Triforce! - Triforce! #116: The Toys That Made Us

Episode Date: March 4, 2020

Triforce! Episode 116! Sips has been watching a ton of The Toys That Made Us... when he's not been playing Tarkov, anyway. Support your favourite podcast on Patreon: https://bit.ly/2SMnzk6 Music c...ourtesy of Epidemic Sound. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Starting point is 00:00:49 Hello and welcome to the Triforce podcast this week. We're broadcasting from our coronavirus-proof bunker in the middle of the ocean. Yeah, we're self-isolating. We're self-isolating, yeah. We've got to stay safe. It's spreading. You know, I realized when they were talking about self-isolating, I just do that anyway. That's just how I live. Video games have rendered me self-isolated. People have been saying, like, you know, draw the curtains, you know, tell the Ocado guy to leave the shopping on the doorstep,
Starting point is 00:01:17 and then just, you know, watch that box set you've been putting off for a while. Oh, man. Like, that's my life anyway right like okay check this check this segue check this transition the box set that i've been putting off okay right i started watching it and man i'm loving it i started watching the toys that made us the uh the docuseries on netflix really i didn't watch it it's really really good i like i put off watching because i just thought ah fuck you know i like the the first season was great they did uh the star wars toys by kenner you know like the original ones
Starting point is 00:01:56 the story is really interesting they did he-man which was really interesting and they did so many of those gi joe you know like the fully articulated three-quarter. Yeah, I had tons of them too. Really interesting. And Barbie as well, which was super interesting too. There's four episodes in the first season. The focus is more on sort of like North American culture though in the 80s from what I've noticed.
Starting point is 00:02:23 Do they interview anyone who's like, this is my mint collection. Yes, tons of people. Caravan Barbie, she's still in the packaging. It's like she's got a whole house full of... Yeah, yeah, yeah. And they talk about like, it's really interesting to see which flavors of Barbie did really well.
Starting point is 00:02:42 Like Malibu Barbie, when it was introduced, became like the biggest seller of all time. I mean, Malibu barbie when it was introduced became like the biggest seller of all time i mean malibu stacy was referenced in the simpsons right they still make malibu barbies now because it's that sort of valley girl you know sun-kissed skin with you know blonde hair and stuff and it's like almost became like a template for i don't know like like american women so here's a question about that right malibu malibu barbie comes out in the 80s and then in the 90s and the 2000s you have a lot of it came i think it came out in like the in the 60s or the 70s malibu barbie like the big seller
Starting point is 00:03:16 because barbie in the 80s was fucking huge barbie in the 80s was big and then slumped and then barbie in the 90s was big and then slumped it's it's been around for a long time so it's not 1971 it feels like it's been consistently really popular but there's been times where it hasn't been and and it's had to sort of move with the times as well like social change and stuff like that too i don't know it's it's just weird it's it's kind of weird to think that it this is a toy that came out in the 50s um and has been around like all this time it's how much say do kids have in in buying this stuff and making are the kids the ones picking it off the shelves or are the parents the ones picking it for them i think back i think i think early on back in the days it was like you had to convince mothers before children about toys
Starting point is 00:04:02 because you're like a mother would take a you know i think kids get into a toy store and i want that one or whatever but like when barbie first came out barbie had boobs and at the time it was just like well this fucking doll has boobs like like everybody thought it was she had a banging bod to be fair to barbie i mean it's changed a lot over the years and stuff they figure out that she was like some really alien size she used to be like slender man the barbie now is is skinny as fuck but barbie used to be the uh the guy who originally designed her was a he used to design missiles for the u.s military he's got a couple of missiles on this one and then so and then mattel scoop him up because he was like a you know an industrial engineer or whatever
Starting point is 00:04:47 and he starts drawing up uh he he like he invented you know like the the fucking knee snapping thing that you know when you bend barbie's yes legs and you hear that snapping thing like he he and he patented and invented that genius and like uh all the ways that she moves and her shape and everything and uh but it turned out like later in life that genius and like uh all the ways that she moves and her shape and everything and uh but it turned out like later in life that he was like a fucking total sex addict and like he just like did a lot of cocaine and was like a party boy and stuff and like it just seemed weird that like i wonder what came first like was he always like that or was it just from years of designing like this like perfect woman also more importantly did he ever get any poontang because he designed barbie like was that a child oh yeah well i think
Starting point is 00:05:30 he was he was fairly wealthy like at the time they couldn't afford to pay him the salary that he was getting paid designing missiles so they brought him in on a lower salary but they gave him like a 1.5 royalties of anything that he designed for barbie which made him like a millionaire overnight basically it was like a this insane deal for him you know what it's so funny when you think back to these businesses all of these toys were mainly designed made overseen managed by blokes yeah well especially back in like the 50s the 60s like there would absolutely have been women involved, especially back in like the 50s, the 60s. Right.
Starting point is 00:06:05 But there would absolutely have been women involved. But we're talking about the 50s and 60s. It was like very, you know, very, very much a more sexist era.
Starting point is 00:06:13 And I just imagine the Mad Men guys, but instead of doing advertising, I would like to see a version of Mad Men where they're arguing about Barbie dolls. And John Draper gets up
Starting point is 00:06:21 and gives some speech about knees and snapping and how, you want a shorter skirt? Well, let me tell you something. The American people aren't ready for a shorter skirt. Yeah. I imagine that it was somewhat like that. But they had this period where at Mattel, the founder of Mattel was a woman and her husband.
Starting point is 00:06:40 But she was like the big cheese. Right. husband but she was like the she was like the the big cheese right and uh she got caught up in a in a big scandal where she was like cooking the books uh because things weren't like going super well at mattel at after a certain point this is despite having she used the barbie cooking set to cook the books that's my question i'm sure she did yeah but anyway she was ousted she was she was fine she was ousted from the company she had to do community service and stuff and then there was a period where um it was just a bunch of bunch of you know old crusty corporate guys that took over mattel so they were yeah yeah so they were running barbie and one of the one of the barbie lines that came out at that time like prison bar and like community service Barbie. It's like she's got a big bag on her.
Starting point is 00:07:27 Got the orange jumpsuit, pick it up, rubbish. It was always a hard sell to men because when men saw a Barbie doll and they saw her breasts, they immediately just thought about sex. They humped it. Right. But like when a woman saw a Barbie doll and or like a child saw a Barbie doll, like they didn't think on those terms, obviously sort of thing. So these guys all take over the Barbie franchise and they're responsible for, you know,
Starting point is 00:07:50 creating these new lines and keeping the company afloat or whatever. And one of the Barbies that came out around this time was you could like, you could turn her arm all the way around and in doing so, it would like inflate or deflate her tits. So you could like she she could become like
Starting point is 00:08:08 prepubescent barbie and then god woman barbie like just front just by like twirling her arm around and like it's funny the lady describing it's like all these these men execs thought that it was just this incredible thing of feat of engineering that you could make a tits bag on my chest and arm god damn it Johnson you cracked it yeah and it just totally flopped like all these
Starting point is 00:08:30 all these moms like going to the store and seeing this and being mortified nobody bought it for their kids and stuff how do you even
Starting point is 00:08:35 advertise that some of the stories are super fucking funny so so anyway the TLDR is it's a really cool series it's actually really well done it's very funny it's super really cool series. It's actually really well done. It's very funny.
Starting point is 00:08:46 It's super interesting. And especially if you grew up in the 80s, which it seems to focus on very heavily. Around that time when the G.I. Joe sort of revamp came along, He-Man, you know, the Star Wars toys and stuff. I mean, that was my childhood was those toys. Same. So it was just a massive blast of nostalgia for me when I came to the UK
Starting point is 00:09:08 having grown up with American toys and the sheer volume of them on offer and They were all very very glitzy and kind of they seemed like amazing I mean transformers not all obviously a lot of these toys were not made in America No, not even being launched in america the cartoon and all the rest of it that you know geo joe transformers and he-man it all felt very american centric and growing up there you felt like this is incredible i came to the uk and it was a bit like uh because obviously the uk 70s and partly into the 80s was still recovering from sort of the war and it had a far more socialist feel so it felt a bit like going from the future to some
Starting point is 00:09:46 dank communist country where the toys were like a cheap knockoff of the west even though britain is in the west it felt like their toys were working man's barbara she knows how to cook a meal for her husband when he comes home after a large long day in the coal mine it just felt a bit crappy like the barbie dolls the cindy and there was another one they just looked a bit bit chubbier and kind of not as well i mean this is they didn't have a tan their clothes were like homemade yeah this is another thing like because my wife has been sort of half watching it in the background while i'm while i'm watching it and she's interested enough but because it is so North American focused
Starting point is 00:10:25 like even with Barbie she had a couple of Barbies but she had Cindy's right like like that was the big thing in the UK so some of it she was like oh yeah whatever but like it didn't really apply same with G.I. Joe's like G.I. Joe's just didn't make it over here it was you know it was like the Barbie sized action men that were still right but the I mean, when I when I came over here, action men was not a thing you got in the States like at all. Like toys. Back then I was thinking about this. I think we talked about it the other week. I can't remember about that. I was watching the original Day of the Jackal when the characters in England, all the cars are English. When he's in France, they're all French. When he's in Italy, they're all Italian.
Starting point is 00:11:03 And it was the same with toys in that when I came over here and I went to a toy store, there seemed to be a much smaller range of toys that I was used to seeing in huge volumes. And you just could not get toys over here that were available in the States. So I'd go to the States on holiday and I'd go to the Star Wars aisle and it would be teeming with stuff that we had just never seen in the UK like the Ewok Village and stuff like that but I think the Ewok Village was a pretty universal one but there were other sets and characters and ships that you just could not get like you could get Slave 1 Boba Fett ship never saw it in the UK if someone got it in the UK fair play to you but in the
Starting point is 00:11:39 States I saw way more range it's the same with Barbies and in a way it still is like the ranges of toys that they offer the size of the stores is so much bigger So when I came to the UK everything seemed much smaller and pokier and the toy stores seem to have a much smaller range So this Star Wars range was like few of the main characters a couple of the bigger things Yeah, but I never saw like a Millennium Falcon on the shelves or an x-wing but I used to see them all the time in The States. Yeah, it's weird. It's yeah I know it's I guess nowadays you won't get that so much nowadays because a lot of the shows that are watched in the west for example you know people are watching them on like netflix or whatever also you just
Starting point is 00:12:14 you can get it all on amazon or whatever like it's all available but like my you know my kids watch stuff on netflix that is clearly american right sometimes will be dubbed with like by somebody with a british accent you know what i mean like there's lots of canadian shows that they watch patrol yeah paw patrol is a perfect i don't know why they dub it into an english accent because they didn't dub pepper pig when they took it over to the states they know the original voices and they said a lot of little kids in america growing up with pepper pigs british accent which is quite funny it is yeah it's like yeah it was it was weird there were a lot of shows you didn't get over here or that it wasn't as like it was every day in the states yeah and i in the i would get my my spider-man comics and my my uh all my marvel
Starting point is 00:12:54 comics really and in them there would be a big two-page spread of like your saturday morning tv and it had all the characters and all these all of them were just basically selling toys every single one of them was about basically selling toys every single one of them was about selling toys that was yeah that was the way they did it i guess i guess they still do that i mean there's a fuckload of pepper pig stuff out there holy shit is there ever yeah and like uh my daughter's into my little pony now which is just holy crap mine went through that phase as well it's just it's just everything like it it's almost like they make a movie and like frame for frame you can find a new toy in there you know what i mean there's just everything like it it's almost like they make a movie and like frame for frame
Starting point is 00:13:26 you can find a new toy in there you know what i mean there's just like everything that one new character is introduced they can make like 12 variations of a toy for them and stuff it's it's insane i mean that that's what started that started with star wars and and followed through with transformers things like this yeah and star wars was the big one like for merchandise i think i think star wars was one of the first that did that sort of thing where it released basically the same toy over and over again,
Starting point is 00:13:51 just in different variations. They had miniature versions or they had whatever. They had these different sets. It just did so well, though. It was incredible. I think the iconic thing I remember was that, remember George Lucas saying that to Spaceballs that he could, you know, you could go ahead and do whatever you want with Spaceballs, just you're never allowed to make any toys, you know, because that was like the money.
Starting point is 00:14:14 That was where the money was. I mean, that's, there's no doubt they made more money. Well, funnily, it's funny he realized that, but they had the worst deal. Like the story behind Star wars and the toys they ended up signing with uh kenner you remember kenner the toy company kenner this is just like a small ass toy company in cincinnati that had no really big lines of toys or whatever you know they were just they were just doing what they they could to get by sort of thing and then they landed the the the rights to star wars because when star wars was coming out and being filmed everybody
Starting point is 00:14:46 just thought it was going to be a huge flop even george lucas thought it was going to be a huge flop like if you ever read about the story of star wars so no toy companies wanted to touch it they were just not interested um and then kenner comes along and says yeah yeah we'll take it but the deal that they made was like it was crazy it was like for every sale like i think george lucas got like 2.5 cents on the on on a say on a dollar fox got 2.5 cents on a dollar and then the rest went to kenner so they just had this like insane deal and they just made millions like it was just it was absolutely nuts is this what contributed to that original kind of idea of the christmas scarcity of a toy and that whole yeah well that so what they did they didn't
Starting point is 00:15:31 have the toys ready in time for christmas when the movie came out and nobody expected the movie to be as big as it was and when christmas came around they had no physical toys to sell but what they what they did was they sold this piece of paper that had a picture of all the figures so you bought the piece of paper it was like a poster with all the figures on it and then you bought into this promise that the toys would ship to you within like three or four months of purchasing that at christmas so they still managed to get this crazy christmas rush in of sales and then once the toys were ready and they hit the shelves they just like fucking they never even touched the shelves they were just flying
Starting point is 00:16:11 like out of the stores like a kickstarter they sold like over two billion star wars toys like just for the original trilogy like it was insane did you know that kenner made some toys to tie in with the aliens franchise probably that's way if you look them up in your own time listeners of this record they were thinking it's gonna be as big as star wars well they made them in 1992 and aliens came out in 1986 so god knows what they were thinking but but they've taken the characters and they've tried to make them like nowadays if you think about the characters that come out the lord of the rings movies any fucking movie you got i go into my local comic shop yeah in richmond and
Starting point is 00:16:50 they've always got toys in tie-ins for for everything so every movie that comes out because it's grown-ups collecting them really for their little glass case of of incel them that they put all their things in and these were way before that 1992 this wasn't a thing back then and they've taken them and it's like nowadays they're made loving recreations of the characters so there's like john wick toys or whatever and there'll be a perfect model it'll look just like john wick in the movie but back then if you look at this they've been like their imagination has run wild so ripley has like a gigantic cannon and like all this stuff hanging off her. Vasquez has a back mounted missile launcher that sits on top of her head and has a giant rack of missiles. Like they've literally turned them into cheap ass superheroes as a vague tie in to the Aliens franchise.
Starting point is 00:17:41 That's so weird. It happens a lot with toys though like if you watch this documentary you'll see that a lot of the big like that like the the final play for like a lot of these toys because like there's there's definitely a shelf life for them as well the gi joe's toys i remember them dominating my childhood they were only they were only popular for like four or five years and they were just completely slumped and it was the same it was like at first it was like you know the real american hero yeah they were fighting cobra and stuff and then it just got crazy they were in space fighting octopuses and stuff and like and people just moved on to whatever was coming out next that was fresh
Starting point is 00:18:17 informed the media though too like that they became they made more money than the media so it was like we need to you make the media to sell these toys what how can we make this and as a result it's like the the the hand the dog scratching the hand what is it what yeah like the he-man toys were the same it was like the first first year sales they they couldn't they couldn't have imagined it they were just like what they thought they thought they would make maybe a million. They ended up making like 7 million in their first year. So they were pretty happy. But then like second year was like fucking something crazy, like 30 million.
Starting point is 00:18:55 Third year was like 70 million. And then fourth year was like 200 million. And they were just like, holy shit, like we can do no wrong. We'll just keep pumping out He-Man toys. Fifth year, back to 7 million. Like it just completely fucking bottomed out. I wonder if it's like, like if you think about the, as you said, the shelf life for these toys, it's not just like what's hot. Because if you think about it, something doesn't stay hot for like five years.
Starting point is 00:19:20 It's more like kids are the right age. Yeah, that's it. The cartoons come out. This is the best thing ever. But when those kids kids grow up you can't rerun the old cartoons because they're no longer cool and also when that kid's grown up too big for those toys they give them to their younger sibling you don't need to buy them a second time no of course and then you need to get a new generation into it but then everything's changed there's new cooler cartoons that's it i mean you like the next generation of kids isn't going to be interested in what the previous generation
Starting point is 00:19:48 played with right because there'll be something new like i remember he-man sort of like not not necessarily dying out because i loved it i used to watch the show and everything but as i got older i remember i remember getting into gi joes and that was just like, okay, I'm playing with G.I. Joe's now. And then after G.I. Joe's, I got more into like Construx and Lego and stuff. You know what I mean? Like, I think that's a fairly natural path for a child and playing with toys sort of thing. But like, you know, in the same way that we flip between movies and franchises and TV shows and games these days. But then again, some things have stuck around for a long time. mean pokemon cards think about that what's that yeah they keep coming back man they keep coming out there's like a new series that just came out my son's buying them like we
Starting point is 00:20:33 went to there was like a local comic convention here last weekend and he he just we went and he bought a bunch of pokemon cards it was just like what like like the latest series or he doesn't even play pokemon he just collects yeah no no same my eldest my eldest just collects them yeah she's got a book yeah like what she we we got like the book book with the little slidey holes for all the cards she organizes them according to this but there's some really weird psychology there yeah and and he likes trading them too he trades them with his friends at school. But she fucking loves to trade them. It's crazy. Gotta catch them all. It's funny.
Starting point is 00:21:05 Like, I guess it teaches them a bit about like economy and money and stuff like that. Like, because at first he was just trading stuff because he thought his friends would want these things. I was like, don't give your good stuff away. Like, you know, trade your doubles and trade for stuff that you need. And he was like, oh, yeah. Like, it just clicked. Like, it's funny. Like, because kids kids they don't really
Starting point is 00:21:25 know what they're doing you know you gotta help well my eldest is some kind of uh trading savant because she she keeps her eye on the trends she understands that oh she she came home the other the other like a day trader with like screens literally is she she came home at the start of this school year and she was like put a suit on some of the uh i think some of the year threes because they've moved up to the so there are two playgrounds at the school of this school year, and she was like... Put a suit on. I think some of the year threes, because they've moved up to the... So there are two playgrounds at the school. There's one for the year one and two kids, and then once you're in year three to year six,
Starting point is 00:21:52 you're in the big playground. So the year three new intake, they see all the stuff that the year fives and sixes are playing with, and of course... So she's hustling. The year threes come into the playground. She sees them, and she said to me, some of the year threes are getting into Pokemon.
Starting point is 00:22:05 I think that's a, you know, and she was basically thinking new market. New. Do you want to invest that? New market, yeah. She was like, you should get in on the ground floor. This is going to be big. It's a bear market.
Starting point is 00:22:15 Let's go. Or is it a bull market? I don't know, whichever it is. Bull market, I think. So she figures out that all the kids in year three just want the cute Pokemon and they'll trade their good Pokemon for cute Pokemon. So she starts trading for cute Pokemons so she can double her winnings by going to the year threes and give them the cutie pie Pokemons. She says to me,
Starting point is 00:22:35 one kid just wants Pikachus. Doesn't matter if they're really bad Pikachus, he wants them. I've got a Korean Pikachu. He's going to want that. So she takes that into school on the Friday when they're allowed to take them in. She's trading up like 10 GX is whatever they are for like one one lousy rare Pikachu, but that's like worthless She's a garbage. The stats are garbage. I said, what do you care about stats? You don't even play the game, but she just she knows that that is then more valuable to another trade. Yeah Yeah, who does that's smart you you braised you you She needs a million a million put me down for two boxes for two percent of the company i'll take five cute pikachus please
Starting point is 00:23:10 but get this she expanded her market further right she realized that there were a lot of boys that didn't have an interest in pokemon cards but they had some they just acquired them somehow like there were a lot of boys they just wanted to talk to girls right well so she found out that they were into match attacks like the football cards so she traded and we bought she was like i need to buy some match attacks i was like oh you get into football she goes no i still don't care about football but the boys at school want the match attacks cards and i don't care if i give them a mario balotelli or whatever as long as i can get some pokemon cards and they'll do like three and four to one because they care more about the match attacks
Starting point is 00:23:46 than they do about the Pokemon. So she realized that the value for those guys was in the match attacks. So she bought and she traded for some shit match attacks cards. Bingo, she's doubled up. So all the boys are upgrading out of Pokemon. They're like, Pokemon's dead.
Starting point is 00:23:59 We're 13 years old now. We don't have no Pokemon. It's all about football cards now, baby. Well, they were 10 to be fair so it's funny how these um how these little factions form at school though because even my son who's eight and in year three there's like four or five guys at his school who are i guess their their dads are really into football and and as a result they're really into football or whatever but man these kids have like all the jerseys and
Starting point is 00:24:25 they trade cards and they play football at lunch and stuff yeah it's like it's insane so let me ask you guys this is this is a moral quandary if you like um this is a a friend of mine their son isn't really good enough to play football for the school team right he loves football he's very enthusiastic he wants to play right now the school team doesn't have a B team. They only have an A team. So you either make the cut or you don't get to play and you don't even get to train with the team. Like, they just train the A team
Starting point is 00:24:52 because if you didn't make the cut, that's it. You're out. Oh, my God. I figured this story out. Are you talking about yourself in Dota 2 right now? No, this is not A or B team. I'm fucking D team. Maybe he can become a coach or a referee.
Starting point is 00:25:06 I love the game, but no one wants to be on their team. Is he good at being a goalkeeper, maybe? Well, that's... Or is that a different... No, I mean, he loves football. He lives for football. That's a great suggestion. But he just can't do it. That might be the answer, people.
Starting point is 00:25:20 No, that's not the answer, because that's still playing football, lads. They don't just stick the worst player in goal. You have to be good at being a goalie to be i know but maybe maybe he maybe he should try it out maybe he'll find that he's actually good at that you know it's a different set i'm sure he has but the point is that they've run the rule over this kid and decided he's not up to scratch so what what do you say if that's your child who says i really want to play football i didn't make the cut what can i do what do you do do you like all the other kids in your class all the other boys in your class are playing football you can't do like missiles do you want to design some missiles look you know you football you can
Starting point is 00:25:54 be your own man just because you look sometimes you don't want to be sometimes you don't want your hobby to become your passion uh your your job even sometimes you want your passion to stay as your passion your hobby can be like this thing that you're you're like you love you know if you start playing football maybe you'll hate it you know stick to the science he has played and he really wants to play he really wants to play about mascot can he wear the costume this is this i i don't know why i fucking asked you of all people tell your friends you know to watch there's a whole bunch of really um good youtube documentaries on on famous basketballers like kobe bryant and like michael jordan and stuff and i'm sure this exists for all types of sportsmen or whatever not only do you have to play a lot and practice a lot but
Starting point is 00:26:40 there's like a lot of psychology in it too right like there's some yeah i watched some really interesting videos recently about kobe bryant and like how he would like approach you know like matches against you know people he thought were like really tough competition for him sort of thing right because like if if if they're paired up against each other on opposing teams or whatever um there's a chance that they can't score as many points as they normally would for their team right and then they they could lose as a result so he had to like study his his his enemies a lot um to see what kind of stuff they would do what sort of positioning they would use and stuff so that he could um you know foil them uh and
Starting point is 00:27:23 prevent them from from scoring points and stuff and he was like really good at it but a couple of times when he wasn't so good at it and was frustrated with it he went away and just like worked even harder to like study them and everything and then would come back and get results and stuff i i agree with the same with this football kid maybe he's just gonna go off and and not only does he have to do the physical but you got to do the mental as well you see like you know like short shorter footballers who are still like playing at the top flight despite the fact that they are you know not as well look at wayne rooney he's like the danny devito of football and he was yeah what are you talking about you see like wayne rooney wasn't that short i don't watch much football yeah i
Starting point is 00:28:02 was gonna say it's pretty obvious. I mean, Lionel Messi would be a decent example. Xavi. These were small guys. Iniesta. Carlos Puyol was short for a defender. Yeah, okay, Mr. Football. We get it.
Starting point is 00:28:15 You know a lot of footballers. Basketball. Again, it's even harder, though, if you're a small guy to make it, I guess. And there will be a point at which, you know, I'm assuming this friend of yours, Well, you might not get the dunks, but you can still get the shots. You might be good at throwing three-pointers or whatever. Like, you know, everybody's got that. But I think you just got to keep working at it. I think if he's 10, I don't think he should pack in his dreams of being a pro footballer right now.
Starting point is 00:28:37 No, no, no. Listen, this isn't about being a professional footballer. This is wanting to play football with your friends at school. But not being good enough to do it. Right. He hasn't made the cut at school. Okay they play like every day if he loves it he has to keep trying because some people naturally will just will just gravitate towards and be better at it to begin with you're saying he needs to double his work effort yeah some people just take longer to
Starting point is 00:28:59 get good but with enough practice he can get good like it's not he's not doomed to never be good actually got like a broken leg or something can he actually physically can't do it then i mean that's a little bit different conversation yeah but i i mean there's no been no sort of mention of that so i'm assuming oh yeah sorry no he has no arms or legs right right right right well he what about being a header you have to do that what about being a header? You have to do that. What about being a header? Let's move off football. Let's move off football, because this is actually triggering me.
Starting point is 00:29:32 They should have that. Like Peter Crouch, he was a header, right? He's got a jetpack, and he heads the balls. Jesus. Oh, I would watch the hell out of that. That would make football so much watchable man i think everyone would it's like basically rocket league oh that would be a fucking toy that would be like a fucking amazing toy line it wouldn't if kenner if kenner were making toys
Starting point is 00:29:57 about the 90 the 1990 uh football team the the Italian 90 England team. Around that era, that's when Kenner were at their peak. You would have had Gazza with a jet pack. Gary Lineker would have had giant feet. Oh, yeah. An action kick. You pull his leg back
Starting point is 00:30:16 and it kicks really hard and stuff. And they would have had accessories like a fucking special communication helmet. Bazookas and everything. Yeah, it would have been... Bobby Robson would have been in a gigantic robot suit. A ballzooka that fires special communication helmet bazookas and everything yeah it would have been bobby robson would have been a gigantic in a gigantic robot suit
Starting point is 00:30:28 a ball zooka so i was thinking earlier peter shilton is the shape of the goal he's just the actual shape of the goal what would the
Starting point is 00:30:35 equivalent of what would the fucking equivalent of alien toys be these days are we talking about like a human centipede action figure or like a
Starting point is 00:30:44 stephen king's it clown action figure do you mean i mean but there probably are those things but they're not aimed at kids or massacre my thing is that these were clearly toys aimed at kids for a franchise of movies that are 18 plus yeah the alien ones i don't think i don't think toys are toys historically um weren't made against movies. And only few movies have pulled off successful toy ranges. And the reason is because movies are only in a movie theater for like a couple of months or whatever, and then they're gone sort of thing, right? But now you can buy the DVDs and watch at home or whatever. But it's easier to make toys off a long running TV series.
Starting point is 00:31:26 Right. But I think what's happening now is a lot of toys are coming out off the back of video games. I think that's a big. There's loads of fucking Halo toys and stuff like that. That culture. Gears of war. I see some Gears of war.
Starting point is 00:31:39 It fits in perfectly with collecting and shit like that. Yeah. So video games, I think are huge toy sellers. And a sustained long-running franchise with iconic characters all right so what would what would be the least appropriate toys to release based off a video game i'm thinking amnesia would be a pretty pretty bad like a toy range uh for the video game the suicide of rachel foster for example yeah exactly just off the top of my head
Starting point is 00:32:08 off the top yeah yeah i mean these are not like i guess i guess if it's not child friendly it doesn't tend to go super mainstream does it you know you've got like mario and hallow there's loads of fortnite toys you've seen those in the toy stores? Yeah, but loads of kids play Fortnite. Five Nights at Freddy's, which isn't even really for kids. At all. It isn't at all for kids. And they're super popular with kids. Yeah, I don't know why. I have no idea why either.
Starting point is 00:32:34 That's crazy, actually. That is a real one that's really had a breakthrough, hasn't it? Five Nights at Freddy's. That is super weird. Still never played it. There's so many kids. There's Resident Evil toys. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:32:43 There's fucking Overwatch toys. There's Lego for Overwatch. There's Dota toys, but's lego for overwatch like there's no toys they're only for nerds really like me well that's more for collectors but then don't assassins assassin's creed's pretty sort of middle of the road isn't it it's teen teen stuff yeah that's me i mean they're just the word assassin you know a guy who literally murders people having kids you could imagine having kids toys of him, right? Yeah, but he looks cool, though. How different is that to, like, a G.I. Joe? What does G.I. Joe do?
Starting point is 00:33:10 And he's not fucking, you know, saving cats out of trees, is he? He's murdering people. No, he's not murdering people. You can't murder someone if you're in a war. Nobody dies in G.I. Joe. Their plane explodes and they parachute out. Everybody parachutes to safety in G.I. Joe. That's the running sort of, like, meme of G.I. Joe. That was the running sort of like meme of G.I. Joe.
Starting point is 00:33:26 Even if they're on the ground. What if I shot you? Yeah, you dive out of the exploding tank. You might get scuffed up a bit, but nobody ever died in G.I. Joe. I mean, no one died in A-Team, and that was about a bunch of soldiers fighting mercenaries, and then nobody died. It's too violent. What are they doing?
Starting point is 00:33:43 They're like the worst team of mercenaries ever. That's the whole point. Can you imagine being the government agency that employed the A-Team? You'd be like, the A-Team has a 0% kill record. Well, I think that's a testament to how professional they are. These numbers are all wrong. First of all, the Terminator in Terminator 2 didn't kill anybody, and he still got the fucking job done, didn't he? Spoiler alert.
Starting point is 00:34:08 Apologies. What do you mean he killed tons of people? He killed the parents? He killed the dog? In Terminator 2, excuse me, Lewis? T-1000 killed a bunch of people. I don't think Terminator... Oh, but I thought he was a hero. ...programmed to be good, to protect John Connor. John Connor said to him Don't kill him. You were not
Starting point is 00:34:24 descriptive over which Terminator you said was killing people. I said The Terminator. Terminator 2 is the only one worth actually watching. So I think when somebody says The Terminator, they're talking about Terminator 2.
Starting point is 00:34:33 But when I'm talking about The Terminator, I'm thinking of Arnold Schwarzenegger, The Terminator, The Governing. But he was the good guy in that movie. Did he kill anyone in Terminator 1? No, but in the first film,
Starting point is 00:34:42 he did kill people and he was going to kill people in 2, but John Connor stopped him and said, what are you doing? He was going to kill Linda but in the first film he did kill people and he was going to kill people in two, but John Connor stopped him and said, what are you doing? He was going to kill Linda Hamilton in the first one, remember?
Starting point is 00:34:49 Yeah, he tried to kill her. But when they sent a different one back to protect John Connor, he was in an argument with some guys in a car park and he pulled out a gun and he was going to shoot them. What the fuck did you do that for?
Starting point is 00:34:58 Because you told me to. I'm not against people not killing people. I'm all for it. I'm all for people not killing people. I'm down with it. I'm all for people not killing people. I'm down with it. I think that would be great if we could solve every problem without killing.
Starting point is 00:35:12 But I just find it quite odd that something so focused. It's like, imagine if Assassin's Creed in that whole franchise, he never killed, he never assassinated anyone. It'd be a bit weird, wouldn't it? He could be a lyrical assassin maybe bust out some limericks or whatever and verbally assassinate people there's different forms of assassination lewis you should know by now right character assassination yeah character assassinations another one yeah character assassins creed that would be a very different he just gets up on stage and does a two-hour roast. Oh, fuck. Fucking posts nasty things on Twitter and gets sued for defamation.
Starting point is 00:35:49 So coronavirus, huh? Oh, man. Let's not go back to coronavirus. Please let's not. We don't know what's going on. It could be... The big news now is that there's a lot of cases in Italy. There's like 500 cases in Italy.
Starting point is 00:36:01 Mamma mia. I hope they're okay. And countries are warning their citizens not to travel to italy because they don't think you may as well tell them not travel i think because i i'm by the time this comes out i'll be there i'm in kiev next week so i'm i'm going via munich airport i'm going to kiev what are you going there for a doTERRA event all right right so me and sips gets gdc next week yeah oh next week we're both? We're traveling, right? All three of us are traveling.
Starting point is 00:36:28 And it doesn't really matter if it's in Italy. Because if it's in Italy, it's everywhere. I think if you really want to stop it, everybody stays home for two weeks. You shut down everything. Riddle me this. The city of San Francisco has declared a state of emergency. And there's zero confirmed cases of the coronavirus in San Francisco has, the city of San Francisco has declared a state of emergency, and there's zero confirmed cases of the coronavirus in San Francisco. How does that work?
Starting point is 00:36:50 Well, they're panicky in Frisco. You know, it doesn't take much to panic the people of San Francisco, I guess. There's got to be a reason for doing it. I'm just trying to understand what the reason is. We've run out of hummus. We're out of rice-a-roni. It's a state of emergency. Rice-a-roni.
Starting point is 00:37:02 There's no avocados. San Francisco treat. Who remembers that advert? Oldies? Any oldies any oldies any boomers no what are you fucking doing uh there'll be some listener out there that knows what i'm talking about somebody some somebody somewhere might know and they'll recognize that jingle too laughing up i entertain myself on your own what uh what have you guys played any any video games recently i'm in a i'm in a rut i haven't been able to find anything that i want to play but i've stopped playing overwatch which is a good
Starting point is 00:37:32 that's a good thing yeah there are three games that i'm into at the moment obviously dota i'm going to exclude because it's that's been a permanent fixture in my life for eight years so i'm going to say dota has always been there right i'm not gonna list that as one of my hot games for now because i still play it pretty much every day right um squad squad um just had a big update uh three big updates since i last played it it's amazing it's very very cool it's very difficult right but it feels very cool to be flying in helicopters you can call in artillery strikes it's very cool hell let loose i still want to play that as a new map for that i want to play that tarkov tarkov i've been playing tarkov and it is very fun it's very tense very nerve-wracking yeah we were people were asking me in chat do you think sips was like this i was like i think sips would hate this i played
Starting point is 00:38:19 it last night i got it i played it last night i i like it i like the idea of it i like it's tense but it's so um i wish you just had a compass on the hud so that you could call out where stuff is instead of having to be super descriptive here's behind the blue container to the right of where you are not where i am like it just takes yes it's a clusterfuck of uh playing with the team is impossible like it's very difficult i feel like maybe playing solo would be a little bit easier well i mean what i've found is certain maps lend themselves to pure fighting you don't really need to worry about anything else um i get lost on the maps an awful lot some of them are very big and once you know them i think that's half half the game maybe more than half the game a bit
Starting point is 00:39:05 like counter-strike if you play csgo if you don't know the maps you're basically useless and i think tarkov is a lot like that it is there's something very satisfying about killing people and taking their stuff yes and i love that in the inner game when you're like i didn't just kill you you're out of this run that's it there's no respawn for you and everything you had on you apart from the stuff in your little special case i'm taking that yeah doubling down in poker it is but but i then need to escape that special case isn't big enough to fit like really good stuff though but well yeah but you can put the really valuable stuff the really valuable stuff like special keys and things like that oh yeah yeah yeah some of those keys are worth like hundreds of thousands of rubles and stuff hey yeah but i was watching like um sacrile stream it
Starting point is 00:39:50 he has like 200 million rubles or something crazy like that he's been playing it since release just crazy rich going in what mega geared up man no my satisfaction does not come from thinking one day i'll be that good my satisfaction comes from thinking i'm gonna kill that guy with the shittiest gun i can find that is what i get out of it i just want to survive one round i played three games last night and i did okay like surviving and stuff and then right at the end just like everybody's like okay go to the distraction thing where are you guys? I've lost you. I'm dead.
Starting point is 00:40:26 Like just somebody just fucking shot me on a train track. It's very frustrating. Yeah. Like you get people camping the exits, which is the lowest of the low. I mean, they literally lie in a corner waiting for you to try and exit the map. And then they shoot you and take your stuff. And people will run to the exit to camp the exit. Like the match will start and they will just run to the exit to camp it.
Starting point is 00:40:44 That's it. And I'm thinking, what a desperate piece of shit you are fuck you it's it's such a neat idea for a game though i really like it and it is tense it's like it's it's it's like playing rust without having to worry about um gathering resources and setting up a base and stuff like that, right? It's just the PvP, but it's simulated very well, isn't it? Like the damage, the guns. I mean, I think the combat's really good and everything, the healing. Yeah, but it's like reloading your gun takes a while, you know? It's like all these little decisions you have to make. And the medical stuff, you don't just go bandage done.
Starting point is 00:41:22 You've got to do these fucking battlefield operations. My dude's extracting the bullet and stitching himself up it's like it's crazy even even just like loading up magazines like but keeping track of how many bullets you have and stuff like you you could find yourself in a situation where you're like fuck i have no ammo i'm almost dead i really need to extract like it's it is really well done it's it's a really it's a really neat idea you can i can see why it's so popular too because i think it's i think it's fun to stream but it's a nice change from battle royale too yeah because it still feels like battle royale but it's not yeah it's like the next evolution right it's like the next one it's not fortnite
Starting point is 00:42:00 and it's not apex well instead of having a circle that that that sort of shrinks around you you're you're limited by time you have half an hour so like you have to extract within half an hour so you have a limited time to run around on the map kill people take stuff loot stuff gain xp whatever you know what i mean so it's like it's it's it's not like this thing that you can just spend a lot of time meticulously doing you know it's just it just it's something you have to sort of think about and plan. Kind of, you know, it's kind of like with BRZ, you sort of have to react to this circle closing. But, you know, with this, you have to sort of be mindful of the timer. But then the additional adjustment, which I think is so clever, is that there are also AI units on the map.
Starting point is 00:42:42 Yes. But players can also be controlling the AI units. So you can do a run where you spawn in as a scav and you have random gear and you can exit the map and you can keep whatever you exit the map with just like regular, but you don't have a special container. So you either get out or that's it. And you have to try and kill the other players and take their stuff,
Starting point is 00:43:00 which makes it really interesting because that means otherwise you think, oh, it's just a scav. We can just kill it. But that scav could be a dude and you could be really good you have a hideout that you can um you can upgrade the hideout yeah you can find parts for your hideout out on you know in these missions bring them back and upgrade your hideout which give you like passive bonuses and stuff i will say this i've streamed it a bit it is the most backseated game i think i've ever played.
Starting point is 00:43:25 Yeah. Everything I'm doing is wrong. No, don't put your screws there. You need the bolts and the screws. Don't sell that. Oh my God, what do you do? It's like constant. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:43:34 Don't put that ammo in that gun. You need the PP-17-48B rounds, not the C rounds, you noob. You're like, come on. Oh man, there's six vendors and they all sell this random assortment of magazines ammo weapons and stuff it's like i bought a gun yesterday and it took me like an hour to find the the the vendor that actually sells the magazine for this thing oh my god and then load the bullets into it i'm gonna have to check this out here's my thing um which I've played,
Starting point is 00:44:05 which I recommend you play Sips. The new DLC for RimWorld came out. Oh, yeah, I know. People keep getting me to... I'm not in the mood to play RimWorld. You have to be in the mood, right? RimWorld Royalty. It's 15 quid.
Starting point is 00:44:18 It's got this amazing system where there's this sort of imperial kingdom and they can give you of i could they can give you quests i was questioning this the other day as paid dlc um and like a lot of people pointed out i was playing farmer's dynasty at the time which i paid like 20 bucks for and like you know so they were saying like how could you question that when you paid money for like this crappy game or whatever and that's a fair point but with RimWorld and the amount of mods that are out, it feels like hasn't somebody already modded that?
Starting point is 00:44:49 Or did they just take a really good mod and then charge for it? How long have you spent on RimWorld to get your 10 bucks worth or whatever? Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah, absolutely. I've gotten it. I don't mind supporting them further.
Starting point is 00:45:01 It's an amazing game. I think you could afford a DLC, which has a shitload of stuff anyway. But I'm just i'm just i'm not criticizing i'm just curious as to how they found something that wasn't modded or you know what i mean like i i will i will definitely get it my question too i don't mind supporting them but it just it seems crazy that a mod doesn't already exist for that or did they just take it a mod and polish it up they they're they're
Starting point is 00:45:25 made by random people who are usually shit they're not updated they're not stable they're not very good they're not very in depth they're not balanced they're not fun you know and they don't usually work i don't know some some rimworld mods are really good though yeah yeah but i i think i think the thing is the mods can only they can change change a little bit, but they can't change the underlying code. So whatever happens with a mod, it's still basically building on the base game. So any DLC that the actual devs release, they can change the game to fit that.
Starting point is 00:45:57 So it's like version 1.1 of RimWorld, right? So they've been some, obviously some changes under the hood that a mod wouldn't be able to do. I think that's the essence of it. I got a weed mod for RimWorld that had like all this broken ass stuff in it, but it was well done. It was cool. You could grow weed and like harvest the weed and stuff,
Starting point is 00:46:13 but then you could make like weed armor and stuff that sold for a lot of money, which was in itself kind of broken. And I think another thing you have to be careful of when you get a mod in RimWorld is depending on what it sort of contributes back to your colony, if it all of a sudden just raises the worth of your colony tenfold, you're going to get raided by something that you just can't defend against. You know what I mean? Absolutely. It might have been something that was really easy to set up that made you a lot of money, but then you don't have the gear that you need to fight off a raid of like 20 fucking you know robo maggots or whatever they are oh man so so so anyway this dlc it's added like these sort of quests that you could do to raise yourself in the king's eyes and
Starting point is 00:46:57 so one of the quests that i saw ben doing was that the king gave him had made him look after his royal stag okay and so he the king king you had to look after this stag and feed it and stuff but the king made him look after his royal stag. And so you had to look after the stag and feed it and stuff, but the king sent some bodyguards with the stag, which were like four power-armoured badasses with sort of these new weapons and gear and stuff. And then, obviously, someone wants to capture and kidnap the king's stag, so they send these waves of mechs at you. And you're trying to heal up the power guys and keep them fed and build them rooms and stuff and keep them happy and then
Starting point is 00:47:28 eventually you know you've you hold off all these mechs and then you sort of get to get raised up to a duke and you get some special powers and the king asks you to build something for him or you know it's it's cool and it's fun and it's different and it gives you this alternate win condition as well rather than launching the rocket the idea is to like ascend to be a king of your own area i it's kind of it's good stuff um and i recommend you give it a go and not not be put off by the idea that i think rimworld did add modding support and you know they it is a game with mods that has had allow it i think that that shouldn't you shouldn't hold that against it no no um if it didn't have any mods i was just surprised that dlc came out so long after the game has been released and there wasn't already like a mod in existence that kind of did that
Starting point is 00:48:15 and maybe there is but at the same time i don't begrudge paying more money for a game that i've gotten you know 10 times the value out i mean honestly the the it's it's like a one-man team as well right i think he's got i think he's got a few people with tyne and sylvester is that his name yeah he probably has a couple it's amazing yeah it's a great game it's it's really good so i recommend you you give it a go i played uh i played that stone shard for a bit yesterday which i i overall i liked i like the look of it hardest balls yeah it's it's hard but it feels bullshit hard and not like it it doesn't feel hard in a clever way like battle brothers i i died because i was fighting a room with like three people that i killed and then i was resting and i was really
Starting point is 00:49:00 low on health after that fight and some dude just came in from like four rooms away and attacked me and it's just like Okay, you know like that that doesn't feel fair or good It's just a stupid mechanic these games are games for masochists Yeah, like a lot of people that dive into two games like that Like you have to grind like battle brothers is a prime example of a game I really want to love but if i lose one more guy to a random headshot from some unarmored archer with a bow and arrow and this guy's it's like 20 missions i've had to do to get this guy leveled up and get geared up bam dead i'm like what the fuck like my archer just died and it's gonna take me hours and hours
Starting point is 00:49:40 and hours to replace him i can't even afford to replace him and he just dies yeah like there's nothing i can do there's nothing you can do i mean's nothing you can do. I mean, it's just like, I honestly think there are a lot of games out there where the devs are appealing to us, a niche crowd who like that. Of psychopaths. Yes. They enjoy the suffering and pain of randomly losing a guy. There's a lot to like in Stone Shard though i don't want i don't want like people to think that i just i i hate it just because of that but that it was enough to get me to stop playing it i just thought i'm not wasting my time on a game that's just gonna do this like it's not
Starting point is 00:50:15 no you're right and there's no reason to if that's not if you didn't fight if you didn't die and think that was okay i'm gonna learn from that i'm gonna do it again i'm excited to carry on i will try again like unless you're excited to do that and sometimes games do that like i i don't want i there's this growing frustration where people code incredibly hard games and then everyone loves them and if you say anything bad about them and you say oh i don't like this game they go well just get good fucking news why do you suck so hard yeah Why are you criticizing the game for being hard? It's like, well, maybe... Do you know what I mean? It sometimes feels like if you're a game dev,
Starting point is 00:50:50 you could just make a really hard game and people will review it overwhelmingly positive just because, oh, it wasn't for me. I wasn't very good at it. I died straight away. I only played it for half an hour. I didn't really like it. But I give it a positive.
Starting point is 00:51:03 Yay. Do you know what I mean? People are scared to do that. People don't want to stick their necks up and say, this game was too hard for me, because it's like admitting failure. I also think with a lot of those games, what you end up with, if it's that brutally hard, people are going to
Starting point is 00:51:17 min-max it, and it turns out, oh, this is the only build that's actually any good. Yeah, so it can boil down to that. Don't do this, don't do that's actually any good. Yeah. It can boil down to that. Don't do this. Don't do that. This literally boils down to, this is the only thing that actually really gives you a decent chance.
Starting point is 00:51:31 Yeah. And I like games that give you a bunch of different ways to win. It annoys me when a game doesn't have that. I don't mind a game throwing curveballs at you once in a while too. Like, you know, if you eat some berries that you found because you're hungry and you get poisoned but there's some reasonable way to get around that where it's not just like you're dead now you know it's like it's like going back to sierra adventure games you know like yeah oh you shouldn't have pressed the one key randomly
Starting point is 00:52:01 you're dead i hope you saved you know like it's just i don't know do you know the first the first game i can remember being like that i think it was called dragon's lair and it was an arcade game and it was very expensive because it used instead of just graphics it was almost like watching a cartoon yeah it had the cartoons right they were in it they were in arcades yeah i think it was ralph was the artist think. But it was really fucking impossibly hard. Like, impossibly hard. The game gave you no feedback. There was no idea of what you had to do.
Starting point is 00:52:33 You just had to learn by playing it. And there were trading cards that came out to go with Dragon's Lair. I remember having them. I remember I'd play the game. I'd put my money in. I would die almost straight away. Because there was no internet guide to look up. You had to buy a magazine that said is this is what you do in these rooms
Starting point is 00:52:47 Yeah And the trading cards that you could buy would give you hints about what to do on each room And it would be like when the dragon moves to this side push right if you push any other direction game over you're dead It's like that throughout the game. Yeah, it's Un-fucking-believable. Yeah, it was a thing. And it's just stupid. Because it doesn't... I feel like there's clever ways of making something difficult. Like, where you either need, like, skills. Like, you need to practice to get better at it.
Starting point is 00:53:15 Or whatever. But there's some really just bullshitty things that happen. It's lazy. Where people are just like, oh, it's really hard. But it's like, no, it's not hard. It's just badly designed. Like, it's... You know what I mean? there's there's a way better way of doing this yeah like dota is hard and the the better you get it the harder it gets but you can always there is
Starting point is 00:53:35 always a way to win yeah that's what i like about it and yes there are some games you just think oh my god but it's like you got outdrafted or that you know you you made a fundamental mistake yeah there's there's there's metagame components and stuff too. But a game that just says, Oh yeah, sorry. Yeah. You, you, you ate the wrong berry. Like you said, you're like, but there was no, like I don't like a game where the only way to learn what not to do is by dying to it. Like there should be some hint that this is a bad thing. Yeah. It's, it's stupid. Like most games, let's say, you know,
Starting point is 00:54:03 those puzzles where I think Mario, that's why Mario did this really well is you generally know okay something's about to happen like if there's a platform that's going to collapse it wobbles a bit and you think oh shit this is going to collapse and you jump off it the thing is like in a in in a game like that in a platformer like mario the average time it takes to complete a level is like a minute or two minutes or whatever there's even a timer on the top of the screen right right so if you miss a platform and die okay cool i'll retry it it's not um you know but like in a game like stone shard um where you can only save the game
Starting point is 00:54:36 by sleeping at an inn or whatever right you might it might have taken you two hours to get to the to to like the depths of this fort that you're fighting your way through just just to get sort of you know dunked on by some dude that probably shouldn't have heard you i know it's like early access maybe they'll change it i don't know but it's just like and then you die and then and then you have to restart but it's not like a there's no satisfaction to it whatsoever you just have to redo two hours of the same shit to get back to that point. By putting that in, what you're doing is saying,
Starting point is 00:55:09 we don't want save scumming. Like we want that rogue experience, but it's like, but, but that's like, if you don't want to save scum, just do an Ironman run. Just let people do an Ironman run.
Starting point is 00:55:19 Let me save scum. Cause I can't get anything out of the game if I can't save scum. Cause I'll just go like, fuck this. I'm done. Like, I'm not going to spend another two hours doing the same fucking level yeah i think that's why games like x-com and maybe battle brothers works because it's not
Starting point is 00:55:33 it's not just you and one character it's it's the overarching game is you're managing a squad a roster with like a back bench and stuff like that so in x-com doing an iron man run it's a little bit different because you might lose your best guy but then it makes things interesting or it can yeah and it's part of the story i yeah like when i've done an x-com run we lost reggie no he's done 50 missions but then somebody else has a chance to shine and it's interesting and it's like okay cool yeah you know what i mean but like in a game where you control one character like i guess like i'm not a big dark souls fan either and i guess there's you know a lot of people love these like really difficult games where you have to like learn patterns and these big boss fights
Starting point is 00:56:15 it might happen to you no it might happen to you you'll play a specific game and it'll get you into that genre and suddenly you'll be like oh maybe i maybe i could do dark maybe and then you try it and maybe you'll like i've watched harry because there do dark maybe and then you try it and maybe you're like i've watched harry because there's kind of the gateways to it i've watched people play it that have good at it and they die to a chest like a light one and remnant from the ashes is really light like dark souls yeah it's good stuff they're good fun yeah i i i haven't like any of those games that i've played i haven't really enjoyed like Lewis, I have a heart condition and I have anxiety. There's no way I'm playing a game
Starting point is 00:56:47 where I die and that's the end of the game. No way. Too much for me. Do you know what you should be playing with? Barbies. Yeah, you should. You should get a Malibu Barbie flag. That's what you should be doing. I would love to. Get some G.I. Joes. Man, I wish I didn't sell them. I sold all my G.I. Joes at a garage sale
Starting point is 00:57:03 when I was in my teens i needed money for smokes my sister broke the heads off all my action men right she she she pulled the heads off all of them i couldn't believe it i went to university they came back and i was like i wonder if they're gonna be worth anything one day i went to look at them all the heads have been pulled off i mean she did this because my i had set up a sniper overlook from my bunk bed sniping down into the barbie dream house right which is perfectly acceptable thing to do when you're like 13 years of age she remembered that as soon as i left the house i'm off to university
Starting point is 00:57:33 she's like fuck this nerd i'm gonna snap the heads off all these action men what the fuck kind of vindictive bitch is my sister she's chill now well she's dead now no i killed her no i sent the a team to kill her but they worked it out because they haven't killed if you'd had your whole collection of action men or gi joes or whatever preserved throughout those years and you find yourself like in your 40s and like being nostalgic and looking back you could have been that guy that just has a room in his house devoted to like your shrine to you know childhood toys or whatever no i'm i'm glad that i've sold all my toys and now i don't i don't have that that attachment to stuff like as an adult you know like material things i i'm not overly attached to and i think
Starting point is 00:58:19 that's because as a kid i sold all my toys at a garage sale. So, you know what I mean? You bought some cigarettes and some beer and some weed. Oh, man. I've got a lot of stuff from when I was younger still here, like comics and role-playing stuff. You should give it to your daughter to, like, bargain up in the playground. No, I want to trade it for Pokemon cards. Get a really good deal.
Starting point is 00:58:40 But to me, this is like, she loves looking through this stuff. And I like the fact that I've kept it because I know she's going to be into this stuff when she's older. So I've kept it, honestly, because I know that one day she will get value from it. Also, I'm still desperate to play the original Car Wars with someone at some point. I reckon Ben would play it. Car Wars? Yeah, Car Wars, mate. One of the best board games of all time.
Starting point is 00:59:00 Car Wars we're playing. And Starfleet Battles. Any Starfleet Battles fans out there? Yeah, there will be there will be a couple of nerds a couple of nerds bless you i'll come wait bring it down with you we'll play it here when you come down the rulebook for starfleet battles is like a tax manual it is insane we got ben though all right but it's literally i'm not kidding he knows it already you'll be in the middle of this i'm gonna say actually, Lewis, according to Rule 14b.6.01,
Starting point is 00:59:25 Clause 3, you cannot launch a Wild Weasel shuttle on your turn after you've done your energy allocation, but before you've done life support or something. It'll be like that, of course. Ben will say, oh, unless you're using the Tachyon card, in which case you can do it. There's no Tachyon card. Ben will know.
Starting point is 00:59:42 Ben will know. Ben doesn't know Starfleet battles. He's like, yeah, I've played Starfleet battles Ben will know. Ben doesn't know Starfleet battles. I played Starfleet battles for six years at the club with Tony. I guarantee you he doesn't know Starfleet battles. Five quid says he does. A tenner says he does not. 20 quid says he does. Wait, when we say no, are you saying he's heard of it,
Starting point is 00:59:58 or are you saying he knows the rules? He knows the rules. 20 quid, done. I'll have 20 pounds off you, sir. I guarantee you ben does not know the rules for starfleet battles you do not know what ben knows he knows a lot of shit do not know what ben he spent years in those we played more than walk over 10 years he played fucking battle tech and stuff you played starfleet battles is he in the office is he in the office now yeah well you're asking now you
Starting point is 01:00:26 were busy prancing around collecting mounts and raising your reputation with the bronze dragon flight you know what ben was doing that's right he was playing starfleet battles no fucking way fucking time no way he learned all the rules he learned all the moves this guy has got the moves he's got the he's got the razzle dazzle. He can bust it out anytime he wants. I guarantee you he doesn't. No, he probably doesn't. Because I know Ben and he likes fun games.
Starting point is 01:00:53 It's not his desk. I'll have to ask him when he's back. Right. Anyway, that's enough time for today. Thanks for watching, listening, everyone. We'll be back next week. Oh, no, we won't. Where are you going away?
Starting point is 01:01:04 Are you going to be away on Thursday? I will not be here on thursday i'll be in flax is going to tarkov next week so we're gonna have a couple of weeks of triforce break yeah because we're away the week after that too so yeah holy crap that's come along really quick and then twitch con is just around the corner too holy i'll do a solo podcast if all the time. Please do. Monoforce. In your dressing gown on your channel. No. I'll do a solo podcast.
Starting point is 01:01:32 Or how about this? How about the week you guys are away, I do like a special Triforce where I talk to other people. No. And record those conversations and we put it on. No. As like a Triforce on the road interview special i'll talk to a random assortment of people i know sure no i won't i won't get around no i can't be bothered the more i think about it bye thank you

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