February 6, 2023 • 55 mins
Your stalwart hosts test the very fabric of their friendship – even moreso than usual! It’s not just an argument about a video game, it’s an argument about arguments. Revel in two lifetimes of regrets as the fellas recount their own sordid histories with social games, plus the phenomenal job InnerSloth did harnessing that sick tension and using it to help us all survive the pandemic and come out the other side just a little more suspicious of our loved ones.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hey, I have an accusation. Uh, Mike is the one
(00:27):
who killed the other ship heads, and it was in
the cafeteria, and I saw him do it with his
acid with his acid tongue. That's right, I saw it.
I saw it. I have an accusation, counter accusation. Classic.
Adam started a slow role podcast intro without warning me,
(00:50):
So it's not as funny as it could have been
if I was prepared, Classic, What waits for us to
detract from your obviously heinous deeds. Well, it's a social
game about I'm nagging. I'm nagging your bit. That's part
of my undermining you my lies later. Yeah, it's already
a complex thing. Now, that's what's interesting about social games,
(01:13):
which is a ripe topic that we will get into
on this episode of One Upsmanship where we talk about
video games. We're two pals. My name's Michael Swain, my
name is Adam Cancer, and we've been pals. But in
this you know, cutthroat world of two legged aliens up
till now, Yes, can anybody really have a friendship in this?
(01:33):
In the world of among us the game that we're
gonna be Yeah, an hour from now, we will have
been pals that way and one and somebody will be
guys tonight because we're talking about a twenty ish I
think Sensation actually released inen but had a huge spike
(01:56):
and popularity, which is when most of you probably heard
about it. If you have. It's a cute, funky, simple
little social game that took the world by storm called
among Us. It's a great game by developer Inner Sloth.
Wanted to give them a shout out because man, I
bet this is so fun for them, Like to some degree,
I'm sure they accepted with humility that like we'll get
(02:19):
into it. But like luck is involved, right or fit
or whimsy, Like for this game to have been such
a cultural phenomenon and presumably make them so wealthy, that
must be delightful. I mean, this is a good job,
inter Sloth. This is they're a small team. This is
like Blair Witch. This is like, man, you hit everything
at the right time. Uh. And like also it was
(02:42):
a good idea, but it wasn't like I mean, I
don't want to say too much now, it also involved
stuff you couldn't have predicted for Uh, it's a wonderful game.
We're gonna talk about it today. We should pass our
first checkpoint and jump right into tell Me Like I'm
a bit, don't you think yep, So we passed it
check point. That means we're in the middle of a
game and a bunch of Randall's quit out, ruining the game.
(03:04):
So we got ejected to the lobby and had to
start over. One of my main gripes with playing p
VP in this game, uh, which reviewers mentioned I noticed
when I was doing a review round up to inform
this episode, So it is a thing. Uh. There's a
lot of call for them to disincentivize quitting, which I
think all PvP games have struggle with absolute handle that
(03:26):
twitters and flakes. Um. But speaking of quitters and flakes,
Adam and I are gonna know give you a segment
called tell me Like I made that, where, in case
you're unfamiliar with among us entirely, we briefly explain what
the deal with it is, so you have context for
our destruct our destruction, our conversation to come about where
(03:47):
it lands in the medium of video games, and how
it affects it, if at all, uh, and whether it
makes the celestial hard drive. So Adam, I've been doing.
I mean, people won't know this, but in the batch
we've been recording today, I've been doing intros, mostly doing
some of them. Yeah, I guess it's half and half.
Can you take this? I'll take it absolutely. Tell me
like I made bit, I will. Among Us is a
(04:10):
video game. Uh. It was designed in but like we said,
it kind of it kind of took off right around
the time of the pandemic, uh, swarm of the Earth.
Those things are not coincidental. Um and Uh it's it's
a fairly simple game. It's it's uh is pixel art
the right term. It's not quite pixelar, but it's pretty.
(04:31):
It's pretty rudimentary like sn It's like a simple drawn
doodle sn S style overhead game in which between four
and fifteen players. Ideally they're all online, though uh sometimes
I guess you can use randos, right, you can couch this?
Uh oh no, I'm asking you. I didn't think you could.
(04:54):
Oh maybe you can't. Maybe I got that wrong. Anyway,
between four and fifteen players, so it is a multiplayer
game are basically, uh, these two legged aliens and space
shoots space suits running around uh an environment. There's like
five to ten maps something like that. Oh, those foremaps
excuse me, there's only four in my bad and Uh,
essentially what happens is one between one and three, I
(05:16):
think depends on how many depends on how many players
you have. Are chosen as an impostor and h that
means that their job is to murder everybody and get
away with it without anybody seeing anything. Um. And the
rest of you are normal ship crewmates who wander around
trying to repair pieces of the ship that are broken,
because of course the ship is broken, and once it
(05:37):
gets repaired, you escape. The goal of the impostor is
to murder everybody. The goal of the crewmate is to
fix the ship and to get rid of the impostor,
thus making the world safe again. UM. And it's very
simple in that way. You're just kind of running around
with little mini games, uh, solving puzzles and hoping to
survive if you are not the impostor. And at the
(05:58):
end of each round, accusations are made, just like Mafia
if you've played that game, that card game, UM, and
people are saying this person is the impostor. You can
call for meeting at any time, by the way, and
people vote, and if they vote that you are the impostor.
They ship you out into the dark void of space,
and we discover if you were, in fact the impostor
(06:20):
based on whether the game continues or not, or based
on whether the right number of impostors have been revealed
or not. And that's it. It's a very it's pretty simple.
Games last between I don't know, five and fifteen minutes roughly,
and uh, it's a great way to find out a
whole lot about your friends. That's pretty much it. Well done. Um,
you forgot Yeah, that it well, I guess you you
(06:43):
said it, but I would say it's friendship, poison it relationship.
I agree, destroys if you're someone who feels deeply and
is very sensitive, like myself, it's a toxic mix. We're
that and recrimination, which I did forget one key element.
So once you're once you're killed or voted out, you
can be a ghost. You're a ghost, which means you
(07:04):
can see what everybody else can see. When you're a crewmate,
a crew member or an impostor, you have a limited
cone of vision, so you can't see everything. Um, and
of course you're limited by the room you're in and
stuff as well, So ghost everything I don't know about you,
but when I played this in real life in college,
when you were a ghost, because the dead can't speak,
(07:25):
or it will ruin some of the you can start
card counting or you know, process of elimination. Who's what? Um,
they would or we would make people. I guess I
was part of it. Yeah. Yeah, in Mafia, when you died,
you'd have to go stand outside on the freezing cold
until the game was over because you can't real punish
allowed to interact. Yeah, like you guys just didn't punishment
(07:47):
that there's no gentleman's agreement for you. It was like, no,
we don't. Part of a bit was like if someone
came in because they're like, I'm just gonna use the bathroom, guys,
you'd be like, fuck you ghost, the dead don't. It's
a game that rings out the worst new people. Maybe
I have a friend group, Uh the present company exclusive
of course, let's get into our next segment. Um. So
(08:09):
we pass a checkpoint. Uh, one of us is ejected
from the airlock. A two player game of among us
would be fairly born mostly the game. So it's over.
So the game's over. And now that we've processed the game,
we can look back on it and give our rants
gamer rants. This is where we say the subjective take
that each of us has on our experience with the game.
(08:32):
I'll go first, since Adam did the tell me like
I made big segments, so player one plugging in Michael Swain,
I kind of tipped it already. But and it's not
to say I dislike this game, So I guess I'll
bring that into the mix for my rant. So I
guess my rant is the positive take on this is
that by gamifying. Mmmmm, here's a compelling way to say that.
(08:54):
Let me start over, so you know how. There's something
that's often spoken about, which is that it becomes easier
and easier to take a human life the more technology
buffer is interposed between you and the actual killing, to
extrapolating out to pressing a button and someone you've never
met far across the world is killed by a drone. Right, Um,
(09:15):
this has been shown and we worry about it. What
will happen when the Boston Dynamics dog with a gun
strap to it? You know, someone can just in the
government could just text kill that guy and they'll just
get a text back that says that guy was killed. Like,
if you don't have to viscerally experience that, Uh, how
can your conscience come into play? And is that a problem?
I actually feel that that happens here in a positive way,
(09:38):
by which I mean I've played this game in real life.
And I want to get into some anecdotes because among
Us is a simple game, and I think we'll have
to talk about social games in general. Slash we get
to this is a good excuse to talk about social
games in general. We don't get to cover them often. Um,
but as far as among Us specifically, which is modeled
on a game called Mafia or some people regionally it
(09:59):
could be called Werewolf. Uh. And there's slight variations, right,
but a structured game of lying to your friends, someone
to share. If someone's a doctor, you go to sleep,
you wake up, you you all debate who did it? Uh?
These have always historically for me been traumatic, like literally
has uh Uh. Well, I'll tell the anecdotes during game on.
(10:23):
There's two I want to tell that it really happened
that are are emblematic, but I'll just leave it there.
They're not pleasant. I don't like lying to my friends,
which is very interesting because throughout my childhood I was.
I was a kid who lied a lot, and I
it's been a chronic issue, like I had to work
to be not a liar, which I'm not today proud
(10:44):
to say, but it's still man. It's so, this is
gonna be a psychologically complex SWAM episode, guys, But um,
and there's and I want to save a lot of
it for game on UM. So how do I bring
this to an end in a graceful way where I
actually said something in my rant that's meaning um, and
that is that the gamification of this totally takes a
(11:04):
lot of the sting out. I don't take it as personally.
I'm not as thin skinned about it, and I found
it much more enjoyably fun. And the fact that it's
plugged into technology and that it's often happening during a stream.
We played this a lot with our friends on stream
made it feel like an improv game where we're all
performing and it doesn't matter who lives or dies. It's
(11:26):
about the fun of it. It's about the spectacle. It's
about the fact that when you're watching multi stream and
someone gets killed, the people who killed them can no
longer hear them, but other people can hear them. Go funk.
I knew it was you. I knew it was you,
you son of a bitch. Like, that's so fun. I
think it's way more fun in a gamified, technologically enhanced
way than it ever was playing it with my friends
(11:49):
to kill time in college when I actually found it
upsetting and depressing. That's my rant. I love that rant
uh player to Adam Ganzer plugging in. Yeah, I think
the genius here is that they gave they programmed a
game that that gives you all the experiences that you
(12:10):
want and a few that you didn't know you wanted,
of a game that I feel like almost everybody in
any social group has probably played before, right, Like it's
certainly I mean I don't know, for in my southern
California resident world, everybody knew what Mafia was. Everybody's played Mafia,
So I mean it's almost the equivalent of like finding
a great game version of Duck Duck Goose or something
(12:31):
you know that like delivers on like yeah, yeah, getting
chase and almost being caught and getting there first, and
they delivered some great game of that. This is like that, Um,
all of my friends are evil bastards. That's what I
learned from among us, they're all evil, especially Dave. Uh
I The thing that is like uncomfortable about them, That's right, Dave.
(12:53):
The thing that is like uncomfortable about among us is that,
like you, you learn a little bit about who you
are socially from the way the game goes. Like that's
like an unintended artifact of these games, and it completely
happens every time, right, Like, uh, there's there's just like
social dynamics that these games bring out that are I
(13:15):
think a little uncomfortable. At least they're uncomfortable for me.
I always find like, oh, I'm the evil guy in
this group. That's how everybody I get uncomfortable making morally
dubious decisions to NPC. Now it's my actual friend. Yeah,
Like and it does require a kind of like like
being good at lying and stuff. Because like another touchdowne
for this game is the thing the board game the thing,
(13:36):
um because similar to that and again or I would
say the movie, well, but yeah, the board game based
on the movie. Uh So Like again, it requires like
finding the thing that that compels other people to vote
for you. It's almost like the equivalent of like running
for president in sixth grade, you know, what I mean
where it's like you're not you're not getting elected based
on the issues. You're getting elected based on you had
(13:59):
the best rap and you had the coolest right, right,
And that's like that is fun And this game is
a great backbone for those kinds of things. Like it's
not exactly the best kind of thing for like a
for like a dinner party, but it's the equivalent of
a fun game at a dinner party. Right. Uh. That's
that's what the role that this game uh served, especially
(14:23):
in the pandemic where it was impossible to get together
with your friends and stay safe. It was impossible to
do that. So of course it took off, you know,
because it's like delivering the social dopamine hit that we
all were missing, you know. And it's great like and
and there were so many like famous people playing it
and stuff, and you could see like how it really
touched on a universal part of human experience in a
(14:44):
great way. Um, I don't have a lot of negatives,
and that it revealed stuff to them like yeah, you
see unvarnished, like that's what that celebrities really like, that's
the right. That was the joy of it in watching
clips of it is like, Oh, they're like actually kind
of a only person and I didn't know that. Like,
I like AOC is definitely like a sweetheart with her friends,
(15:05):
you know, like when you saw her playing a second Oh,
you're fun in this Like that's great. Uh. This is
why I would never intentionally broadcast myself playing this game again,
because I'm a monster. I'm very ruthless about murders. I
really am, uh, and I get very cutthroat about it. Uh,
because I'm viciously competitive in this game. Is not a
(15:26):
good uh expose of that. Um. The mini games themselves
are very simple. There's nothing wrong with them. I liked
it their time bound, but they're easy enough that anybody
can do them. And uh, the rules are are broad
enough that you can pick this game up and learn
it in like fifteen minutes. Like you can understand, you know,
in fifteen minutes how to play it pretty easily. To
(15:48):
be really great at it, though, is a lifetime of
socialization and that I love. I just want to add
one more thing. Apparently they've added some updates in recent
months where there are roles. They're just crewmate roles, like
you can have like special powers and stuff. I haven't
played too much with those roles, so I don't know
anything about them. I don't know how they enhance her
(16:09):
or don't enhance the game. I imagine it's kind of
nice to have like somebody else who can use the
events besides just the impostors. Yeah, the engineers can use
the like scientists can check player vitals at anytime. It's
minor stuff like stuff that like negate some of the
tools that the impostors have. Because I will say early
in the game, if you were like really good at it,
(16:30):
like if you understood the mini games, you could destroy everybody.
Like I played around with Alabre who's a friend of ours,
where we were both the impostor and there was like
a bunch of other people and it was like the
round last of two minutes, and we killed fucking everybody.
You know. Yeah, sorry, So it had it's not like
technically perfect, like it's not perfectly balanced. Um, but it's
(16:54):
hard because you're designing a game that's really about hanging
out with your friends, so like, uh, it just creates
this like you know, it's not for a gamer who's
looking for a really challenging or unique input output experience.
It's really about like, what how is your friend group?
That's how good the game is. Then that's my ransom.
(17:14):
Stick into it. Uh, now it's time for break. I
think that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, hop in the
vents about that time. Um so we'll hop into the
vents and murder everyone. So when we're when we come back,
there will there will be no one. Everyone will be murdered,
um which, and we'll be shouting into the void, even
(17:35):
building towards this for years, welcome back no one, because
everyone's a dead, murdered corpse. This is still one upsmanship
Mike and Adam. And we're talking about among us game
on segment working, which means that we're just gonna we
(17:58):
get to say all the things we want to say.
I start with a funny star please, I would love
for you too, So the okay too? Because one so quick. Um.
The two worst times I played a game like this
one was literally Mafia, which was a friend of mine.
I don't even want to say their name, but a
(18:18):
friend of mine who's no longer really a friend. We've
drifted apart in the middle of one of these Mafia
things looked and told me, by the way, I wasn't
lying I was a peasant or whatever. I was a villager,
and I said, it's not me. I'm a villager and
I promised, and they said to everyone, all of our
beloved friends. I can tell he's lying because I can
(18:41):
look in his eyes and I can just see that
he has a liar's soul. He is a liar, like
as a person, and I our friendship never really recover
and like you mean really like like holy in life,
and she's like yeah, and it's yeah, okay. So we'll
(19:01):
get into my history of long later because I did
have a child. But the other anecdote I wanted to
tell was Griffin Raoul, friend of the pod. If you
listen to us over at patreon dot com slash small Beans,
you can hear him guests on many of our pods.
He's a scientist, monk, marathon runner, cool guy. Um. Since
we were like seven years old and had days where
(19:22):
we were like, I'm not your friend anymore, right, The
biggest fight we've ever had was towards the end of college, UM,
when he drove me to a friend's house to play
a game called diplomacy, which is like risk, but instead
of rolling dice, you lie to each other. It's a
social game much like Mafia, but with a world map
and you're trying to conquer everyone. And it takes eight
(19:42):
hours to play famously and we got there to my
friends like dorm and in the first round it's about
making compacts and then double crossing each other. In the
first round, we go into a room and he goes,
I swear I'm gonna do this, blah blah blah, I
swear on our friendship. And I said, oh, here we go. Well,
then that's we have. And he said, we have a
(20:02):
huge advantage because none of these people have been best
friends since we're five. Like I could say I swear
on this or that, and yeah, I could still, but
I'm swearing on our friends. Like and I go, meaning like,
if you lie, then we won't be friends anymore. And
he's like, that's right, and I said, well, okay, then
this does give us. He eliminated me completely from the map.
(20:23):
It was all a lie and I went for a walk,
uh to walk around for hours because he I needed
him to drive me home eight hours later. So I
walked around for hours listening to the same not a
surf song on repeat. It's called Amateur tears running down
my face, thinking, well, we're not friends anymore. That's the
end of our azing Like this is the kind of
(20:47):
ship that you can't like. A video game can't produce
this unless it's a social video game. And I love this.
They're harnessing they didn't invent it, that they did not
invent it, They're just capitalizing at the perfect moment on it.
I'll tell one anecdote of my own that really thrills me,
so like my the thing that happens to me every
time I play this game is specifically, but really all
(21:09):
these games in general, but this one is I get
killed immediately, and I have over time, I've learned to
accept that a lot a large percentage of my friends
or just people who know me in real life think
of me as threatening. And I don't know why, because
I think Mike can validate I'm a very kind person. Uh,
you just characterized. But it's games specifically. You just said
(21:30):
your games you are so people want to eliminate. Yes,
I get eliminated fast all the fucking time, right, that's
what happens. So anytime I do get like fucking allowed
to live long enough, I'm out, Like I'm like I'm
out for blood because it's like it's revenge time. Right.
So one time I was playing with our group of friends,
including Tom Ryman and Tom it just seemed to me
(21:52):
like he was the impostor. But I had literally no evidence,
right other than he had been quiet. So you never
really I picked this for unless unless you see it.
That's exactly it. I picked this person, so fuck them
unless you see it, right, So, like I had to
make something up, so I said, I think it's Tom.
He's been slinking around, right. I just said he was
(22:12):
slinking around. That was the evidence, and everybody liked the
idea that he was slinking around so much, and he
got so fucking mad. He's like slinking around. How is
that a proof for anything? Right? These are the kind
of conversations you get into. And of course they ejected
him into space and he was the impostor. And it
was one of the greatest moments I've had in games
ever because I picked him and it just happened to
(22:35):
be true. I literally just had the cool rap song
at my sixth grade presidential election. That's all it is. Man.
It's like there is no like I know there's people
out there like who would say there's a strategy to it,
and I'm sure there is, but the yeah, but the
fun of it is not really the strategy. The fun
of it is the politics, you know, like the Jerryman
(22:57):
during and the manipulation of your friends. That's the of it.
But it also speaks I guess it's fist fun. I
guess what I'm saying is it's the quote unquote fun
is and the tensions. So speaking of harnessing, right, if
you played these mini games as activities in and of themselves,
it would be the most boring, would almost in a
(23:18):
sense where I sometimes question, like, what was warrior Ware
is about? That was really boring? Um? But uh, and
yet these are not. They're super tense, which no other
mini game has ever achieved because they cover your whole screen,
so you're thinking, any second, I could be murdered. So
it's p VP mini games, and immediately when you pit
another human mind against yourself, it lends it attention that
(23:40):
no mini game could have other Um. And I would say,
but what's interesting about that is that we're playing on
the fundamental aspect of humanity that we don't often like
to acknowledge. Well, the people who acknowledge it flagrantly. We
consider assets, which is which is that we subtly shame
or don't shame each other. They're like, it exposes who
(24:01):
in the friend group has more sway and who, Yes,
that's about it. Yes, like if you all had to
vote for Tom or Adam and you had no evidence
either way, and it's like I don't want to know that.
That's what hurts to expose. That's what it looks about
it as the person as the not Tom of the group.
It hurts to hear that. And like I'm not kidding,
(24:23):
I quit among us for a very long time because
like I was really bummed about that part of my
friends group, Like, oh shit, Like at the end of
the day, I've I matter less than these people do,
Like they like me and stuff. Sure, but like they
would say, if this other person first, just like in
a in a in a murder storm with a blank slate,
(24:43):
I get the last ship out, you know, And that hurts, man,
you know, And that's the bummer about these games, but
also the thrill of it a little bit, I think
without those like the core of it's the core of
poker is not the mathematics of credits it's bluffing people,
it's lying as someone and having them believe you that threat.
And now I think that you can. I think it's
(25:05):
important to sort of see the game in a as
having a kind of vacuum right where it's like, really,
anything is on the table because this isn't the real thing.
And I think that's how Griffin plays and I kind
of play like that too, where it's like, look, I'll
say anything to win the game. What do I care?
This is that's what the game requires, you know, Like
Priffin is very competitive like you and feels that within
(25:27):
the confines of a game, it's everything is just a
good team. Um he might. I'm not saying that's a
totally valid that makes sense. I just can't feel that
I'm too sense and it's just the way I am. Well,
this game exposed to me that I also have a
couple of soft spots that hurt, and I don't like
to have them pointed out like one of them is
(25:48):
I don't like being seen as a monster all the time.
I'd like to be able to just be a nice guy,
but I don't. That's not around like I have for
you know, like this is my beard is not a
flame to burn you. This is the joke that I
tell all the time when I when I voiced the sentiment,
because it comes up often enough. The number of times
(26:10):
I've turned a corner and scared someone by just being
much taller and bigger than them is more than ten.
It's like it's dozens of times, like in an office
or something. Man, I mean, I'm six four white mail.
If I if I'm walking at night and a person
crossed the street to avoid me, I don't take that personally. Actually,
I'm like, sure, happen to me all the time, you know,
(26:32):
little do you know I'm a coward? But I couldn't
if this is a real thing, I'd be tongue stabbed
to death in the first wave. Like I'm not a fighter, really,
I just look scared. I'd be an event shipping myself,
just waiting for the thing to end. Yeah, so I
have one, like can you imagine I have a So
I want to change the subject, do you mind? I
wanted to tag onto the end of that story that
(26:53):
I think is really way bigger a topic than I
thought we'd get into on this podcast. Probably, Ever, this
is more like tales from the Pit territory. But um,
so my history of lying, and it actually goes hand
in hand with me being a writer and a storyteller.
I would lie as a kid all the time by exaggerating,
so it is famous. People would always say, like, if
Michael gives you a number and a story of an
(27:15):
anecdote that happened, and it's really entertaining and funny, like
divide the number by two or three, it's not you know,
like I say, and there were ten ninjas there or whatever.
Like I would tell stories that really happened, Okay there,
we never encountered ninjas, but you know, I'd say, like
when we went on ten roller coasters and my parents
would know that I meant three. Um, And I crafted
(27:37):
that into fabricating stories and then saying I was just joking.
And then it became a way of toying with creativity
and fabrication. And I appreciate it because it led to
and I never thought of it as quote unquote real
lying because it's just like entertainment imagination. Yeah, it's a
(27:57):
it's an act of imagination, right. Even though I was
people some people who really care about honesty and have difference,
you know, levels of priority would find out, like, but
you said you went on ten roller coaster, and they'd
be like, that's weird that you lied about that, And
so some people would think it's weird. So as I
grew up, I stopped doing it. And when V told
(28:17):
me that I had the soul of a liar. Uh,
they pointed out all the times I lie in exaggerate
historical and I was like hurt that they didn't. I
was like, do my friends not understand that I would
never really lie to them about something important? And I
like had this masscript away where I was like, my
friends think of me as someone who lies casually. And
(28:40):
it began a journey that end would with me admitting
to myself that I had a drinking problem and secret
alcohol and that I was like being unfaithful to my
wife at the time and keeping that as a secret,
and that I did have a problem with secrets. And
I've done many years of work to like obliterate all that,
(29:00):
and it all came down to this game of mine.
So I guess it was like good in the long run.
But my point is that social games socialists such a man,
a social game can change your life in a way
that in a way that you don't want, like I
don't want Mafia to be a bit that big of
a turning point in my we can really accidentally or
(29:22):
in a backward in a back alley way kind of
like point out some profound truths about your friends about yourself. Uh.
Like that's why we like social games, is like there's
a little bit of daring about it. Like, for instance,
this is this is not exactly equivalent, but one of
the reasons why fantasy football we played that in a
(29:43):
cracked right, um, and Mike was in this group, and
like it was a bunch of people who don't play
care about sports, as you can imagine, right, I like football,
but most of my most of our friends don't. But
we all got really into this fantasy football league. And
it wasn't because we cared about football. It was because
the social piece of like everyone like the trades and
the like the weekly rants and like the competing with
(30:06):
your friends, and you know, just that piece of it
was engaging enough that I think everybody was found a
way to care about it, you know. And and uh,
there's a lot of video games that are sort of
built around this idea. Uh, this is just one of
those Runaway Hits another one that's like similar, but I
think they're trying to they're trying to get rid of
the risky part of it is Mario Party. Have you
(30:29):
ever played any of the Mario Parties? Yeah, I find
them intensely boring, and I'm not surprised because they reward
whoever's in last place to try and always make it cleense,
and so I'm like, what's the point that is how
Nintendo chooses to make it not a combatitive experience. Mario
Kart does that as well. So Mario Kart moment to
(30:50):
moment is so fun that I get well. So I
think Mario Party is an interesting contrast to among Us
because among Us is devious and is willing to let
like whatever friend group is like that's how this game
is going to go, you know, And I think that's
a good that's a good and bad thing about it.
Mario Party is a much safer experience. Like there's like
there's bumper lanes in it, you know, where it's like, look,
(31:12):
you know, just because somebody's really bad at like strategy
in games doesn't or like reflexes, we don't need to
rub it and we're not going to rub it in.
You can't run up a big lead on them because
we've made a bunch of safeguards. And that's an like
Nintendo feels that's necessary in their social games, you know.
And how do you feel about Well, I think it's like, uh,
it's the safety well you said it, the bumpers, right,
(31:34):
the safety net is gone. There's no excuse to hide
behind and and that's less true and among us, which
is why I like it so Like, like you said,
being the killer in real life Mafia, even being the
killer when I was selected made me feel bad because
I was scared of being singled out as the target.
I didn't want to lose. But at the same time,
when I won, I felt like all I proved was
(31:56):
that I was an adept liar, which, as I described,
I already felt like that's negative and I was self
conscious about people thinking I was an adept liar. Um.
So I didn't want to win and I didn't want
to lose, and I didn't want to get picked, and
I wished we weren't playing that, whereas in among us
the gamification, I enjoyed being the killer. I feel, I
feel the power trip that the game intends me to
(32:17):
feel somehow. The fact that we're all dorky cartoon characters. Man,
I can't even imagine the anatomy of these things if
they were naked. The fact that were they were, these
stupid little dudes makes it all better. And that's cute.
It just take. But it reminds me of Yeah, I
think I do need that safety net. So, like Mario,
Party never triggered me in that way. I thought it
(32:39):
was boring, but it never pissed me off, whereas I
would have tantrums when I was a little little kid.
Because Griffin, who is legendary in my life as a competitor. Um,
he's very achievement oriented. But growing up I never won
any game against Griffin, and he was my best friends amazing.
It was just like the run of the mill. Um.
(33:00):
We would fistfight, not you know, just like to fight,
not because we were mad at each other. He always
kicked my Yeah, he always kicked my ass on every
video game. I never ever ever beat him at Actually
I would beat him the first few rounds and then
he would seem to acclimate and then he would dominate
me for every every board game, every activity we ever did.
He would just dominate me, and I would ask him,
(33:23):
how are you released? A dozen times? What are you doing?
And he'd say, when we were young, I can't explain it,
and I'd get so mad, like he's withholding some secret
for me. And then when he got old enough to
elucidate it, he'd say, what I'm doing is I don't.
It was when we were playing Smash Brothers that era.
He'd go, you're playing the game. You're trying to figure
(33:43):
out what moves set my character has and what are
good attacks against that move set. I'm playing you, I'm thinking,
what are the repeatable patterns that Mike does? Oh, you
like to dodge to the left a lot, I'll funk
with that. I am thinking mercilessly of destroying you, the
human being, Michael, and the way your brain works, predicting
(34:03):
you and crushing you. And you're not thinking about that
because you're so soft hearted that you don't want to
crush me. You want to win the game. You'll never
win the game. You have to destroy me. And I'm like, Okay, well,
I can't stand against that kind of willpower, but that
kind of that's the point of view, that's a way
of approaching life. I mean, honestly, my brother is a
lot better at most political and he's good at poker,
(34:27):
and he's good at all things. I think that's there's
a kind of there's a and the political word politicals charged.
But like these like interpersonal skills are are a gift
that not everybody has. Like some people understand how to
play a room, how to play another person and are
naturally good at that, like Griffin's naturally I can play
(34:48):
a room. I can win this game, but only by
being a weasily manipulator and then I and they don't
like it, and some people are they're not they're not
bound up with that kind of moral system for better
for work, you know, like like like on a certain
end of that spectrum is you know, sociopathy, right, But
like there's a whole bunch of people were like, look,
this is just how it works, This is how life works.
(35:09):
You gotta play the people in the room. And like
then there's people who are closer to what I think
you really are and what I really am, which is like, look,
I just want to like be in the system that
you set up and be good at it because I
know how to do that. I like to achieve and
I'm conflict, right, that's right. I'm not exactly conflict Boyden,
but but more on that spectrum than Griffin. My paradox
(35:30):
is that I do want to achieve at a high
degree and I want validation for having achieved, but at
the same time, I don't want it at the expense
of others. And you can't always get both. It is tough,
and I'm talking in like, yeah, well that's what among
us does. It's what's so good about it is that
like it's a it's a mirror that you didn't expect
to find in a very trivial activity, you know. Um.
(35:54):
One of the other genius things about the game is
that it it harnesses both the collaborative part of working
with the team and the competitive part, Like you're doing
both things right and so because of and this is
like a thing that's built in the mafia, right, because
nobody knows who anybody else is. We're all trying to
find whoever, but like find out who everybody is, but
(36:15):
we're also all sort of daring each other too. Well,
then if you're not the bad guy, you should help
us with this thing, you bead, I will help you,
know what I mean? Like so there's like a there's
a great sort of like standoff vibe to it. Uh
that is also collaborative, right, Like you do these little
tests to figure out, oh I can trust this person.
We're all yeah, exactly, and like it's like Shirley Jackson's
(36:38):
the Lottery, but you're one of the throwing stones people,
not the You're not the one getting hit. Yeah exactly.
But like that's that's the fun part of it. And
it's a little more indirect than say Smash Brothers or
a fighting game, where it really is just like you're
you're either better or worse than the other person. You know.
It's like a little bit of the best of that uh,
(36:59):
distilled out in a simple formula. And I love that.
It's interesting they just released I just read an article
this morning about there's some FBI paper released. By the way,
there's a bunch of gaming FBI ship being released right now,
which surprise, surprise, We've known this for a while. But
you know, like to some degree, the air top gun
is an Air force psy op or recruitment tool, and
(37:21):
to some degree video games aren't. Like there are there
are military people directly involved in consulting on call uh.
And another thing that was just revealed and I and
I think this one's dumb is that the FBI looks
at has at least one program where they're gathering data
on how gamers treat NPCs in moral decision driven games
(37:44):
to try and identify sociopaths and future potential criminal serial
killers and that sort of thing. And I'm like, no,
you need to look at among us, dude, not n PCs,
because I will, I will gaslight an NPC. I'm firmly
aware that it's it's a sentient yeah, like you're looking
for you need to look for the among us players
who just dominate, not yeah, not not okay, no shade
(38:07):
to anyone who's great at among us. But I just
think it's what we're getting at is that it's an
extremely revealing things. You're looking fast time. You're looking for Griffin, FBI,
that's how you're looking for. You're looking for Griffin. But
in order for me to arrive at a place where
I have an answer for our final segment, I want
to ask you about the I want to focus us
a little on the game itself and point out a
(38:28):
couple of things so it does benefit from the fact
that it was a pandemic darling. Somebody had to allowed
us to socialize it. Yeah, I mean Animal Crossing did
as well, and we covered that and said many good
things about it. Uh. It at a point had two
million concurrent players at it. I think that's just amazing
to imagine two million people on Earth are all doing
among us. That's um, that's so weird. Yeah. Uh, it
(38:53):
revitalized or you know, it was a big streaming hit.
But and I think the developers have shown that they're smart.
They were They smartly canceled a plan sequel and decided
to just support. They took all the content that was
going to be in the sequel and put it in
this one because they're like, this is the jam. We
know where the party's at. We don't need to change locations.
Let's just keep the party going. Um. So I think
(39:16):
they're savvy, and I think they were smart to do
the idea in the first place. And I love seeing
a little game that's just hand drawn doodles get more
praise from us than like a Triple A game. Some
Triple A games I could mention this year. Um, that's
cute to the contrarian and indie person. In me. But
at the same time, here's the negative thing I'm gonna do.
(39:37):
I don't expect another seminal hit game from these developers
per se based on this, because the reason it's good
is not craft, and I don't know that's interesting the
most negative thing I can say about this, And so
I want to ask, like hard Drive way, That's what
I'm thinking. I'm like, is the hard Drive about virtuosic
skill as well as being emblematic of humanity? Or is
(40:00):
it just about being emblem It's because because this describes
this is so revealing about humanity and human social structures.
But you know what I mean, how do you feel
about the craft of it? To me? I gotta I'm sorry,
but I got to address the elephant in the room
or whatever. It's just doodles like this whole time we've
been heaping praise, we have to point out right and
(40:23):
like it has that Rocket League vibe. Also, where only
that ship map is good. That ship map is great.
No one plays the other maps. You can get hats
and pets, but who really cares. It doesn't change anything.
You can add roles, but it barely changes it. Rocket
League is a much more sophisticated and important game than
this is like Rocket League is rocket League is a
(40:45):
perfect physics uh that has captured something that people want
to do. Like Rocket League, this is much less ambitious.
That's my ProVet League is Tetris, you know what I mean?
Like like for better like It's maybe not as important,
but it's it's a game into that where it's invented
a kind of entertainment and a kind of experience that
is unique to it, and uh, it deserves to live
(41:08):
forever in that way, I think. Um, I don't know.
I mean, I guess we're kind of in our last
segment here, So do we want to pass a checkpoint?
Is that what you want to do? Okay? I just
want to talk about it broadly, you want, Well, I
just wanted to ask about the I mean, I got
your answer on how to calculate the drive portion of it, Um,
but I wanted you to speak to Do you think
(41:31):
there are any smart design decisions? Do you think there's
any spark of genius in here? Do you think am
I being harsh that I'm like the aesthetic is really
just shitty? Do you know I think the aesthetic? Is
there some missing cleverness there that I'm not seeing or
am I Like, I mean, come on, it's pretty basic.
I mean it is basic. So tetris Uh. I think
(41:52):
the aesthetic is permissive. You know, it's permissive meaning because
it's like sort of this like sort of zany, but
also a little like it's got a little bit of
creep to it, just like a tiny little tim Burton
to it. Uh. Would you want to triple a realistic
alien isolation? No, I don't want that. I actually think
(42:12):
the harmlessness of it and the is what makes it
is what softens the blow of the social danger of it,
Like the social danger is while you're playing, and I
think this game is is it facilitates it in such
a way that it's never super harmful. Like it's like
you never feel like I did a glory kill on
my friend here, Like it doesn't give you any of
(42:34):
those kind of uh endorphins or whatever, and it shouldn't
because it's not about triumphing over another person. It's about
like looking at the faces in the room and feeling
and who do I believe you know? And I think
that the art style, especially if you're streaming it with webcams,
which most people do, you know, like, if they're streaming it,
that's what they're doing. I think mechanically it was designed
(42:56):
in a perfect way to be permissive with without being uh,
without losing a little bit of the edge that makes
it fun to kill your friend, like you know, the
the kill animations are are funny, but also like, man,
you chopped up in half, you're like, uh, like that
kind of stuff. I think it's the right tone, So
that part is good. The tone is good. I think
(43:17):
the decision on what the mini games are is right
because they're not easy, but they're not substantial. They're just
occupying enough time that it's dangerous. So I think in
that way, it's like smartly designed so that you're always
looking over your shoulder. That's the point of the game.
They do a great job of. Everything adds to that,
(43:39):
nothing detracts from it. Everything they've added has kept it
looking over your shoulder, and that's the right thing. Um,
So I think that part's genius. I don't know that
it amounts to seminal game per se, even though it's
really important, um because I think Candy Crush was really important.
But I don't know how seminal it is. But I
don't want it on The Drive right because, for reasons
(44:00):
that are probably obvious, I see it as Big Driver
is still You're, in my opinion, like not an objective
look at the history of video games, you know, um
that we try to obtain objectivity. I think it's we're
also are embracing the subjectivity of you and I being
the ones curating this. The human experience is solely subjectivity,
(44:21):
and our experience is shaped wholly by the time we
were born into blah blah our skill sets. Of course
it's subjective. While we're on this topic, can I address
a comment someone ready to which was, um, the Drive
will never or like the show will never be legitimate
because Michael will never let anything popular and likable on
The Drive because he's substantry and which was which was
(44:43):
about our Call of Duty episode? I just want to
point out that The Drive features Elden Ring, Tony Hawk,
pro skater BioShock, the Last of Us, to Destiny, to
Red Dead, Redemption to Super Mario World like come off it.
But also I really think the value of the show
is the need of the conversation. It's not the yea
(45:06):
or nay, like you gotta speaking of being a little
less serious. Let's not take the drive set seriously. I mean,
that's that's a fine comment to say to the commentary,
I would say, I think the drive, I think the
Drive is is good because it makes us make a
binary decision about the game's value, and people want that.
You know. I just think if you if you think
(45:28):
that's the I don't want to be a review show.
So if you thought that was the point of the show,
you don't want to be only a review shills and
go to our Patreon and pay us. Don't add me
on Twitter. No, I honestly, I I want to counterpoint that.
I think the guy I don't think the sentiment expressed
there is true. But I think that that frustration that
(45:50):
some people have about what games you're willing to include, uh,
it reflects a point of view that differs from yours,
And I think they have the there's some there's they
have some validity and expressing it. The thing they chose
to say wasn't true per your examples. But I think
that that uh, their frustration over you not being willing
(46:11):
to give a grand theft auto or a call of
duty a slot for reasons that they don't they don't.
That's a that's a valid point of view. It's the
same reason why, like, you're never gonna get me to
play fifty j RPGs in the year. It's just not
gonna happen, like while I play some Sure, but I
don't like those games. You're like, and I'm sorry. I'm
the guy doing the podcast, and you have used the
(46:32):
argument from time to time. This just wasn't fun to
me for some inexplicable once in a while, you know,
it doesn't, and that's the drive has to be subjective. Well,
and I think the genius of this particular game is
how it really coalesces around the cocktail of personalities you've assembled.
(46:53):
And I mean, and that's why it's so naturally segues
into a hard drive conversation because the cocktail of personality
that you and I have are you and me and uh,
and therefore some things are excluded because they don't fit
into that ven diagram that well, you know, Um so
I think that's okay. I agree, we're really good. It's
a really good podcast. Um Now we gotta listen to
(47:17):
some really really good We'll be back with more really
good commentary on a pretty good medium video games stick around.
Well I barely got over that, but really that was
(47:37):
not what we did. The break. Yeah, we passed our
final checkpoint, jettison everyone out there airlock. It turns out
no one did it. There was a glitch and we've
all just died meaningless deaths in space. I do love
that it's an airlock. I wish your eyeballs popped that
(47:58):
the space element of it adds something to it, like, oh,
that's a smart design decision we barely touched on. We
did mention it's based on the thing, but it didn't
have to be alien theme or thing them and that
was smart. Again, It's like it's the right tone because
it's like there's something a little creepy about it, but
it's still cute, like you know, that's why I came
(48:21):
to Tim Burton, because Tim Burton is like the master
of creepy but cute. Uh, And so there's a little
bit of that vibe to it, you know. Not, but
have you read The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and
other stories by Tim Burton? Hand illustrated Tim Burton's a
better artist than among us. Well, of course, of Burton's
doodles are better than I. I'm sorry the art style
(48:44):
does not conform. I think I think that you're discounting
the psychological effect of it. Not it's transcendent artist, right,
that it makes it less. It's a calming it's a
calming aesthetic and it's like but it's not Rayman or
something thing where it's like, well every piece of this
is gorgeous and like really fun to you know, be
in we gotta something is really great. Um that one
(49:09):
you could put on the dock at any old time.
We should absolutely play it. Okay, well what are you?
What are you doing here? You go first. I will
say that I think we do have some obligation as
on this podcast to include a party game. I do
think party games are a big aspect of video games
(49:30):
that you and I have not covered at all. And
I don't know if it would it be cheating to
include VR tabletop simulator which can load any board game.
I don't know that feels like that feels like including
like just like a format basically instead of an art
a deck of car Yeah, like it's like, all right,
make sure cards are important. I can't disagree with that.
(49:50):
I don't know that feels like cheating to me, dude,
I want to do an hour long episode on Yo Yo.
I was serious, Although I will say I am pretty
liberal with my interpretation of of what is a game. UM,
I don't know, depending on when this comes out. Uh,
(50:11):
you may have seen that I was very liberal with
the game of the Year definition. UM, so we'll see
depending on when it comes out. I'll say that I
don't think this is the one that belongs on the
hard drive. UM, but I do think that there's a
place for I guess I would include Pokemon Go in
this and Mario Party and like there's games that are
(50:33):
that could make it. I feel like that are in
this sort of like getting out in the world and
like engaging socially through through video games and are not
strictly competitive like Call of Duty or something. I feel
like it belongs somewhere, but I don't think it's this one,
so I'm deleting it. I are it's weird. But over
(50:55):
the course of our conversation, I have fluctuated more to
times that I think I ever have. I I we
talked ourselves. I talked myself into the idea that it's
super socially revealing and strikes to the core of human
interaction and therefore the aliens who inherit the celestial hard
drive should definitely see it. So I talked myself into
a keep. Then when I brought in the subject of Craft,
(51:18):
I reminded myself that I don't think it's that well crafted.
It's not badly crafted, but it's just easy, Like, yeah,
it's not an achievement. It feels like one of those
games that I could make, and I know nothing about
game design, so maybe that's naive to have said. But
hearing you delete it also made me feel the confidence
(51:38):
to delete it, which is funny because that's also a
social influence type thing because I was going to keep
to the point that in our spreadsheet I typed, but
now I'm going to delete that and type delete, so
it's a double delete with an asterisk. It's a good game, yeah,
I mean I don't think we and we think it's
an important game. Generally cover bad games, like I you know,
like we're not covering games that are not uh we
(52:01):
we try not to cover a game that has no
ship because it's a waste of everybody's time unless it's
like other than but again, well socially relevant like and
I think that game did have a shot independent of
having talked with you about it, uh, and I honestly
thought you would really like that game. Anyway among us
is great. Nobody's saying it isn't. But for me, the
(52:24):
one thing that it doesn't do that I would want
is it doesn't feel like a creative achievement. It feels
like a gamified harnessing of a thing that was already great. Mafia,
a game that existed already. They didn't invent Mafia. That's
if they had, or if they'd really put a spin
on that's like wow, I've never thought of the game
like that, then I would have absolutely kept this game.
(52:45):
Um so, but well done to the to the developers,
I had a great time, and they're not they're they're
not sweating that they didn't make the shouldn't be forgotten.
Well done, Tom is slinking around, and Dave is evil.
Those are my final remarks. The final question is this
the order? Is this game the origin of the phrase
(53:06):
of the words sus like of that usage, I've seen it,
I've more and more and more seen it highly associated
with this game, But that itself would be quite an
accomplishment that you that you popularized sus um, but I mean,
but that would just possibly but that would just be
like the same as like Austin Powers creating a phrase
(53:31):
like you know, like the one of those phrases, please
do your voice powers voice or whatever, pick your favorite
of his phrases. You know, so probably we must rest
the means of production from that into the hands. He
Uh yeah, that Austin Danger travel from poll to poet.
(53:54):
He does say that all the time. Dude. I bet
people listening to there are people hearing our voices right
now now who are thinking, I wonder what Eustin Powers is.
I wonder what that's around. I'll say to those people,
is We're so glad you're here, thank you for being here,
happy to have you, thank you, thank you for being
young enough that you wanna that you don't know about
that and uh still like this conversation providing some continuity
(54:17):
to us and loves thank you so much. If you
want to hear us talk about all sorts of other things,
mostly film and television, but also other things, many things,
several times a week, go over to patreon dot com,
slash small beans, or just point your podcasting implement at
small Beans Otherwise, if you just want to hear about
video games, you're already at the right spot. One upsmanship,
(54:39):
one upsmanship. That's it for this week. Now, murder Mike
with my tongue
Hey, I have an accusation. Uh, Mike is the one
(00:27):
who killed the other ship heads, and it was in
the cafeteria, and I saw him do it with his
acid with his acid tongue. That's right, I saw it.
I saw it. I have an accusation, counter accusation. Classic.
Adam started a slow role podcast intro without warning me,
(00:50):
So it's not as funny as it could have been
if I was prepared, Classic, What waits for us to
detract from your obviously heinous deeds. Well, it's a social
game about I'm nagging. I'm nagging your bit. That's part
of my undermining you my lies later. Yeah, it's already
a complex thing. Now, that's what's interesting about social games,
(01:13):
which is a ripe topic that we will get into
on this episode of One Upsmanship where we talk about
video games. We're two pals. My name's Michael Swain, my
name is Adam Cancer, and we've been pals. But in
this you know, cutthroat world of two legged aliens up
till now, Yes, can anybody really have a friendship in this?
(01:33):
In the world of among us the game that we're
gonna be Yeah, an hour from now, we will have
been pals that way and one and somebody will be
guys tonight because we're talking about a twenty ish I
think Sensation actually released inen but had a huge spike
(01:56):
and popularity, which is when most of you probably heard
about it. If you have. It's a cute, funky, simple
little social game that took the world by storm called
among Us. It's a great game by developer Inner Sloth.
Wanted to give them a shout out because man, I
bet this is so fun for them, Like to some degree,
I'm sure they accepted with humility that like we'll get
(02:19):
into it. But like luck is involved, right or fit
or whimsy, Like for this game to have been such
a cultural phenomenon and presumably make them so wealthy, that
must be delightful. I mean, this is a good job,
inter Sloth. This is they're a small team. This is
like Blair Witch. This is like, man, you hit everything
at the right time. Uh. And like also it was
(02:42):
a good idea, but it wasn't like I mean, I
don't want to say too much now, it also involved
stuff you couldn't have predicted for Uh, it's a wonderful game.
We're gonna talk about it today. We should pass our
first checkpoint and jump right into tell Me Like I'm
a bit, don't you think yep, So we passed it
check point. That means we're in the middle of a
game and a bunch of Randall's quit out, ruining the game.
(03:04):
So we got ejected to the lobby and had to
start over. One of my main gripes with playing p
VP in this game, uh, which reviewers mentioned I noticed
when I was doing a review round up to inform
this episode, So it is a thing. Uh. There's a
lot of call for them to disincentivize quitting, which I
think all PvP games have struggle with absolute handle that
(03:26):
twitters and flakes. Um. But speaking of quitters and flakes,
Adam and I are gonna know give you a segment
called tell me Like I made that, where, in case
you're unfamiliar with among us entirely, we briefly explain what
the deal with it is, so you have context for
our destruct our destruction, our conversation to come about where
(03:47):
it lands in the medium of video games, and how
it affects it, if at all, uh, and whether it
makes the celestial hard drive. So Adam, I've been doing.
I mean, people won't know this, but in the batch
we've been recording today, I've been doing intros, mostly doing
some of them. Yeah, I guess it's half and half.
Can you take this? I'll take it absolutely. Tell me
like I made bit, I will. Among Us is a
(04:10):
video game. Uh. It was designed in but like we said,
it kind of it kind of took off right around
the time of the pandemic, uh, swarm of the Earth.
Those things are not coincidental. Um and Uh it's it's
a fairly simple game. It's it's uh is pixel art
the right term. It's not quite pixelar, but it's pretty.
(04:31):
It's pretty rudimentary like sn It's like a simple drawn
doodle sn S style overhead game in which between four
and fifteen players. Ideally they're all online, though uh sometimes
I guess you can use randos, right, you can couch this?
Uh oh no, I'm asking you. I didn't think you could.
(04:54):
Oh maybe you can't. Maybe I got that wrong. Anyway,
between four and fifteen players, so it is a multiplayer
game are basically, uh, these two legged aliens and space
shoots space suits running around uh an environment. There's like
five to ten maps something like that. Oh, those foremaps
excuse me, there's only four in my bad and Uh,
essentially what happens is one between one and three, I
(05:16):
think depends on how many depends on how many players
you have. Are chosen as an impostor and h that
means that their job is to murder everybody and get
away with it without anybody seeing anything. Um. And the
rest of you are normal ship crewmates who wander around
trying to repair pieces of the ship that are broken,
because of course the ship is broken, and once it
(05:37):
gets repaired, you escape. The goal of the impostor is
to murder everybody. The goal of the crewmate is to
fix the ship and to get rid of the impostor,
thus making the world safe again. UM. And it's very
simple in that way. You're just kind of running around
with little mini games, uh, solving puzzles and hoping to
survive if you are not the impostor. And at the
(05:58):
end of each round, accusations are made, just like Mafia
if you've played that game, that card game, UM, and
people are saying this person is the impostor. You can
call for meeting at any time, by the way, and
people vote, and if they vote that you are the impostor.
They ship you out into the dark void of space,
and we discover if you were, in fact the impostor
(06:20):
based on whether the game continues or not, or based
on whether the right number of impostors have been revealed
or not. And that's it. It's a very it's pretty simple.
Games last between I don't know, five and fifteen minutes roughly,
and uh, it's a great way to find out a
whole lot about your friends. That's pretty much it. Well done. Um,
you forgot Yeah, that it well, I guess you you
(06:43):
said it, but I would say it's friendship, poison it relationship.
I agree, destroys if you're someone who feels deeply and
is very sensitive, like myself, it's a toxic mix. We're
that and recrimination, which I did forget one key element.
So once you're once you're killed or voted out, you
can be a ghost. You're a ghost, which means you
(07:04):
can see what everybody else can see. When you're a crewmate,
a crew member or an impostor, you have a limited
cone of vision, so you can't see everything. Um, and
of course you're limited by the room you're in and
stuff as well, So ghost everything I don't know about you,
but when I played this in real life in college,
when you were a ghost, because the dead can't speak,
(07:25):
or it will ruin some of the you can start
card counting or you know, process of elimination. Who's what? Um,
they would or we would make people. I guess I
was part of it. Yeah. Yeah, in Mafia, when you died,
you'd have to go stand outside on the freezing cold
until the game was over because you can't real punish
allowed to interact. Yeah, like you guys just didn't punishment
(07:47):
that there's no gentleman's agreement for you. It was like, no,
we don't. Part of a bit was like if someone
came in because they're like, I'm just gonna use the bathroom, guys,
you'd be like, fuck you ghost, the dead don't. It's
a game that rings out the worst new people. Maybe
I have a friend group, Uh the present company exclusive
of course, let's get into our next segment. Um. So
(08:09):
we pass a checkpoint. Uh, one of us is ejected
from the airlock. A two player game of among us
would be fairly born mostly the game. So it's over.
So the game's over. And now that we've processed the game,
we can look back on it and give our rants
gamer rants. This is where we say the subjective take
that each of us has on our experience with the game.
(08:32):
I'll go first, since Adam did the tell me like
I made big segments, so player one plugging in Michael Swain,
I kind of tipped it already. But and it's not
to say I dislike this game, So I guess I'll
bring that into the mix for my rant. So I
guess my rant is the positive take on this is
that by gamifying. Mmmmm, here's a compelling way to say that.
(08:54):
Let me start over, so you know how. There's something
that's often spoken about, which is that it becomes easier
and easier to take a human life the more technology
buffer is interposed between you and the actual killing, to
extrapolating out to pressing a button and someone you've never
met far across the world is killed by a drone. Right, Um,
(09:15):
this has been shown and we worry about it. What
will happen when the Boston Dynamics dog with a gun
strap to it? You know, someone can just in the
government could just text kill that guy and they'll just
get a text back that says that guy was killed. Like,
if you don't have to viscerally experience that, Uh, how
can your conscience come into play? And is that a problem?
I actually feel that that happens here in a positive way,
(09:38):
by which I mean I've played this game in real life.
And I want to get into some anecdotes because among
Us is a simple game, and I think we'll have
to talk about social games in general. Slash we get
to this is a good excuse to talk about social
games in general. We don't get to cover them often. Um,
but as far as among Us specifically, which is modeled
on a game called Mafia or some people regionally it
(09:59):
could be called Werewolf. Uh. And there's slight variations, right,
but a structured game of lying to your friends, someone
to share. If someone's a doctor, you go to sleep,
you wake up, you you all debate who did it? Uh?
These have always historically for me been traumatic, like literally
has uh Uh. Well, I'll tell the anecdotes during game on.
(10:23):
There's two I want to tell that it really happened
that are are emblematic, but I'll just leave it there.
They're not pleasant. I don't like lying to my friends,
which is very interesting because throughout my childhood I was.
I was a kid who lied a lot, and I
it's been a chronic issue, like I had to work
to be not a liar, which I'm not today proud
(10:44):
to say, but it's still man. It's so, this is
gonna be a psychologically complex SWAM episode, guys, But um,
and there's and I want to save a lot of
it for game on UM. So how do I bring
this to an end in a graceful way where I
actually said something in my rant that's meaning um, and
that is that the gamification of this totally takes a
(11:04):
lot of the sting out. I don't take it as personally.
I'm not as thin skinned about it, and I found
it much more enjoyably fun. And the fact that it's
plugged into technology and that it's often happening during a stream.
We played this a lot with our friends on stream
made it feel like an improv game where we're all
performing and it doesn't matter who lives or dies. It's
(11:26):
about the fun of it. It's about the spectacle. It's
about the fact that when you're watching multi stream and
someone gets killed, the people who killed them can no
longer hear them, but other people can hear them. Go funk.
I knew it was you. I knew it was you,
you son of a bitch. Like, that's so fun. I
think it's way more fun in a gamified, technologically enhanced
way than it ever was playing it with my friends
(11:49):
to kill time in college when I actually found it
upsetting and depressing. That's my rant. I love that rant
uh player to Adam Ganzer plugging in. Yeah, I think
the genius here is that they gave they programmed a
game that that gives you all the experiences that you
(12:10):
want and a few that you didn't know you wanted,
of a game that I feel like almost everybody in
any social group has probably played before, right, Like it's
certainly I mean I don't know, for in my southern
California resident world, everybody knew what Mafia was. Everybody's played Mafia,
So I mean it's almost the equivalent of like finding
a great game version of Duck Duck Goose or something
(12:31):
you know that like delivers on like yeah, yeah, getting
chase and almost being caught and getting there first, and
they delivered some great game of that. This is like that, Um,
all of my friends are evil bastards. That's what I
learned from among us, they're all evil, especially Dave. Uh
I The thing that is like uncomfortable about them, That's right, Dave.
(12:53):
The thing that is like uncomfortable about among us is that,
like you, you learn a little bit about who you
are socially from the way the game goes. Like that's
like an unintended artifact of these games, and it completely
happens every time, right, Like, uh, there's there's just like
social dynamics that these games bring out that are I
(13:15):
think a little uncomfortable. At least they're uncomfortable for me.
I always find like, oh, I'm the evil guy in
this group. That's how everybody I get uncomfortable making morally
dubious decisions to NPC. Now it's my actual friend. Yeah,
Like and it does require a kind of like like
being good at lying and stuff. Because like another touchdowne
for this game is the thing the board game the thing,
(13:36):
um because similar to that and again or I would
say the movie, well, but yeah, the board game based
on the movie. Uh So Like again, it requires like
finding the thing that that compels other people to vote
for you. It's almost like the equivalent of like running
for president in sixth grade, you know, what I mean
where it's like you're not you're not getting elected based
on the issues. You're getting elected based on you had
(13:59):
the best rap and you had the coolest right, right,
And that's like that is fun And this game is
a great backbone for those kinds of things. Like it's
not exactly the best kind of thing for like a
for like a dinner party, but it's the equivalent of
a fun game at a dinner party. Right. Uh. That's
that's what the role that this game uh served, especially
(14:23):
in the pandemic where it was impossible to get together
with your friends and stay safe. It was impossible to
do that. So of course it took off, you know,
because it's like delivering the social dopamine hit that we
all were missing, you know. And it's great like and
and there were so many like famous people playing it
and stuff, and you could see like how it really
touched on a universal part of human experience in a
(14:44):
great way. Um, I don't have a lot of negatives,
and that it revealed stuff to them like yeah, you
see unvarnished, like that's what that celebrities really like, that's
the right. That was the joy of it in watching
clips of it is like, Oh, they're like actually kind
of a only person and I didn't know that. Like,
I like AOC is definitely like a sweetheart with her friends,
(15:05):
you know, like when you saw her playing a second Oh,
you're fun in this Like that's great. Uh. This is
why I would never intentionally broadcast myself playing this game again,
because I'm a monster. I'm very ruthless about murders. I
really am, uh, and I get very cutthroat about it. Uh,
because I'm viciously competitive in this game. Is not a
(15:26):
good uh expose of that. Um. The mini games themselves
are very simple. There's nothing wrong with them. I liked
it their time bound, but they're easy enough that anybody
can do them. And uh, the rules are are broad
enough that you can pick this game up and learn
it in like fifteen minutes. Like you can understand, you know,
in fifteen minutes how to play it pretty easily. To
(15:48):
be really great at it, though, is a lifetime of
socialization and that I love. I just want to add
one more thing. Apparently they've added some updates in recent
months where there are roles. They're just crewmate roles, like
you can have like special powers and stuff. I haven't
played too much with those roles, so I don't know
anything about them. I don't know how they enhance her
(16:09):
or don't enhance the game. I imagine it's kind of
nice to have like somebody else who can use the
events besides just the impostors. Yeah, the engineers can use
the like scientists can check player vitals at anytime. It's
minor stuff like stuff that like negate some of the
tools that the impostors have. Because I will say early
in the game, if you were like really good at it,
(16:30):
like if you understood the mini games, you could destroy everybody.
Like I played around with Alabre who's a friend of ours,
where we were both the impostor and there was like
a bunch of other people and it was like the
round last of two minutes, and we killed fucking everybody.
You know. Yeah, sorry, So it had it's not like
technically perfect, like it's not perfectly balanced. Um, but it's
(16:54):
hard because you're designing a game that's really about hanging
out with your friends, so like, uh, it just creates
this like you know, it's not for a gamer who's
looking for a really challenging or unique input output experience.
It's really about like, what how is your friend group?
That's how good the game is. Then that's my ransom.
(17:14):
Stick into it. Uh, now it's time for break. I
think that's right. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, hop in the
vents about that time. Um so we'll hop into the
vents and murder everyone. So when we're when we come back,
there will there will be no one. Everyone will be murdered,
um which, and we'll be shouting into the void, even
(17:35):
building towards this for years, welcome back no one, because
everyone's a dead, murdered corpse. This is still one upsmanship
Mike and Adam. And we're talking about among us game
on segment working, which means that we're just gonna we
(17:58):
get to say all the things we want to say.
I start with a funny star please, I would love
for you too, So the okay too? Because one so quick. Um.
The two worst times I played a game like this
one was literally Mafia, which was a friend of mine.
I don't even want to say their name, but a
(18:18):
friend of mine who's no longer really a friend. We've
drifted apart in the middle of one of these Mafia
things looked and told me, by the way, I wasn't
lying I was a peasant or whatever. I was a villager,
and I said, it's not me. I'm a villager and
I promised, and they said to everyone, all of our
beloved friends. I can tell he's lying because I can
(18:41):
look in his eyes and I can just see that
he has a liar's soul. He is a liar, like
as a person, and I our friendship never really recover
and like you mean really like like holy in life,
and she's like yeah, and it's yeah, okay. So we'll
(19:01):
get into my history of long later because I did
have a child. But the other anecdote I wanted to
tell was Griffin Raoul, friend of the pod. If you
listen to us over at patreon dot com slash small Beans,
you can hear him guests on many of our pods.
He's a scientist, monk, marathon runner, cool guy. Um. Since
we were like seven years old and had days where
(19:22):
we were like, I'm not your friend anymore, right, The
biggest fight we've ever had was towards the end of college, UM,
when he drove me to a friend's house to play
a game called diplomacy, which is like risk, but instead
of rolling dice, you lie to each other. It's a
social game much like Mafia, but with a world map
and you're trying to conquer everyone. And it takes eight
(19:42):
hours to play famously and we got there to my
friends like dorm and in the first round it's about
making compacts and then double crossing each other. In the
first round, we go into a room and he goes,
I swear I'm gonna do this, blah blah blah, I
swear on our friendship. And I said, oh, here we go. Well,
then that's we have. And he said, we have a
(20:02):
huge advantage because none of these people have been best
friends since we're five. Like I could say I swear
on this or that, and yeah, I could still, but
I'm swearing on our friends. Like and I go, meaning like,
if you lie, then we won't be friends anymore. And
he's like, that's right, and I said, well, okay, then
this does give us. He eliminated me completely from the map.
(20:23):
It was all a lie and I went for a walk,
uh to walk around for hours because he I needed
him to drive me home eight hours later. So I
walked around for hours listening to the same not a
surf song on repeat. It's called Amateur tears running down
my face, thinking, well, we're not friends anymore. That's the
end of our azing Like this is the kind of
(20:47):
ship that you can't like. A video game can't produce
this unless it's a social video game. And I love this.
They're harnessing they didn't invent it, that they did not
invent it, They're just capitalizing at the perfect moment on it.
I'll tell one anecdote of my own that really thrills me,
so like my the thing that happens to me every
time I play this game is specifically, but really all
(21:09):
these games in general, but this one is I get
killed immediately, and I have over time, I've learned to
accept that a lot a large percentage of my friends
or just people who know me in real life think
of me as threatening. And I don't know why, because
I think Mike can validate I'm a very kind person. Uh,
you just characterized. But it's games specifically. You just said
(21:30):
your games you are so people want to eliminate. Yes,
I get eliminated fast all the fucking time, right, that's
what happens. So anytime I do get like fucking allowed
to live long enough, I'm out, Like I'm like I'm
out for blood because it's like it's revenge time. Right.
So one time I was playing with our group of friends,
including Tom Ryman and Tom it just seemed to me
(21:52):
like he was the impostor. But I had literally no evidence,
right other than he had been quiet. So you never
really I picked this for unless unless you see it.
That's exactly it. I picked this person, so fuck them
unless you see it, right, So, like I had to
make something up, so I said, I think it's Tom.
He's been slinking around, right. I just said he was
(22:12):
slinking around. That was the evidence, and everybody liked the
idea that he was slinking around so much, and he
got so fucking mad. He's like slinking around. How is
that a proof for anything? Right? These are the kind
of conversations you get into. And of course they ejected
him into space and he was the impostor. And it
was one of the greatest moments I've had in games
ever because I picked him and it just happened to
(22:35):
be true. I literally just had the cool rap song
at my sixth grade presidential election. That's all it is. Man.
It's like there is no like I know there's people
out there like who would say there's a strategy to it,
and I'm sure there is, but the yeah, but the
fun of it is not really the strategy. The fun
of it is the politics, you know, like the Jerryman
(22:57):
during and the manipulation of your friends. That's the of it.
But it also speaks I guess it's fist fun. I
guess what I'm saying is it's the quote unquote fun
is and the tensions. So speaking of harnessing, right, if
you played these mini games as activities in and of themselves,
it would be the most boring, would almost in a
(23:18):
sense where I sometimes question, like, what was warrior Ware
is about? That was really boring? Um? But uh, and
yet these are not. They're super tense, which no other
mini game has ever achieved because they cover your whole screen,
so you're thinking, any second, I could be murdered. So
it's p VP mini games, and immediately when you pit
another human mind against yourself, it lends it attention that
(23:40):
no mini game could have other Um. And I would say,
but what's interesting about that is that we're playing on
the fundamental aspect of humanity that we don't often like
to acknowledge. Well, the people who acknowledge it flagrantly. We
consider assets, which is which is that we subtly shame
or don't shame each other. They're like, it exposes who
(24:01):
in the friend group has more sway and who, Yes,
that's about it. Yes, like if you all had to
vote for Tom or Adam and you had no evidence
either way, and it's like I don't want to know that.
That's what hurts to expose. That's what it looks about
it as the person as the not Tom of the group.
It hurts to hear that. And like I'm not kidding,
(24:23):
I quit among us for a very long time because
like I was really bummed about that part of my
friends group, Like, oh shit, Like at the end of
the day, I've I matter less than these people do,
Like they like me and stuff. Sure, but like they
would say, if this other person first, just like in
a in a in a murder storm with a blank slate,
(24:43):
I get the last ship out, you know, And that hurts, man,
you know, And that's the bummer about these games, but
also the thrill of it a little bit, I think
without those like the core of it's the core of
poker is not the mathematics of credits it's bluffing people,
it's lying as someone and having them believe you that threat.
And now I think that you can. I think it's
(25:05):
important to sort of see the game in a as
having a kind of vacuum right where it's like, really,
anything is on the table because this isn't the real thing.
And I think that's how Griffin plays and I kind
of play like that too, where it's like, look, I'll
say anything to win the game. What do I care?
This is that's what the game requires, you know, Like
Priffin is very competitive like you and feels that within
(25:27):
the confines of a game, it's everything is just a
good team. Um he might. I'm not saying that's a
totally valid that makes sense. I just can't feel that
I'm too sense and it's just the way I am. Well,
this game exposed to me that I also have a
couple of soft spots that hurt, and I don't like
to have them pointed out like one of them is
(25:48):
I don't like being seen as a monster all the time.
I'd like to be able to just be a nice guy,
but I don't. That's not around like I have for
you know, like this is my beard is not a
flame to burn you. This is the joke that I
tell all the time when I when I voiced the sentiment,
because it comes up often enough. The number of times
(26:10):
I've turned a corner and scared someone by just being
much taller and bigger than them is more than ten.
It's like it's dozens of times, like in an office
or something. Man, I mean, I'm six four white mail.
If I if I'm walking at night and a person
crossed the street to avoid me, I don't take that personally. Actually,
I'm like, sure, happen to me all the time, you know,
(26:32):
little do you know I'm a coward? But I couldn't
if this is a real thing, I'd be tongue stabbed
to death in the first wave. Like I'm not a fighter, really,
I just look scared. I'd be an event shipping myself,
just waiting for the thing to end. Yeah, so I
have one, like can you imagine I have a So
I want to change the subject, do you mind? I
wanted to tag onto the end of that story that
(26:53):
I think is really way bigger a topic than I
thought we'd get into on this podcast. Probably, Ever, this
is more like tales from the Pit territory. But um,
so my history of lying, and it actually goes hand
in hand with me being a writer and a storyteller.
I would lie as a kid all the time by exaggerating,
so it is famous. People would always say, like, if
Michael gives you a number and a story of an
(27:15):
anecdote that happened, and it's really entertaining and funny, like
divide the number by two or three, it's not you know,
like I say, and there were ten ninjas there or whatever.
Like I would tell stories that really happened, Okay there,
we never encountered ninjas, but you know, I'd say, like
when we went on ten roller coasters and my parents
would know that I meant three. Um, And I crafted
(27:37):
that into fabricating stories and then saying I was just joking.
And then it became a way of toying with creativity
and fabrication. And I appreciate it because it led to
and I never thought of it as quote unquote real
lying because it's just like entertainment imagination. Yeah, it's a
(27:57):
it's an act of imagination, right. Even though I was
people some people who really care about honesty and have difference,
you know, levels of priority would find out, like, but
you said you went on ten roller coaster, and they'd
be like, that's weird that you lied about that, And
so some people would think it's weird. So as I
grew up, I stopped doing it. And when V told
(28:17):
me that I had the soul of a liar. Uh,
they pointed out all the times I lie in exaggerate
historical and I was like hurt that they didn't. I
was like, do my friends not understand that I would
never really lie to them about something important? And I
like had this masscript away where I was like, my
friends think of me as someone who lies casually. And
(28:40):
it began a journey that end would with me admitting
to myself that I had a drinking problem and secret
alcohol and that I was like being unfaithful to my
wife at the time and keeping that as a secret,
and that I did have a problem with secrets. And
I've done many years of work to like obliterate all that,
(29:00):
and it all came down to this game of mine.
So I guess it was like good in the long run.
But my point is that social games socialists such a man,
a social game can change your life in a way
that in a way that you don't want, like I
don't want Mafia to be a bit that big of
a turning point in my we can really accidentally or
(29:22):
in a backward in a back alley way kind of
like point out some profound truths about your friends about yourself. Uh.
Like that's why we like social games, is like there's
a little bit of daring about it. Like, for instance,
this is this is not exactly equivalent, but one of
the reasons why fantasy football we played that in a
(29:43):
cracked right, um, and Mike was in this group, and
like it was a bunch of people who don't play
care about sports, as you can imagine, right, I like football,
but most of my most of our friends don't. But
we all got really into this fantasy football league. And
it wasn't because we cared about football. It was because
the social piece of like everyone like the trades and
the like the weekly rants and like the competing with
(30:06):
your friends, and you know, just that piece of it
was engaging enough that I think everybody was found a
way to care about it, you know. And and uh,
there's a lot of video games that are sort of
built around this idea. Uh, this is just one of
those Runaway Hits another one that's like similar, but I
think they're trying to they're trying to get rid of
the risky part of it is Mario Party. Have you
(30:29):
ever played any of the Mario Parties? Yeah, I find
them intensely boring, and I'm not surprised because they reward
whoever's in last place to try and always make it cleense,
and so I'm like, what's the point that is how
Nintendo chooses to make it not a combatitive experience. Mario
Kart does that as well. So Mario Kart moment to
(30:50):
moment is so fun that I get well. So I
think Mario Party is an interesting contrast to among Us
because among Us is devious and is willing to let
like whatever friend group is like that's how this game
is going to go, you know, And I think that's
a good that's a good and bad thing about it.
Mario Party is a much safer experience. Like there's like
there's bumper lanes in it, you know, where it's like, look,
(31:12):
you know, just because somebody's really bad at like strategy
in games doesn't or like reflexes, we don't need to
rub it and we're not going to rub it in.
You can't run up a big lead on them because
we've made a bunch of safeguards. And that's an like
Nintendo feels that's necessary in their social games, you know.
And how do you feel about Well, I think it's like, uh,
it's the safety well you said it, the bumpers, right,
(31:34):
the safety net is gone. There's no excuse to hide
behind and and that's less true and among us, which
is why I like it so Like, like you said,
being the killer in real life Mafia, even being the
killer when I was selected made me feel bad because
I was scared of being singled out as the target.
I didn't want to lose. But at the same time,
when I won, I felt like all I proved was
(31:56):
that I was an adept liar, which, as I described,
I already felt like that's negative and I was self
conscious about people thinking I was an adept liar. Um.
So I didn't want to win and I didn't want
to lose, and I didn't want to get picked, and
I wished we weren't playing that, whereas in among us
the gamification, I enjoyed being the killer. I feel, I
feel the power trip that the game intends me to
(32:17):
feel somehow. The fact that we're all dorky cartoon characters. Man,
I can't even imagine the anatomy of these things if
they were naked. The fact that were they were, these
stupid little dudes makes it all better. And that's cute.
It just take. But it reminds me of Yeah, I
think I do need that safety net. So, like Mario,
Party never triggered me in that way. I thought it
(32:39):
was boring, but it never pissed me off, whereas I
would have tantrums when I was a little little kid.
Because Griffin, who is legendary in my life as a competitor. Um,
he's very achievement oriented. But growing up I never won
any game against Griffin, and he was my best friends amazing.
It was just like the run of the mill. Um.
(33:00):
We would fistfight, not you know, just like to fight,
not because we were mad at each other. He always
kicked my Yeah, he always kicked my ass on every
video game. I never ever ever beat him at Actually
I would beat him the first few rounds and then
he would seem to acclimate and then he would dominate
me for every every board game, every activity we ever did.
He would just dominate me, and I would ask him,
(33:23):
how are you released? A dozen times? What are you doing?
And he'd say, when we were young, I can't explain it,
and I'd get so mad, like he's withholding some secret
for me. And then when he got old enough to
elucidate it, he'd say, what I'm doing is I don't.
It was when we were playing Smash Brothers that era.
He'd go, you're playing the game. You're trying to figure
(33:43):
out what moves set my character has and what are
good attacks against that move set. I'm playing you, I'm thinking,
what are the repeatable patterns that Mike does? Oh, you
like to dodge to the left a lot, I'll funk
with that. I am thinking mercilessly of destroying you, the
human being, Michael, and the way your brain works, predicting
(34:03):
you and crushing you. And you're not thinking about that
because you're so soft hearted that you don't want to
crush me. You want to win the game. You'll never
win the game. You have to destroy me. And I'm like, Okay, well,
I can't stand against that kind of willpower, but that
kind of that's the point of view, that's a way
of approaching life. I mean, honestly, my brother is a
lot better at most political and he's good at poker,
(34:27):
and he's good at all things. I think that's there's
a kind of there's a and the political word politicals charged.
But like these like interpersonal skills are are a gift
that not everybody has. Like some people understand how to
play a room, how to play another person and are
naturally good at that, like Griffin's naturally I can play
(34:48):
a room. I can win this game, but only by
being a weasily manipulator and then I and they don't
like it, and some people are they're not they're not
bound up with that kind of moral system for better
for work, you know, like like like on a certain
end of that spectrum is you know, sociopathy, right, But
like there's a whole bunch of people were like, look,
this is just how it works, This is how life works.
(35:09):
You gotta play the people in the room. And like
then there's people who are closer to what I think
you really are and what I really am, which is like, look,
I just want to like be in the system that
you set up and be good at it because I
know how to do that. I like to achieve and
I'm conflict, right, that's right. I'm not exactly conflict Boyden,
but but more on that spectrum than Griffin. My paradox
(35:30):
is that I do want to achieve at a high
degree and I want validation for having achieved, but at
the same time, I don't want it at the expense
of others. And you can't always get both. It is tough,
and I'm talking in like, yeah, well that's what among
us does. It's what's so good about it is that
like it's a it's a mirror that you didn't expect
to find in a very trivial activity, you know. Um.
(35:54):
One of the other genius things about the game is
that it it harnesses both the collaborative part of working
with the team and the competitive part, Like you're doing
both things right and so because of and this is
like a thing that's built in the mafia, right, because
nobody knows who anybody else is. We're all trying to
find whoever, but like find out who everybody is, but
(36:15):
we're also all sort of daring each other too. Well,
then if you're not the bad guy, you should help
us with this thing, you bead, I will help you,
know what I mean? Like so there's like a there's
a great sort of like standoff vibe to it. Uh
that is also collaborative, right, Like you do these little
tests to figure out, oh I can trust this person.
We're all yeah, exactly, and like it's like Shirley Jackson's
(36:38):
the Lottery, but you're one of the throwing stones people,
not the You're not the one getting hit. Yeah exactly.
But like that's that's the fun part of it. And
it's a little more indirect than say Smash Brothers or
a fighting game, where it really is just like you're
you're either better or worse than the other person. You know.
It's like a little bit of the best of that uh,
(36:59):
distilled out in a simple formula. And I love that.
It's interesting they just released I just read an article
this morning about there's some FBI paper released. By the way,
there's a bunch of gaming FBI ship being released right now,
which surprise, surprise, We've known this for a while. But
you know, like to some degree, the air top gun
is an Air force psy op or recruitment tool, and
(37:21):
to some degree video games aren't. Like there are there
are military people directly involved in consulting on call uh.
And another thing that was just revealed and I and
I think this one's dumb is that the FBI looks
at has at least one program where they're gathering data
on how gamers treat NPCs in moral decision driven games
(37:44):
to try and identify sociopaths and future potential criminal serial
killers and that sort of thing. And I'm like, no,
you need to look at among us, dude, not n PCs,
because I will, I will gaslight an NPC. I'm firmly
aware that it's it's a sentient yeah, like you're looking
for you need to look for the among us players
who just dominate, not yeah, not not okay, no shade
(38:07):
to anyone who's great at among us. But I just
think it's what we're getting at is that it's an
extremely revealing things. You're looking fast time. You're looking for Griffin, FBI,
that's how you're looking for. You're looking for Griffin. But
in order for me to arrive at a place where
I have an answer for our final segment, I want
to ask you about the I want to focus us
a little on the game itself and point out a
(38:28):
couple of things so it does benefit from the fact
that it was a pandemic darling. Somebody had to allowed
us to socialize it. Yeah, I mean Animal Crossing did
as well, and we covered that and said many good
things about it. Uh. It at a point had two
million concurrent players at it. I think that's just amazing
to imagine two million people on Earth are all doing
among us. That's um, that's so weird. Yeah. Uh, it
(38:53):
revitalized or you know, it was a big streaming hit.
But and I think the developers have shown that they're smart.
They were They smartly canceled a plan sequel and decided
to just support. They took all the content that was
going to be in the sequel and put it in
this one because they're like, this is the jam. We
know where the party's at. We don't need to change locations.
Let's just keep the party going. Um. So I think
(39:16):
they're savvy, and I think they were smart to do
the idea in the first place. And I love seeing
a little game that's just hand drawn doodles get more
praise from us than like a Triple A game. Some
Triple A games I could mention this year. Um, that's
cute to the contrarian and indie person. In me. But
at the same time, here's the negative thing I'm gonna do.
(39:37):
I don't expect another seminal hit game from these developers
per se based on this, because the reason it's good
is not craft, and I don't know that's interesting the
most negative thing I can say about this, And so
I want to ask, like hard Drive way, That's what
I'm thinking. I'm like, is the hard Drive about virtuosic
skill as well as being emblematic of humanity? Or is
(40:00):
it just about being emblem It's because because this describes
this is so revealing about humanity and human social structures.
But you know what I mean, how do you feel
about the craft of it? To me? I gotta I'm sorry,
but I got to address the elephant in the room
or whatever. It's just doodles like this whole time we've
been heaping praise, we have to point out right and
(40:23):
like it has that Rocket League vibe. Also, where only
that ship map is good. That ship map is great.
No one plays the other maps. You can get hats
and pets, but who really cares. It doesn't change anything.
You can add roles, but it barely changes it. Rocket
League is a much more sophisticated and important game than
this is like Rocket League is rocket League is a
(40:45):
perfect physics uh that has captured something that people want
to do. Like Rocket League, this is much less ambitious.
That's my ProVet League is Tetris, you know what I mean?
Like like for better like It's maybe not as important,
but it's it's a game into that where it's invented
a kind of entertainment and a kind of experience that
is unique to it, and uh, it deserves to live
(41:08):
forever in that way, I think. Um, I don't know.
I mean, I guess we're kind of in our last
segment here, So do we want to pass a checkpoint?
Is that what you want to do? Okay? I just
want to talk about it broadly, you want, Well, I
just wanted to ask about the I mean, I got
your answer on how to calculate the drive portion of it, Um,
but I wanted you to speak to Do you think
(41:31):
there are any smart design decisions? Do you think there's
any spark of genius in here? Do you think am
I being harsh that I'm like the aesthetic is really
just shitty? Do you know I think the aesthetic? Is
there some missing cleverness there that I'm not seeing or
am I Like, I mean, come on, it's pretty basic.
I mean it is basic. So tetris Uh. I think
(41:52):
the aesthetic is permissive. You know, it's permissive meaning because
it's like sort of this like sort of zany, but
also a little like it's got a little bit of
creep to it, just like a tiny little tim Burton
to it. Uh. Would you want to triple a realistic
alien isolation? No, I don't want that. I actually think
(42:12):
the harmlessness of it and the is what makes it
is what softens the blow of the social danger of it,
Like the social danger is while you're playing, and I
think this game is is it facilitates it in such
a way that it's never super harmful. Like it's like
you never feel like I did a glory kill on
my friend here, Like it doesn't give you any of
(42:34):
those kind of uh endorphins or whatever, and it shouldn't
because it's not about triumphing over another person. It's about
like looking at the faces in the room and feeling
and who do I believe you know? And I think
that the art style, especially if you're streaming it with webcams,
which most people do, you know, like, if they're streaming it,
that's what they're doing. I think mechanically it was designed
(42:56):
in a perfect way to be permissive with without being uh,
without losing a little bit of the edge that makes
it fun to kill your friend, like you know, the
the kill animations are are funny, but also like, man,
you chopped up in half, you're like, uh, like that
kind of stuff. I think it's the right tone, So
that part is good. The tone is good. I think
(43:17):
the decision on what the mini games are is right
because they're not easy, but they're not substantial. They're just
occupying enough time that it's dangerous. So I think in
that way, it's like smartly designed so that you're always
looking over your shoulder. That's the point of the game.
They do a great job of. Everything adds to that,
(43:39):
nothing detracts from it. Everything they've added has kept it
looking over your shoulder, and that's the right thing. Um,
So I think that part's genius. I don't know that
it amounts to seminal game per se, even though it's
really important, um because I think Candy Crush was really important.
But I don't know how seminal it is. But I
don't want it on The Drive right because, for reasons
(44:00):
that are probably obvious, I see it as Big Driver
is still You're, in my opinion, like not an objective
look at the history of video games, you know, um
that we try to obtain objectivity. I think it's we're
also are embracing the subjectivity of you and I being
the ones curating this. The human experience is solely subjectivity,
(44:21):
and our experience is shaped wholly by the time we
were born into blah blah our skill sets. Of course
it's subjective. While we're on this topic, can I address
a comment someone ready to which was, um, the Drive
will never or like the show will never be legitimate
because Michael will never let anything popular and likable on
The Drive because he's substantry and which was which was
(44:43):
about our Call of Duty episode? I just want to
point out that The Drive features Elden Ring, Tony Hawk,
pro skater BioShock, the Last of Us, to Destiny, to
Red Dead, Redemption to Super Mario World like come off it.
But also I really think the value of the show
is the need of the conversation. It's not the yea
(45:06):
or nay, like you gotta speaking of being a little
less serious. Let's not take the drive set seriously. I mean,
that's that's a fine comment to say to the commentary,
I would say, I think the drive, I think the
Drive is is good because it makes us make a
binary decision about the game's value, and people want that.
You know. I just think if you if you think
(45:28):
that's the I don't want to be a review show.
So if you thought that was the point of the show,
you don't want to be only a review shills and
go to our Patreon and pay us. Don't add me
on Twitter. No, I honestly, I I want to counterpoint that.
I think the guy I don't think the sentiment expressed
there is true. But I think that that frustration that
(45:50):
some people have about what games you're willing to include, uh,
it reflects a point of view that differs from yours,
And I think they have the there's some there's they
have some validity and expressing it. The thing they chose
to say wasn't true per your examples. But I think
that that uh, their frustration over you not being willing
(46:11):
to give a grand theft auto or a call of
duty a slot for reasons that they don't they don't.
That's a that's a valid point of view. It's the
same reason why, like, you're never gonna get me to
play fifty j RPGs in the year. It's just not
gonna happen, like while I play some Sure, but I
don't like those games. You're like, and I'm sorry. I'm
the guy doing the podcast, and you have used the
(46:32):
argument from time to time. This just wasn't fun to
me for some inexplicable once in a while, you know,
it doesn't, and that's the drive has to be subjective. Well,
and I think the genius of this particular game is
how it really coalesces around the cocktail of personalities you've assembled.
(46:53):
And I mean, and that's why it's so naturally segues
into a hard drive conversation because the cocktail of personality
that you and I have are you and me and uh,
and therefore some things are excluded because they don't fit
into that ven diagram that well, you know, Um so
I think that's okay. I agree, we're really good. It's
a really good podcast. Um Now we gotta listen to
(47:17):
some really really good We'll be back with more really
good commentary on a pretty good medium video games stick around.
Well I barely got over that, but really that was
(47:37):
not what we did. The break. Yeah, we passed our
final checkpoint, jettison everyone out there airlock. It turns out
no one did it. There was a glitch and we've
all just died meaningless deaths in space. I do love
that it's an airlock. I wish your eyeballs popped that
(47:58):
the space element of it adds something to it, like, oh,
that's a smart design decision we barely touched on. We
did mention it's based on the thing, but it didn't
have to be alien theme or thing them and that
was smart. Again, It's like it's the right tone because
it's like there's something a little creepy about it, but
it's still cute, like you know, that's why I came
(48:21):
to Tim Burton, because Tim Burton is like the master
of creepy but cute. Uh, And so there's a little
bit of that vibe to it, you know. Not, but
have you read The Melancholy Death of Oyster Boy and
other stories by Tim Burton? Hand illustrated Tim Burton's a
better artist than among us. Well, of course, of Burton's
doodles are better than I. I'm sorry the art style
(48:44):
does not conform. I think I think that you're discounting
the psychological effect of it. Not it's transcendent artist, right,
that it makes it less. It's a calming it's a
calming aesthetic and it's like but it's not Rayman or
something thing where it's like, well every piece of this
is gorgeous and like really fun to you know, be
in we gotta something is really great. Um that one
(49:09):
you could put on the dock at any old time.
We should absolutely play it. Okay, well what are you?
What are you doing here? You go first. I will
say that I think we do have some obligation as
on this podcast to include a party game. I do
think party games are a big aspect of video games
(49:30):
that you and I have not covered at all. And
I don't know if it would it be cheating to
include VR tabletop simulator which can load any board game.
I don't know that feels like that feels like including
like just like a format basically instead of an art
a deck of car Yeah, like it's like, all right,
make sure cards are important. I can't disagree with that.
(49:50):
I don't know that feels like cheating to me, dude,
I want to do an hour long episode on Yo Yo.
I was serious, Although I will say I am pretty
liberal with my interpretation of of what is a game. UM,
I don't know, depending on when this comes out. Uh,
(50:11):
you may have seen that I was very liberal with
the game of the Year definition. UM, so we'll see
depending on when it comes out. I'll say that I
don't think this is the one that belongs on the
hard drive. UM, but I do think that there's a
place for I guess I would include Pokemon Go in
this and Mario Party and like there's games that are
(50:33):
that could make it. I feel like that are in
this sort of like getting out in the world and
like engaging socially through through video games and are not
strictly competitive like Call of Duty or something. I feel
like it belongs somewhere, but I don't think it's this one,
so I'm deleting it. I are it's weird. But over
(50:55):
the course of our conversation, I have fluctuated more to
times that I think I ever have. I I we
talked ourselves. I talked myself into the idea that it's
super socially revealing and strikes to the core of human
interaction and therefore the aliens who inherit the celestial hard
drive should definitely see it. So I talked myself into
a keep. Then when I brought in the subject of Craft,
(51:18):
I reminded myself that I don't think it's that well crafted.
It's not badly crafted, but it's just easy, Like, yeah,
it's not an achievement. It feels like one of those
games that I could make, and I know nothing about
game design, so maybe that's naive to have said. But
hearing you delete it also made me feel the confidence
(51:38):
to delete it, which is funny because that's also a
social influence type thing because I was going to keep
to the point that in our spreadsheet I typed, but
now I'm going to delete that and type delete, so
it's a double delete with an asterisk. It's a good game, yeah,
I mean I don't think we and we think it's
an important game. Generally cover bad games, like I you know,
like we're not covering games that are not uh we
(52:01):
we try not to cover a game that has no
ship because it's a waste of everybody's time unless it's
like other than but again, well socially relevant like and
I think that game did have a shot independent of
having talked with you about it, uh, and I honestly
thought you would really like that game. Anyway among us
is great. Nobody's saying it isn't. But for me, the
(52:24):
one thing that it doesn't do that I would want
is it doesn't feel like a creative achievement. It feels
like a gamified harnessing of a thing that was already great. Mafia,
a game that existed already. They didn't invent Mafia. That's
if they had, or if they'd really put a spin
on that's like wow, I've never thought of the game
like that, then I would have absolutely kept this game.
(52:45):
Um so, but well done to the to the developers,
I had a great time, and they're not they're they're
not sweating that they didn't make the shouldn't be forgotten.
Well done, Tom is slinking around, and Dave is evil.
Those are my final remarks. The final question is this
the order? Is this game the origin of the phrase
(53:06):
of the words sus like of that usage, I've seen it,
I've more and more and more seen it highly associated
with this game, But that itself would be quite an
accomplishment that you that you popularized sus um, but I mean,
but that would just possibly but that would just be
like the same as like Austin Powers creating a phrase
(53:31):
like you know, like the one of those phrases, please
do your voice powers voice or whatever, pick your favorite
of his phrases. You know, so probably we must rest
the means of production from that into the hands. He
Uh yeah, that Austin Danger travel from poll to poet.
(53:54):
He does say that all the time. Dude. I bet
people listening to there are people hearing our voices right
now now who are thinking, I wonder what Eustin Powers is.
I wonder what that's around. I'll say to those people,
is We're so glad you're here, thank you for being here,
happy to have you, thank you, thank you for being
young enough that you wanna that you don't know about
that and uh still like this conversation providing some continuity
(54:17):
to us and loves thank you so much. If you
want to hear us talk about all sorts of other things,
mostly film and television, but also other things, many things,
several times a week, go over to patreon dot com,
slash small beans, or just point your podcasting implement at
small Beans Otherwise, if you just want to hear about
video games, you're already at the right spot. One upsmanship,
(54:39):
one upsmanship. That's it for this week. Now, murder Mike
with my tongue
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