reasons and When this news broke like I follow a lot of Experimental VR people in the games industry like I know a lot of people from bags dev My Twitter feed became filled with nothing Developers reacting to this negatively trying to plan their post-Oculus pipelines planning on replacing their hardware No one's willing to have a Facebook account in that community Why would you exactly but the real fear I think and there's more like there's a lot of more news happened on this like since we since that news but the real problem I think what people are afraid of is that Facebook is trying to brand these VR headsets as Facebook in order to try to pull people into a Facebook app store and Facebook social network. I mean they have you know the Facebook gaming You know streaming initiative trying to compete with Twitch YouTube whoever right? It's like that's still a but thing that exists I don't know who goes there, but it's a it's a thing. Yeah, they keep they're trying to make it a success I guess I don't know so yeah, basically like if I didn't already have an Oculus Rift and an Oculus Quest I would never buy Oculus hardware again And I definitely won't buy new Oculus hardware because I'm unwilling to have a Facebook account even a throwaway one Well, this is very similar to when GoPro had a controversy when they they switched the GoPro app So that yeah, you could use your go you could buy a GoPro and use it Right, but if you wanted to you needed the app on your phone or right to like, you know Get firmware updates and synchrony you get extra features when you hook it up to the phone And they they when they came out with like a new version of that app and a new GoPro I forget which one it was four or five. I think They made getting a GoPro account mandatory Even if you weren't going to pay for their special extra features and people were like that is some bullshit I don't like that and now it's they give us so much uproar that yeah now It's optional the app still sort of encourages you to make a GoPro account But you do not and people are also worried like well What if I can't sign into my GoPro account because I'm out in the middle of the woods and then I can't Transfer my file, you know to connect to my GoPro. It's like, you know So GoPro relented and it they made it optional right you can just buy a GoPro use it use it with your phone without Making the account without signing into the account So I watched the entire developer community in VR basically abandoned this platform instantly and then The article that was posted like the next day like even the verge their headline for this was quote Facebook is making Oculus's worst feature unavoidable Okay, so the news today is that they're doing even more rebranding they've changed What did they change they changed like the name? Okay, so Oculus Connect was like their conference and they Like the Oculus convention. They've renamed it Facebook Connect. It's coming up like in a few weeks. Okay so it's called Facebook Connect and There are rumblings that they're not gonna even call the hot the the upcoming hardware Oculus anymore though a little bit That was cloudy because I think some people saw the leak of the code name for the Oculus quest to and thought that that was the New brand name, but that appears to be an internal code name I just feel like Facebook quest like just replace Oculus with Facebook and keep everything else. Yeah That seems like straightforward, right? Oh god Even this article frames it as Facebook Connect rebranding follows a controversial choice to require Facebook Logins also renamed the team at Facebook who works on it, right? They're no longer like the Oculus team They're now like the Facebook reality something. Yeah So basically everyone assume it was hoping that Facebook wouldn't ruin The Oculus people and the Oculus culture and the Oculus technology like they've ruined literally everything else They've ever bought and now Facebook's Remember Facebook was started by that awful person, right? Oh, not Facebook was yeah Right Oculus was also started by an awful person Yeah, but the point is is that that culture actually I think improved at least, you know Oculus of the employees at least but it was really that the thing that Oculus had going for it Since the beginning was that like yes their VR hardware and software was better than the competition and probably still is Yep, it came first and it just worked Yep Cuz like I've used vibes their little fiddly index is also a little fiddly like this was the most consumer accessible one and the quest is like really accessible and really cool, but Pretty sure almost everyone using this hardware if they're not a developer also isn't using the Oculus store They're just using it with steam because it just works with steam Though that may not be the case in the future now So I've got a two-year time limit to upgrade all my VR and probably go with whatever like Index two is or I got to keep an eye on this space now, which is I have a rainbow situation here in New York It was just a sudden storm and now the Sun is out again. Yeah, I see the Sun coming back out there late in the day I think there's rainbow action, but I can't see it because I'm doing a podcast But I guess here's my like real real fear aside from everything else that's going on in the space It's something very specific VR is still like an extended market Barely like more like a niche market like it has it's not mainstream consumer technology yet hundred percent agree It is it's like an extended market of enthusiasts Though the quest is accessible It's still a luxury or like odd item like people aren't just buying these off the shelves that a choice for us yet Even though they do just work and they're pretty good Like I think VR is awesome, and I'm still really into it However, my fear is that Facebook is going to literally try to force people to use Facebook social network stuff in VR And I think what that might lead to the biggest threat to Facebook right now in VR is probably VR chat Which Facebook does not own which just works on any headset and is basically the social network It doesn't actually even need a headset. Oh, yeah, there's a desktop client. Look at that VR chat Is janky as hell, but you know what it is exactly what people wanted And it kind of works as janky and weird as it is like I have a lot of fun in there I wouldn't be surprised if Facebook pulls an apple and starts to ban all the kinds of things like VR chat that compete with the things Facebook wants to offer as a first-party service I Don't know if they will that's like a step further than even what Apple does in terms of like monopoly Oh, no, you know how they would go after it They go after it based on in-app purchases or things like that. Are there any Are there any things that Facebook has any like VR games or any VR app at all that Facebook has been Well because VR right now everyone just buys stuff on Steam or in the Oculus store like Facebook is not really messed with it yet This is the first indication that Facebook is now going to start messing with it I mean, you knew they were gonna mess with it. Yeah, and it seems to coincide with Facebook real like Facebook's Adoption and usage seems to be dropping the brand is toxic to younger people like young people don't really use Facebook I worry that what they're trying to do Instagram though. Yeah for now. They're gonna ruin Instagram It's just a matter of time. Oh So my advice to you if you're a VR developer basically if you're a VR enthusiast It is too late to buy Oculus hardware assume that hardware is dead and buy something else like there is no future here for you Yeah, I mean this just goes along with you know what I've been saying for Since Oculus started becoming a thing that people would actually buy is that yeah, the VR is not close enough It's too Scott is gonna buy it or care about it, right? It's like, you know all the VR's that exist today the Whatever they the vibes and whatnot the ocular these are all gonna go away the the VR That's actually gonna be the real deal is coming in the future a few what more years down the road See, I I still think you're like a hundred percent wrong on that This is this is one Generation away from being like a fully expanded market and the lower-end models of one more generation are gonna become mass market And I mean you're welcome to have that I think we're still closer to the virtual boy than we are to that Yeah, okay, you've never even used VR. You have no idea what this is like. I know that it's not good What was what was the last VR hardware you put on your head? What was the last VR where you've tried? It's still I mean What's the difference it's just a higher resolution, you know screen you still putting a screen in front of your eyeballs It's not any difference. It's gonna be that it's gonna be screened in front of your eyes 20 to 40 more years. All right, so in 20 to 40 more years. Call me, okay? Well, the rest of us will keep playing with VR But anyway, the real the story here is just Facebook is doing everything they can to destroy Oculus Well, they're not trying to destroy it. They believe well, I you know, I think they're trying to do I think what they're trying to do specifically is get younger people to get Facebook accounts Well, I don't know how many young people have a VR headset More than you more than you realize quest actually sold really well Really well, how many I can go try to dig up the numbers. It's I can't imagine And there's enough of an ecosystem to where I didn't even outsell something like PSP There is enough of an ecosystem to there are numerous independent game studios profitably making VR games Hmm, I Guess if you make, you know, really quick ones like VR chat You don't need to sell that many well VR chat is very very second lifey and that it's very sort of just open Like you can just make whatever in there So like someone will give you a link to a secret avatar world filled with it's all just copyright violation I'm just saying, you know, if you look at games like, you know, the bomb defusing one, right? It's like, yeah, that game didn't cost a lot to make, you know, so you don't just sell that many copies Yeah That game is basically like a kind of a toy compared to what's coming out upcoming Also, you know, it's gonna I think actually drive headset adoption among our demographic like expanding the extended market That new Star Wars game as long as it's at least passively good Yeah, I think that's definitely I think you're gonna see low-end VR headsets and hot-ass Sell out sell the hell out Microsoft flight simulator already sold all the hot-ass is none left You can have to get another production run, but the point is Yeah, I definitely see that as a good path for game developers is if your game has a first person camera of some kind Right if you're making a racing especially vehicle games racing airplane Anything like that. Yeah, no, you're saying that I in my professional experience. That is not the case Almost any plane game like airplane game with a headset will make people violently nauseous Well, anyway, the point is space games are easier for reasons that are Way out of scope for the show in the point is I think if you're making a game that could be VR But like doesn't have to be VR, right? So like the star wars spaceship game, right? It's like, yeah, that could be VR or it couldn't be it works sort of equally well either way It's not like a game, you know, like half-life alex where it's like it's got to be vr This game is a vr game. It wouldn't really work on a screen that well Have a super good in vr, but would not really be worth playing if it wasn't and it's not a game like I don't know fucking Chess where vr chess is kind of like all right It's better on a screen to just play chess than to do a tabletop simulator vr chess, right? But star wars in a spaceship flying an x-wing sort of equally good at both the screen and the vr modes are sort of Equally valid so if you're making that kind of game add support for vr But don't require it make both experiences Equally good the same way that you could make a cartridge that would be good in a game boy color and a black and white game boy The equally good is key though So many people try to take an existing game they've made that would be good in vr and add vr to it No, no, no, no, no, no that that that's how you get fall out for it's got to be a game that can work either way that has a first person camera naturally that you know just sort of works either way actually third person works really well too you just see yourself you're hovering you look at yourself while you're in VR or you're looking down and interacting with things like there's a lot like that moss game is like that you're basically piloting this little mouse around in a complex 3d environment walking around it and solving puzzles but the camera is first person no you're standing over the mouse third person works fine it's really immersive interesting you've never seen you have no idea you aren't the mouse you're so you are the mouse you you are the mouse you move the mouse with like controllers and you can also your hand and fuss with stuff so that you're not the mouse you're some hand of God this the same way I'm not Mario when I play Mario Brothers I'm still me I'm controlling Mario I mean I mean that's a way to think of it yes you are you're playing imagine playing Mario galaxy but you're in VR in the environment if I play Mario galaxy I'm not Mario but if I play Half-Life I am I'm Gordon Freeman all right that's an interesting distinction you made for reasons that we don't want to get into right now but it has to do with the power of the immersion of VR so let's talk about some other news here right so there's a sports news going on this is really fascinating do you remember when those big controversy over those fancy bathing suits in the Olympics yeah people are going faster and then there was controversy over the fancy shoes people are using in marathons right and how back in the 90s when it was like gotta be the shoes right Air Jordans they did not actually help you at basketball pumps did not help you jump higher but now there are shoes that literally right by producing less heat on impact and producing more spring instead they can actually reduce your long-distance running times right like two percent so we went we went from the gimmick times to where the technology didn't really help then we entered an era where technology helped but only if you're a professional it's like yeah here's some professional golf clubs they do help Tiger Woods hit the ball farther but they ain't gonna help you hit the ball farther right here's a tennis racket it'll help Roger Federer Serena Williams win it won't help you win and now we're entering the era we're like yeah this stuff will help anybody it's just better equipment and it's finally entered the hockey realm right in the NHL right now there's been a new stick that has come out that they're using in games so it must be legal yeah I'm getting I'm getting because that's off is practicing with it there's a bunch of photos of him playing with the stick a goal has already been scored with it and basically the blade of the stick has a slit shaped hole in the stick so it's like is the bottom of this the blade and closer near the top of the blade is a slit and supposedly it obviously makes it lighter because it's just less material but I guess it also makes it you know less better more aerodynamic when you push it forward I guess I don't know what I'm reading at the top and the bottom are shaped slightly differently so you can have more complex sawpuck handling sure at the something to this stick that it may or may not be an improvement it could end up being crazy like the bathing suit and like I'm imagining like holding the stick and the one thing I can see right away is that you could almost like tip the puck up and catch the pucks corner in that thing and like you could do weird stuff with this stick maybe yeah they're calling it sling tech for a reason anyway so that's interesting it's a new thing we'll see what comes of it but it just reminds me that like hey I have memories of like being in middle school high school and the plastic sticks we used like had holes or slits in them in that spot already all my road hockey sticks had that and I always tried to at the time I remember thinking like hey how come the pros don't have this hole in their stick that this has either a it's just decoration it doesn't actually help you right be they're not allowed to this rules there maybe they can't because they're six or wooden right the same way that like minor league little league baseball uses metal bats but pros have to use wooden ones I thought it was you know something like that right whatever and I'm sure it didn't I knew it didn't make a difference for the hockey we were playing in jam or whatever but this is that exact same thing this isn't new it's like I had sticks with this hole in it or at least you know close to this hole in it 20 years ago over 20 years ago yep but I don't think it had any effect on the sticks back then I think it might have just been to save plastic or for structural reinforcement reasons or just to look cool and make his buy it yeah I don't know but I guess now it's a thing someone's you know done some science to at least make someone believe it's real and it matters it clearly doesn't seem to hurt it looks like at the bottom of this article there's another stick that just has a ton of holes in it so the bottom is complete the blade is completely perforated like Swiss cheese yeah there's a screenshot in the article you sent me at the bottom and the NHL is currently reviewing this company I guess to decide if this stick with holes in it is a lot going to be allowed yeah I guess you know as long as it doesn't give some ridiculous advantage like the sneakers or the bathing suit or if it does maybe they just have to decide are we willing to let the sport go down this path that could be cool to then as long as it doesn't pose a safety risk like the stick is shattering all over the place yeah the sticks are already shattering at a pretty high rate that's really that's really the number one concern right you can't have blades going like or like someone gets whacked with it and it hurts way more you know I remember as a kid playing street hockey we all used aluminum sticks that that was we used fiberglass the stick was fiberglass or plastic and the blade was plastic our sticks I had an ice stick where the stick was aluminum there's a wooden blade on the end at another one where the stick was aluminum and then the blade was plastic and straight instead of curved anyway but yeah this is something to keep an eye on and also you know watch out for this stuff and in other sports that are not as tightly regulated all right but anyway things of the day what do you got my thing of the day I forget hypno space outlaw oh yeah so we didn't talk about gdq nearly enough on this show which it which happened over the last week they did gdq online it was just it was just as gdq but it was online edition because every you see everyone was not in the same location they were all streaming there I tend to watch these like a couple days after they air on YouTube they did a very good job of uploading things to YouTube promptly the entire thing is now I believe on YouTube great job technical difficulties not there weren't none but there were way less considering you had all these different people live streaming their stuff right but I guess it helped in some way and that gdq only had to handle the streaming aspect and people they didn't have to handle getting everyone set up on the same physical place you know people had their setups at home they were already set up they just had to manage to stream their own shit somehow which they have experience doing because they're all speedrunners right so I just want to point to if you miss gdq right I just want to point to a particular run here is a run of a game called hypno space outlaw I may have mentioned it on the show previously it's on sale right now to say yes by list are the game is on sale this is a game I first saw at packs then I've played it finally and it was incredible it is a game which simulates basically an alternate reality 90s internet service hypno space which you access while you're sleeping so it's a little bit of cyberpunk going on there and you start out in the game as a moderator of hypno space and if you play the game casually and not speedrun it like list are does here it basically they did an amazing job of like recreating that feeling of being a lurker in an internet community and seeing it play out with that 90s internet aesthetic it is such a good game to play casually and explore the world the virtual world that was created and also an extra note you won't know by watching the video but I'm pretty 90% sure that this video ended up being the world record run for this category and if you look at the website that has the speedrun records it's list are has the record for this category and the time matches the time they got in this run so I think this is a world record run they just didn't realize it at the time not too sure it wasn't it wasn't like announced and I think afterwards you know it was it was found out like oh even though there was also some fooling around during the run because there are certain times you just have to wait and such so they spend a lot of time going to listen to the the grandma song yeah so I saw this tweet that led me down an interesting rabbit hole but the tweet was calling my attention to a reddit that I hadn't really noted maybe I noticed it and forgot about it but the reddit is called are what is this thing and it's a part of that reddit but I have not visited it so it's a place where people will post a thing they found or and basically ask other people to explain what the hell this thing is which honestly a pretty good idea I've seen weird things I wondered what they were but this reddit is notable in that it is a shockingly rapid rate of responses and high success rate at identifying very strange and unusual things but the thing that brought my called my attention is this terrifying picture of something and someone's just like help me what is this and there was an almost immediate combat that said this is gonna sound crazy but that is a harness for a combat dolphin okay and the answer was yes that was in fact a harness for a combat dolphin now when when I mean that's something I've seen in comic books so I was about to ask you so you are not familiar with the concept of combat dolphins which are real and are used by multiple militaries including the United States to this day I've heard of people using dolphins for military applications but the dolphins would be operating like on their own like they would train a dolphin to go do something I've never heard of someone riding a dolphin no no no the harness is not for someone to ride a dolphin the harness is for the dolphin to wear to be able to accomplish its mission which may involve killing someone I was imagining like a saddle okay no this is like a harness but the dolphin can use to carry the tools they need to murder a guy yeah okay yeah I got that yeah because one of the things that these combat dolphins are trained for is to catch basically frog divers and murder them by attacking their air supplies like that's a thing at least that's one of the things they could have been used for also mind-detection or it could be like the time that you know you probably we did the thing of the day with the oh the kind of the Scottish army ration I was annoyed that only one person asked me if that was real after the show many people clicked on that link only one person exhibited even the tiniest degree of skepticism but anyway so I actually went to this reddit and subscribe because this reddit's pretty up my alley and the funniest thing I noticed about this reddit if you get on this rabbit hole they have a bot and the bot's sole purpose is to immediately respond to anything that someone posts that appears to be a bomb giving them instructions and how to not get blown up and how to contact the appropriate authorities and I would how many people find a find a bomb a terrifying number of people that is like the most common thing people find where they're like what's this thing I have a feeling people just playing a game with that bot trying to find bomb pictures on the internet and then they post it my dad was a fireman you know where you have a lot of bombs turn up old people mostly Vietnam and World War two veterans die how did you bring a bomb home they just bring home my grandpa brought a fucking shell home we just had you're on a plane or a boat leaving Vietnam you finally were allowed to leave you finish your duty and survived and you've got a bomb and they're just you're sitting there on the plane or the boat with it and no one gives a shit yes people brought a terrifying amount of things home with the war in the military and you get off the boat or plane in the US in the 70s and you just get off and you're carrying a do you know how many times my dad had to respond to some firefighting call where literally the problem was someone was cleaning out grandpa's attic and they found a bunch of explosives that is a thing people or people like just bring a landmine home put in the basement forget about it sell the house it's still in the basement someone buys the house what's this thing sometimes they're demilled like I have I don't know where it is anymore but I had people who had I knew people had like grenades that were just they there's nothing in them so but it is not that uncommon for grenades that quote have nothing in them to in fact have something in them these definitely didn't have anything in them because they didn't have the handle or the pin anymore yeah so if there was something in there it would have blown up already right but I so I went to the site but the most terrifying thing I found was not actually a bomb though there are a lot of bombs here but it was a picture of a weird siren-looking device and the person was like what is this I think my neighbors set this up to harass their other neighbors and the answer was yes your neighbors are psychopaths and they set up this alarm thing to like blast sound at some neighbor probably over some petty HOA dispute so yeah that's my thing of the day okay in the meta moment we're stuck at home but we are going to be live to tape at not one but two upcoming conventions on Friday September 4th at 4 30 p.m. Pacific time so like 7 30 p.m. real time New York time judge anime by its cover on the yuzu stage at the crunchy roll expo virtual and then on Friday September 18th at 2 p.m. Pacific time or I guess 5 p.m. real time on the PAX 3 channel where is the finish line that's right we have already recorded and submitted both videos of both of these panels to the respective conventions for them to air so it is all taken care of and set in stone I'm gonna put a little thing in my calendar so that I know when they're airing and I'll go to the associated chats at the convention do I have to I'm sure I don't have to pay to attend them right now there's no I got well the PAX one is just a twitch channel I don't know about the crunchy roll one and yeah I will go and attend to these events and be in the chat while they're going on in case I have to say anything I guess answer questions just be social it'll be interesting to see how what kind of audiences these get because online cons are still kind of a new thing and everyone's still trying to figure out if anyone actually goes or cares yeah there have been a lot of online cons that I would be interested in but I didn't bother with because I don't have time in some related meta right after I was done recording for PAX online I did a little experiment I went to the Geek Nights Instagram which almost no one follows and I use the Instagram live feature and I did a little behind the scenes showing how the PAX online panel recording technology setup was done at least in my apartment so at least one person liked it I don't know but you know I think I did a really bad job of filming because they're just like holding a phone sort of haphazardly swinging it around it's probably an awful video even though my explanation I think was okay but that gave me the idea of like hey maybe that's what this is for maybe this is for behind the scenes action right is you know so maybe I'll do that if there's more behind the scenes action yeah also where we're may or may not be where we're increasingly playing games with the listener and also streaming stuff and just hanging out the Geek Nights front row crew forum discord is actually getting more and more hoppin lately because we like our forum we're keeping it going but the kids don't use forums anymore forums are very like some people do they do but forums are very two thousands and the reality is way more people interact in the discord the regardless of whichever way you want to interact with us they're all there yeah email you know Twitter just DM us DMs open you know any kind of way you want to contact and communicate with us except don't show up at my house except do not show up here you if you did show up at my house it's like maybe I don't know it depends I guess now is not a good time yeah now is a particularly not good time to show up at our house to ask a question about Geek Nights yeah but I mean there was a listener at one point who turned out to be a conspiracine up but before then before revealing their nuttiness they were just texting me you know and they were reasonable until they weren't I remember one time we recorded a video for like anime Boston and a listener emailed me and was like based on what's out the window do you live here and I was like yes that was cool and also terrifying but yes jerk you're right you figured out that's where I live there's internet you can figure out where I live right yeah what am I gonna do about it but they figured out based on what was in the background of our balcony because that building used to not be in the way no great I think any New Yorker could figure out where we live just based on that picture if you post a photo of New York it's like a good 60-something percent chance I can tell you where it is very very close I can very likely at least tell you which borough it's a pretty quick a really good game right where there's a foot we post a photo of New York and you have to click on the map of New York and you get one click and how many feet away you are right because remember there was one that was like a country one where we could that could be fun yeah it could be fun you know that the key is it can't be like I've seen the reddit that there's a game like that there's a bunch of games like that the key to this one is it's got to be like a thousand people are doing the picture at once and everyone only gets one click and you just eliminate players eliminate players oh you want to do that figure just be go to upset where you play by yourself and happen to but the data you only let people guess once don't let people try to figure it out and zoom in you you guess and then we show you the right answer and you get points I want to be I want the people to look at the screenshot and they're like that's 233rd Street all right whatever all right yeah otherwise get into it we played a game called Pax Pamir to the second edition of Pax Pamir yep I played Pax Pamir to I've never played Pax Pamir one but I never had Pamir two right which is made designed by the same guy Cole Worley who made root he I think he designed both of the games to is like a updated edition obviously and to his kickstarted somewhat recently maybe like a year or two ago and there was a second kickstarter for 2.0 which I did back yeah for over 3,000 backers almost 250 grand right which is for another printing of the game right so they did a kickstarter for the game and then they did kickstarter for a second printing I already kickstarted the second printing it should be shipping soon ish I guess but yeah so it's a Pax game just like Pax Renaissance Pax Porphyriana Pax Transmanity right I haven't played that one yet either I played Transmanity one time I didn't understand it so it's in that series of games their Tableau building you know card games they're you know where the heuristics are quite advanced they all have a certain sort of sensibility to them even though they have radically different mechanics in many cases yep have we done a show in any Pax game before I think we might have talked about Pax Renaissance I'll double check and I'll link to it if we did anyway so I that when I played Pax Pamir 2 for the first time it was at Pax West it's not related to the convention anyway and I played with someone who had played Pax Pax Pamir 1 and they were upset about the differences but every difference that they brought up that made them upset with something that actually I when they explained it to me I felt that two significantly streamlined the game and made it better based on their description so thanks to that I mean I'm very slightly interested to see what one is like but basically my from the knowledge I have gained not experienced but information I feel like two significantly streamlines and improves upon one and there's not much reason to play one just play two so what is up the Pax Pamir 2 this is a game where you play sort of an Afghan warlord type person during the time of troubles so 8 we're talking 19th century like post Napoleonic War era but after an empire collapsed in the region and basically the colonial powers are all trying to like play their game and mess around in Afghanistan for a lot of reasons I think historically it was called like the great game or something but basically you had Russia and Britain both coming into Afghanistan plus the Afghani people right and all shuffle shuffle shuffle right all kinds of political war stuff going on and I don't know I'm not versed in the history of it I just know that that what something went down then that that was you know pretty interesting actually the description of the game really says it best in Pax Pamir players assume the roles of 19th century Afghan leaders attempting to forge a new state after the collapse of the Durrani Empire okay Western history is called this period the great game because Western history is mostly around fucking with native people and calling it that's right game or diplomacy but basically the game is from the perspective of the Afghani people making alliances and deals with these different foreign factions to try to achieve their own ends and have some agency in their own affairs and to manipulate these interloping foreigners yep exactly so that's the theme of the game right how does the game I gotta do this all the how's the game actually work if you look at the categories this game is listed in in a board game geek economic educational negotiation political post Napoleonic spies secret agents but even funnier the list of mechanisms action points area majority influence area movement card drafting hand management and three more yeah so here's how it works is it's basically a tableau builder meaning that in front of you you're gonna be building a set of cards that represent like your abilities right sort of like in set you know the same way like magic the gathering is a tableau builder right you summoning creatures right so there's a market of cards and you start everyone starts some same amount of money and you go ahead and you buy cards from the market and the card it does that same thing that Vinci or small world does where if you want a lot of games do this where if you something is brand new in the market it costs a lot to go that deep right if you want something that's been sitting in the market for a long time something low-demand no one wants it it made its way all the way to the left side of the market without anyone taking it you can take it for free or cheap right and then you play cards into your tableau and you do what they say on them right what it's trouble I think my yelling told got somehow activated Siri and Siri somehow played a song a song I never heard anyway now I gotta be real clear we are not going to explain how to play this game because that is way too much for a podcast without visual aids oh no no we're gonna talk about this like what it feels like to play the game and the kinds of things you do but all the packs games they like I said they all have a similar sensibility even though they're mechanically extremely dissimilar yeah but like it's hard to explain and describe until you play multiple of them but your brain will engage with them the same way despite the mechanics being so different right so you buy cards you play them into your tableau and that gives you new abilities right and you use these abilities and the cards that you play to influence the board and the stuff you put on the board some of that stuff is just your stuff like cylinders that are like you your tribes from your people yeah right but most of the stuff you put on the board is like a British road right a Russian army right you know there if somebody has the most stuff in a region on the map they take the ruler token from that area and being the ruler means you have powers over that area exactly like you can tax people and stuff right so the way you actually there's all this stuff going on your cylinders that you use to be tribes could also be spies that you put them on other people's tableaus they move around the board doing stuff to interfering with tableaus yeah imagine a five-player magic game and you have one card that literally just slides along all the other players cars that eventually does something like assassinates the shavon dragon yeah stuff like that but the way the game is scored is that there are these three sets of basically like these if you play the physical version of the game there this really nice kind of like resin like you know bricks the components are so good I touched an early version of them in a pack they're super nice they feel almost stony and grainy but not in a bad way they're like extra high quality and fancy and there's three sets that the afghan ones which are green the british ones which I think are the Russian ones yellow and the british ones are pink yes right and it's equal numbers of all three and it starts with none of them on the board none at all every player chooses to ally with one of the three factions at the start of the game so whichever one you're allied with you're going to be when you build a road or an army you're gonna be taking one of those pieces right and putting it on to the board so if it's an if you're Russian if you're allied with Russia you take a one of these bricks and you put it standing up long ways to be an army and you lay it down flat ways to be a road right which and then you know other players are putting them on the board too there might be more than one player with the same alliance all players could have we might all just be in with the british and just be fighting against colonized right you know regardless these pieces are going on to and off of the board right in the three different colors eventually a card is gonna come out of the deck that's a dominance card if that you know and then if that card file falls off the market is purchased or if somehow two of them are in the market at the same time you do a dominance check which is basically a scoring round so the scoring rounds are sort of spaced out randomly but not entirely randomly yeah it feels a little bit like twilight struggle has a similar mechanic yeah it's basically like yeah there's gonna be some number of scoring rounds and they're gonna happen not too early in the game they'll happen eventually and then there'll be this many of them spaced out and then the game will end if we get to the final one the game will definitely end but the game could end earlier and what you do during the scoring rounds is first you say you look at the three it's a perfect user interface for a board game you look at the three rows of remaining bricks that are off the board and you say all right is there anyone who's like really got a lot of bricks on the board right is there like a ton of British ones on the board there won't be that many left off the board and they're arranged in three rows so you can easily see aha Britain's got way more on the board than everyone else just by looking at it instantly and if they have four more on the board four or more pieces on the board than any other person then that means that they're dominant so if Britain has so many on the board Britain has dominance afghanistan right or maybe russia has dominance and then if someone is dominant then what you do is you say okay someone's dominant who is allied with the dominant force so like in the last game two of us were allied with the british so the two of us get to have scoring basically yeah if you're allied with the if there's someone is dominant and anyone who's allied with it is going to score some points if only one person's allied with the dominant faction they're gonna score points by themselves and if no one is allied with the dominant faction i guess that wouldn't be possible for them to be dominant then because no one's allied with them but i guess it could maybe happen i guess no one would score points but if no one is dominant so they've all got all the factions sort of have equalish numbers of things on the board then you just say well who's among you among all players who's got the most like tribes and stuff right who's the best basically who's the best unless a faction is dominant in which case only the people who are allied with that faction matter right so you're doing all this other stuff in the game like when you actually play on your turn you're doing all this other stuff right yeah sometimes you're putting roads and armies out on the board sometimes you're removing them from the board but you're like messing with other people's cards buying cards taxing people to try to get money right you're doing all these other actions right that you know uh that like don't you know trying to become the ruler of a place you know all this other stuff marching moving things around trying to give gifts to different types right you know paying all this kind of stuff that isn't directly related to like it's hard to draw a straight line in your mind between that and the victory condition of be in the dominant faction make a faction dominant when the dominance card shows up you know make no one dominant but then be just stronger than everyone else right it's really hard to draw a straight line shift your alliance the alliances are spinners you can just be like nope i'm with britain now fuck y'all yep you can switch it up very quite easily um you you have to give things up like if you gave a gift to britain to gain their favor and then you switch it up yeah your gifts go away obviously because you're now russian right they don't care if you give a gift and then i get it like the way this works is like some of the cards are people who are patriots of one of the three factions yeah some cards are patriots and some aren't so if you you can only have patriots in your tableau if they're allied with the faction your allied wish so if you change your alliance all your patriots go away if you play a patriot from a faction that's not in your alliance that causes your alliance to change yeah immediately right um but yeah that's that's just a thing but the alliance stuff is really fun like the coalition's i've never seen a game elegantly do what many people have tried to do of have a sort of coalition forming mechanism because games where there's usually alliances think like eclipse or dune right where access and allies i guess you're forced into one particular alliance yeah but you know that's not a coalition that you can't alter it it's not like we start quartermaster general in italy's like nope i'm with the allies right risk and diplomacy with the informal alliances right but in all those games you know the the alliances are sort of like yeah we're agreeing to work together but in pax pamer too it's like okay we're in the same faction we're both trying to put more you know british bricks on the board as roads or armies because we're both in with the british but we're in no way like trying to help each other i'm not trying to help you even though britain likes both of us we both give gifts to the british but we're really both just trying to shut down those russians and shut down each other you have alliances but in no time are you actually in an alliance friendly with another player your different leaders in afghanistan who want to form an afghani state that you are in charge of right not the other guy just because you're both sucking up to britain at the same time you are in no way friends right um and so that's why it works that's why you can be on the the same team without being on the same team and then in terms of actual play it's a lot all the pax games are similar in that every decision you make is a huge decision like every action in the game is deeply desperately meaningful and will radically affect the course of the game or at least your own personal chance of victory you do not actually get that many actions during the game to take um you know and it's there are ways to get some free actions but even then you can't get that many because a lot of times they'll be inconsequential yeah um so the actions you do take are often enormous right uh especially considering that like yeah it's like you know you put down maybe like two roads it's like that's a huge deal two roads yeah right so as a result the game has a lot of posturing of like you could set you there's something that you could do but it would take a couple actions to do it and there's something someone else could do they'll take a couple actions to do it but you might start going down that road to get the other person to be prepared to defend against it and then do something else like there's that kind of interplay a lot of betrayal a lot of like anticipating what someone's going to do and like changing the dominance at the last minute another thing that's very interesting about this game is like i think some other packs games and like many games actually but uh it has a closed economy so all players start with money the same amount and they use that money to buy cards from the market and that money goes to the market and then if someone takes a card from the market that has money on it they get that money so there's no money entering the game like from the bank it's like the money that's in the game from the start of the game is all the money when you use the tax action to take money from other players or the market you don't take money from the bank ever right the only time money comes out of the bank is with these leverage cards so if you play a leverage card two money will come out of the bank to the person who played the card but then if anything happens to that card if it goes away two money goes back in the bank so what if i got a bunch of like british leverage cards and then britain's just sucking it up and i really need a new ally well i'm gonna not only i'm gonna lose all these cards but now i'm also gonna lose a bunch of money that i might not have that's true but the the most interesting part is the fact the money isn't come it's like there's no like taking money from the bank frequently the leverage cards are not that common because the game it makes a game play a few but incredibly tight in that it's like some extremely interlocked gears and everybody takes a turn cranking these gears a little bit until the game ends could you imagine playing monopoly where it's like everything a monopoly that you know you start the game you give everyone $1,100 and then you throw the there's no bank at all it's like there's no collect from 200 from go there's no collect from community chest or chance or free parking there's literally no way to get more money except from another player landing on your house or hotel right or paying you rent from landing on a property there's literally no imagine playing monopoly like that you cannot get money unless it is money from another player and that coupled with the way the factions work make pecs uh pamir unique among the pecs games so i think if you are i've never played a packs game you want to get into these because they are a lot of fun the the things to note is that a the heuristics of not winning not not playing but the heuristic of winning is going to be very obtuse because it is one or two steps removed from the direct actions you take in the game you have to really do a lot of work and gain experience from playing quite a few times to understand how it is doing this lead to the victory points of the dominance right like packs renaissance they don't make sense until you've played the game to kind of see how things go it's like oh so i'm moving these armies around and executing people and then this banker ends the game but how could i have possibly interacted with that banking system yep but uh it's easier to see those connections in the very streamlined packs pamir 2.0 as opposed to the other packs games that i've played there are some i haven't played that might be easier transhumanity looked the hardest in that regard absolutely the hardest i have no idea what the hell to do in that game i watched i walked by you playing it but i've never played it but also the game is actually you might be intimidated to not play it at all but much like 18xx it is much especially this again this heavily streamlined well polished not just in production value but also rules packs pamir 2.0 to learn to play the game is if you can play any other euro-e game a small world a fucking carcassone if you can play it you can play this game right it's like buy a card play a card it's easier to play the magic of the gathering right buy a card play a card do what your cards say you know the cards are very flavorful they're all like characters from you know historical figures from the time and place that are relevant with lots of flavor text on them that's a lot of fun and the cards do things that are relevant to what the cards are you know flavor-wise which is fun also up chris popped into the chat trans humanity is indeed the hardest for directional ureters there is no question it is the hardest i could barely even play a card in that game um but yeah it's you can play this game right no problem our learning game where two players had never played this before was pretty quick yeah it doesn't take that long either it can even end quite abruptly because it like i said it can go to to the final dominance check the final scoring round it can end on any scoring round if one player if a player in first place okay uh if there's a if the gap between the first place player and the second place player is four or more points the game immediately ends and the player in first place just wins that could happen on the first score we might have just talked about something like that in a panel that's going to be live at pack soon oh maybe it's like game endings yeah but yeah it's like it so in fact if you are allied let's say i'm allied with britain and britain is dominant in the first dominance check and no one else is allied with britain that would be five points for me i would just win immediately right that's just an instant win in this game yep so the game is a lot of like slow and thoughtful reaction to the state of the play of the world and what other players have done but so this game is available if you have not kick started you there should be possible to buy this game afterwards i imagine but you'll have to wait a while even the kick started people are waiting a while it is worth it to get the physical edition if you plan to play it a lot because uh it is very fancy and well made and it's not that large won't even take up a lot of space um you can play for free on tabletop simulator there is a there is an official tabletop simulator mod for this game we played it it's still crappy tabletop simulator but it's about as good as tabletop simulator is gonna get this is a sign but i will say this counter-intuitively and this sounds crazy tabletop simulator is actually way better in vr than it is on the desktop for almost any game because it has it's a lot of fiddly interface stuff but in vr you just pick up the pieces and move them like stuff just works you don't have to know any tabletop simulator stuff so packs pammer two terrific game as you would suspect from a terrific designer i want to play then i want to play it a lot after play i definitely think it's pretty much this and packs renaissance are sort of tied in terms of they are like my favorite packs is the ones i understand the most the ones i have played the most i think i'm gonna lean toward this one more if they both get a lot of play right because this one seems like hanzo to tonica is a similar situation for me and that hanzo is a very reactive game uh this is also a very reactive game the decisions i'm making are based very solely on what other players are doing and the cards coming up are just sort of like like they're setting the stage but in renaissance the cards that are available dictate the course of the game much more directly i found yes uh i would say that renaissance i prefer for two player and i prefer the theme of renaissance i like the renaissance period well you know what is we both know more about the renaissance so packs renaissance is he's like we have more heuristics even if i even if i studied both i like the renaissance more than i like you know afghanistan i'm more interested in it but uh because i'm a wipers um but uh in terms of more than two players and in terms of better streamlined more elegant rules i think i would lean towards pammer two for a first packs for someone i think i would agree because i my first game of packs renaissance was less stream was definitely a you won't understand what you're doing and you'll lose and not understand why then we'll play again and that's exactly how it went down i didn't understand why i lost i don't dislike the other packs games i've played like transhumanity or porphyryana i do like them less than these two and they're much more difficult and harder to develop directional heuristics for than renaissance or pammer so stay with renaissance my recommendation is go go pammer and renaissance uh based on your preference and the number of players and if you really into them and you play them a whole bunch then go look at some other packs and see what the deal deal is over there and if you figure out how to be good at packs transhumanity let us know i would love to know what you're doing in that game how are you thinking yeah i don't even know what's going on there all right i think it was a fine show yeah 139 playbacks on this one save as well