August 8, 2025 • 58 mins
Con season is upon us. In this episode, Professor Mouse, the Cosmologist, and Teddy discuss their convention experiences.
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Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Time. It's like a clown.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
No, don't this little page he's bagging boarding Batman and
the gut are like a maze story tellers me some fellas,
we some felons. Isn't amazing. It's like a Pella bear
sella because this shit is so contagious.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Mouths on the.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Summer Reason Pilot got the shelf, while the cycle spinning
knowledge on the getty like appro beat the babble the rabbit.
Don't step to the squad, we get activic and hate.
It's like a steplapart. You don't like fish talk?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Do you hate? It's a matl we.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
The cuttle fish Killers tender Pools on the taping the
Greatest Spider Stars. If you cherish your life, Bucky Barneshit
squad spraying leg and your pipe.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of it. Is It's
just bad?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Is It's just bad?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
The best podcast you've never heard of? The host, Professor
mouse Joint is always by the sea because my loogist,
Hey there, yes, dude on the precipice. On the precipice,
that's like that sounds the There are conventions coming up,
so we're on the precipice of inventions coming up.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Seventy two hours remain at the point of this recording.
By the time this is out, I will be probably
massively feeling massively overwhelmed in a dealer's room, like just
complete overload looking at a bunch of stuff. I really
like going to these cons, but it's specifically like you
(01:22):
get into the big dealers area and it's just, you know,
it feels like an airplane hangar of lots of different booths,
and you know, from like comic book conventions, comic books
and anime and mang are the worst kind of thing
to have at a convention dealers area because there's a
(01:43):
million booths and each booth has boxes, and you're like,
if I actually want to do this, it's going to
take four hours to like rifling through boxes long boxes
of books, and so we like just don't do that.
You know, I'm there for the art, I'm there for
the weird stuff, I'm there for the panels, I'm there
(02:04):
for the programming, and we'll just basically skip the the
dealer stuff. And it's it's weird because it used to be,
especially some specific anime cons, there was stuff that like
this was the only place you could get this stuff,
you know, imported bootlegged fan lation and if you want,
(02:27):
and you know, some of these cons have agreements even
with distributors, and like this is the first place to
get it. See it here first, hard to find. The
Internet has kind of broken that wide open, and like
it's not you know, I look at any of these
like special edition books and manga and DVDs and like, yeah,
(02:47):
if I was really in the market for a specific
N sixty four cartridge, that would be a decent place
to go hunting for it. But also mall found. You
can even like through Markari, I think you can get
onto Japanese eBay kind of, and you know, so like
(03:09):
that kind of stuff isn't really as relevant as it
once was. And with the long slow slide into fascism.
The other thing, especially anime cons, was like you know,
specialty hntai and weird adult stuff, and though as cons
have gotten bigger, that has become less prevalent also, and
(03:34):
so you know it used to be you know, you
go right into the dealers and there's a big old
Yawi booth right there, and that policies are changing and
that's getting shut down into like well, you can't have
a full adult only a booth. Only twenty five percent
of your stuff can be adult themed, which, if you're,
like going back to what we were just saying, a
(03:56):
manga booth, that's fine because if you have like a
giant box of seventy five percent non porn and the
other twenty five percent like that's that you can probably
still get away with that not too difficult, but it's
it's a bummer with the I've seen this a lot
of cons that I used to go to of the
slide into it's family friendly, and what that really means
(04:19):
is get your you know, filthy pervert, anything that isn't
Disney approved out of here, Like, well, that's not a
full expression of this culture, so we'll see.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Also, it's also it also goes to the point of
what you're saying too is like as a vendor, like
famously the industry for which the Internet has revolutionized and
totally destroyed physical media is pornography. Yes, so like why.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Why I mean why I mean? I mean, I mean
all of these things are collectibles in one way or
the other, whether it's you know, your fancy blu ray
of whatever that is, U could be Gundam could be
Gundam themed porn, so you're that's a fair point. And
then you get into, yeah, media of any kind essentially
(05:14):
unnecessary to look at physically, and so you switch to
you know, specialty art and so like what's nice is
that you get the dealer's room, sure, and then you've
also got the artist Sally, and that's where we spend
most of our time. Is the handmade stuff. The this
artist likes this anime but is also schooled in art
(05:39):
nouveau is really big, you know, in the last ten
years of like there's an art nouveau version of sailor
Moon or something, and so it's interesting to see artists
who are trained in other classical styles or just other
styles remixing their work. And you can get stuff there
that's not just official art from the show that you
(06:02):
like and that that's kind of where what I'm into
and that that's an interesting kind of crossover stuff. So
we'll do that. And you know, luckily this con still
has adult panels of various kinds, you know, the after
hour stuff and just so it's not all totally kid friendly,
but there's also a great game room. We spent a
(06:24):
lot of time last year playing pinball. I'm probably gonna
go do that again. I will probably get my ass
absolutely handed to me in a round of Marvel Marvel
versus Capcom at least once. Sure, despite uh getting that
for the switch, have I actually played it?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
No?
Speaker 4 (06:40):
No, I haven't opened that yet, so I don't want to.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
There is that there's a specific type of person who
is one of the worst type of people who are
too good at a video game and then ruin that
experience for everybody.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Yeah, and they were in camp at at the arcade
machine in the game room and like you know, old school,
just sit there until they're beaten and they just spend
all day there. I'm like, if that's your thing, there's
a whole rest of a convention you could also be
hanging out.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
But like, why why do you want to be the
person who plays this game NonStop beating nubes all day?
Like why can't the nubes just play each other? Right?
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:25):
God, Yeah, I might be friends with a couple of
those people.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
It's nice going with other nubes and be like none
of us knows how soul Caliber works.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Let's truly grabbing the controller, being like, uh, which one
which button do I press?
Speaker 4 (07:43):
That's a fun experience. Do you enjoy that?
Speaker 3 (07:46):
So do you do you find this? I find because
I go to different conventions like like un like professional
conferences and stuff. But do you find this because you
do a lot of preparation in a in a more way?
Do you find yourself like dreading the week before? Like
(08:06):
why the fuck did I sign up for this ship?
Because it always happens to me where I'm like Jesus Christ,
like I have to get on a plane, I got
to go to a place. Yeah, I got to do
a presentation, I got to do all this stuff. And
I don't even want to be doing this.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Absolutely. I mean I'm like staring at the schedule double
and triple booked of like there's three time slots where
everything I want to go to is happening, and trying
to make those choices and waiting for the schedule to
actually get on the app and we don't even we
don't even travel for these like we've because I'm so
anxious about it, like thinking about getting a hotel or leaving,
(08:47):
and especially with any of the cosplay we're doing, bringing
any of the stuff with us, Like I don't want
to handle any of those logistics. And if there's people
who do it, you know, semi and you can my
thoughts of professional cosplays, I think, you know, sort of
an oxymoron. But the folks who do that have you know,
big cases and road trips with all their warblow foam
(09:09):
and they do it. And yeah, we've I don't know
if I'll maybe I'll be ready for something like that
in the future, but even without doing a panel, yes,
absolutely like this the weeks ahead of time, like why
did I what am I do? And part of that
is like if I had just spent the last six
(09:31):
months preparing a little bit at a time, I wouldn't
be feeling this way now, the con crunch being a
every con attendee's bane. But you know, it's a growing
process and the learning process.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Well it is a growing process. But I've been doing
this for a long time at this point, thirteen years,
and it never it never gets better every time, like
the way that it works for us. And this is
(10:06):
this is similar with the convention, because you know, the
conventions are happening months and months and months beforehand.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Yes, but the problem is that you like you're like, okay, yeah,
definitely going in my case, you submit a proposal, they
accept it or rejected, and if they accept it, then
it's like you're on the hook.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Now I have to do it kind of thing. And
then it's like so like this year, going at LA
to do a panel that I that I convened, and
it's like that's a fucking six hour flights a different
(10:46):
time zone. I'm going on a weekend. I'm coming back
and teaching. I have to like recalibrate my body, my wife,
my co which means my daughter, my co which means
that her sleep is gonna get like so it's, yeah,
this whole is this whole weird thing that it's an
added level of stress, whereas before it was already stressful
(11:07):
enough where I'm like, you're you're doing like your job,
the job that you get paid for in addition to
and now I'm doing this other thing. And so then
you have to like write a paper and then get
your slides together, and then there's a whole like kind
of like mythologized idea of like the academic on a
plane writing the paper on the way there, because of
(11:30):
course you haven't done any preparation beforehand, and I can't
do that. I will get so stressed out. I need
to have something I have. I have this thing where
I have a draft that I would not want to
jump off of the building if this were all I had,
And so I like to finish that version of the
(11:52):
paper like two weeks beforehand, so that so that I
know that I have something, like like, if I can't
do anything for two weeks for some unforeseemed circumstance, I
have something that I won't want to kill myself if
I delivered in public, and then refinements all the way
(12:13):
up until the day. But the whole time I'm just like, God,
why did I do this? And then you realize the
reason you do it is because after your thing is done. Yeah, yeah,
you're chilling, You're you're supporting your friends, you're seeing your friends,
unless you're like a true narcissist, like the the the
least interesting and most stressful part of the entire process
(12:36):
is like your thing, But then everybody else's stuff.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
You want to you know, you want to be there, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
And this is the thing about what these fan conventions is.
It is essentially the same structure. And we've done a
panel ourselves before and had the same experience like trying
to get dressed up and then also do the panel,
Like that's a lot, But the most people who do
panel are they get a they get an entry for it.
(13:02):
It's like that's why they're doing it. Like I'll do
my panel and then I get to have the rest
of the convention to chill and support my friends and
go see stuff. And it's just for the free entry.
That's interesting and mall doesn't go to a lot, doesn't
like go into a lot of panels at these because
most of them are set up by people who just
want the free entry, and so there's this like a
lot of them are sort of intro level of like
(13:24):
this is just some random person. Would you trust this
random person? Would you follow them on Tumblr? Like that's
fair point. I don't know, like why do I actually
want to hear what they have to say? But you
can kind of tell from the descriptions like, oh, this
person's an academic. Like last year we went to one
that was like a setup about the feedback loop between
(13:46):
anime directors who post World War two started seeing European
art house film and like then you know Cowboy Bebop
being an example of like being super in influenced, and
so they had a lot of really good film clips
like oh, this is like a high school art teacher
or something like. They're full on academic and those are awesome,
but you have to kind of cherry pick which ones
(14:08):
those are just based on what does the subscription sound like.
And yeah, when I have done those, that is so stressful.
And then once it's over, great, now I'm having a
great time.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, in my previous life, when I had to do
a lot of the similar, similar, similar panels to you
mouse the thing, because I was so low on the
academic rung, they also made me do like the university
would be like, hey, you also need to do a
poster session when you get back to like justify us
(14:42):
paying for this. So all the times, like they would
be like, all right, your presentation at this convention is good,
or the trade show is going to be kind of
in the middle, so people will go to it and
we can get the good press, but you need to
also go to at least three or four and like.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
And I give a presentation about the presentation plus.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
When I get back. So it was like I would
always have to be like man because none of the
it's hard to At the time, I didn't have enough
colleagues where I knew them, and I couldn't be like, hey,
can you send me your slide so I can write
this ahead of time. I had to like be there
with notes and like not hungover, because the big things
with the camaraderie at those are like, yeah, these are
(15:25):
academics who are like this is partially vacation time, which
is just an unavoidable thing. And suddenly you're like, all right,
well it's past seven. It's time to treat this like
it's past seven in a foreign city, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Yeah, that is something that I'm very fortunate to be
able to have a fair amount of PTO I can
take and from previous year's experience, Like I am. The
convention starts Thursday night and goes through Sunday, and most
of the things I want to do are after hours.
I'm gonna be on like vampire time all weekend, Like
I'm taking Thursday off and the following Monday and Tuesday's
(16:02):
noting like have an actual weekend after the convention. It's
gonna be so burned out. And that's you know, after
years of trying to do this and then go directly
back to work. It's not working.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Yeah, the in in graduate school and we had similar
things like that, Teddy, but they wouldn't cover the cost
the full cost. They would cover like you know, five
hundred dollars and if the you know, the conferences in
Montreal or something that might cover two nights of the
hotel maybe probably partially cover two nights of the hotel.
(16:38):
You so have to get there the other nights and
stuff like that. And so, I mean I remember doing
like what what people who go to cons do of,
but in graduate school, trying to become like a professional
and car pulling up to Toronto with five people and
(16:59):
we all stay in the same room and like prepare
our presentations and stuff, and it's like, so, I mean,
it's it's dehumanizing. Is too strong, there's too much mustard
on that. Because we had fun and stuff like that.
It's like a nostalgic memory, but it was there were
(17:21):
like those realizations that you had are like epiphanies of
like why am I doing this? Like it's just worth it?
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Yeah, it's so weird, given like that we've all done
these academically, and then going to a fan one and
they're like yeah, this is great, but also super stressful
and like oh kind of overwhelming. What do you mean
I want to do this for work? And then you know,
going I went to my big company convention thing and
(17:51):
they're like, this is there's no cosplay here, this is lame.
Who am I hear? But then if you do a
budget for work and then and I think this is
probably your experience, MoU says, you've gone to fewer of
the fan ones, like you go to enough of these
professionally to be like, no, I'm not going to spend
my free time doing this.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Also, yeah, especially from people who vend at the fan
ones who are like it's hard. Once you go to
enough of them, you're like I've seen this panel thirty
different times. I'm just gonna stay here, or I'm like,
oh I have beef with this one artist and they
like sat me next to like it's it's those weird,
(18:31):
Like oh right, yeah, it's.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
A whole separate stage management business of it.
Speaker 6 (18:37):
Absolutely, yeah, there was there was like Prisbee always is
is very insistent on trying to get me to go
to con the fan conventions, and I would like to
go as his friend, but I just can't.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
I can't do it. It is such a stressful thing.
The commute is bad, and then all so the experience
is kind of bad when you get down there. And
there's also like there are different modalities that people sort
of tap into when they're at conventions and and Prince
b is very much like I mean, he has such
(19:16):
a it's kind of like an imaginative kid like way
about him where he loves he loves the whole thing.
He like walks onto the floor and he's like the
vendors are doing.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
It's like in an Fao Schwartz in Times Square. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah, the artists are drawing and they're doing custom stuff
and I can get something, and it truly is I
think there's a Jois de vive there that I don't have,
where he's like the artists are drawing things and like
they're only gonna draw twenty of these and I can
get one and then I can give it to you
and then you got to figure out what to do
with it. And like I'm literally looking at a wall
(20:03):
of posters that Prince Vy has gotten me at conventions
and stuff, and like that modality I think is is
is not my speed. And then there's the modality of
like being a cosplayer and then also like wanting to
go to panels, which I also find to be very
(20:24):
I mean, Prinsby would send me photos of how long
the lines were that he was waiting in, and I
was like, I mean, I'm happy for you that you're
excited to be there, but that looks like hell to
me to go watch people talk and it's always the
(20:45):
same people.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And he loves it.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
He loves going to see you know, every time Bill
Lamar every time, or Rob Paulson every time we'll do
the Animaniac fucking song like that kind of shit. And yeah,
that that's like the conference lifestyle that I don't understand
because yeah, I've been to so many conferences, and the
(21:08):
more you go to them, the more it is like
go there, do your obligation, support your friends, and then
you know, let's get some tacos in La or like
if we're in Atlanta, like let's go hit up some
some some local stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Yeah, I will say.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
I was going to say that the thing that I've
begun with in my current role when I've had to
do one particular trade show that makes me feel like
my soul is dying a little bit. There are it's
it's interesting to find the pockets of cool people within
those communities because sometimes either new or just folks that
(21:50):
you there there, some of them are just so large
that you there's no way to meet everybody. So it
is I will say to the Prince be of it all.
When you do get to find those truly inspired and
just really cool people, it is a really it is
a nice treat. And there are those like there are
(22:11):
a couple of activists that I ran into at one
of the trade shows that like they got thrown out
because they were and it was it was just a
cool like hearing about some of their I don't want
to get too specific on a thing that's going up,
but like they had a couple of anarchist distros that
(22:32):
they were like, no, we're tech and we like we
know tech well enough, and we are also of this
political mindset and you're like, oh, you are are doing
some cool stuff, and they were. There are just those
people who are before the shine has left some folks's eyes,
like they're like, I'm really interested in this type of
(22:54):
reform and you're like, oh, it's really nice. I want
to support you. I really hope you don't get too
sick in two years and like it. There are some
really lovely connections you can go for networking. Now, Yeah,
if you're just going for networking, it can be like
I've left with this stack of business cards, so now
I have to recycle the stack of business cards and
(23:16):
that will probably get a little draining, but you know,
there's still a little bit of a magic to it,
especially when you see some cool stuff.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Yeah, that's interesting. There's the kind of a con meticulture
and meta gaming that happens of we're just talking about
going to panels, going to dealers, going to artists, but
then there's this repeated like I'm not even there for
the stuff anymore. I'm there for the people and like
the con regulars, and you know, there's this very specific
experience I'm going for. And that's especially especially true for
(23:49):
things like the Supernatural conventions where show's over for now,
and some of those people it's not even about the show.
It's about this like communal experience of the actors have
their own kind of gimmicks now that are divorced from
talking about their characters, like they've already answered every question
(24:09):
anybody could ever possibly ask about all fifteen seasons of
that show, and so now they're like doing pajama parties
and you know, like tarot readings or whatever, and some
there's a certain amount of like super fandom that you know,
you find connection community there that is tangentially related to
(24:32):
the thing you were starting to go there in the
first place. And I think that's you know, cosplay has
a bunch of different motivations to it, but I think
one of the most sort of authentic and cool ones
is using it as an icebreaker, to your point, not networking,
but like it's a shortcut to finding people with similar
(24:52):
interests and then being able to like chat with them.
And especially in this kind of like sad, lonely, decentral
less digital world, it's still a good opportunity to like
meet somebody physically and check out a conversation. Now, whether
or not I have the social anxiety to like allow
that to even really happen for real, we'll see. But
(25:14):
it is a nice opportunity that conventions are unique in
being able to pull people together like that.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
That that that has reminded me of this bizarre dimension
of the academic convention. So there are some conventions like
the big ones where you'll go to the convention and
there will be people meeting having formal like business meetings
(25:48):
with editors about books and like book contracts, and also
like interviews for jobs. So it instead of being so
there was this there in certain disciplines, including one that
I'm in, there's this way that everything is sort of structured,
(26:08):
of like the calls are put out in the summertime,
and then by the time the annual disciplinary conference comes up,
that's where we'll interview and whittle down the finalists. Zoom
has largely sort of replaced that, and then we'll have
the campus interviews afterwards.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And then.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
There are offshoot sort of sub disciplinary conventions that have
now gotten kind of bigger and rivaled even like the
more central disciplinary conventions that have issued that as being
like this is too intimidating, it's making people who have
social anxiety feel like unwelcomed in these spaces. It's making
(26:54):
it's making the conference a little too scary. But then
what what has now happened at those is that junior
faculty have no access to senior people and so there
is no networking that is possible because the culture of
(27:14):
there of that is, and I have seen and been
witnessed to some like really awful behavior from senior faculty
who who are who just kind of like dismiss graduate
students and stuff like that, as being like, you don't
understand what this is, like, I'm just here to have
drinks and talk with all my other friends who also
(27:35):
won the National Book Award kind of bullshit. And it
has it has created like a different toxic environment where
I mean, it's very interesting where it's like now people
are like, can we have some formal networking happen at
these things so that like people can meet people post.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
COVID Informal networking is just super clique?
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah, yeah, because everybody just want to hang out with
their friends. You know, I honestly guilty, but still it's
not great.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Speaking of some of these cons, we mind if we
flip over to some happy con stuff.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Sure? Yeah, and San Diego Comic Con just happened. Some
of them might be happy.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I don't know, I thought you were going to I
thought you were going to hit us with the let's
slip over to some pros. Oh I like it?
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Well, yeah, actually said get into the pros along with
the San Diego Comic Con. There was gen Con that
happened last weekend. So this is our t TRPG update corner.
I just made up that. I don't think that is
uh copywritten, but you know, we'll.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
See us now. We will not ever figure that out,
but just keep doing.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
So. A couple of big things, uh. Gen Con announced
a couple of big games that came out. First, we
have a Temorar role playing game, the book that I
was telling you about with dragons and the Napoleonic Wars.
So it's dragons, but they treat dragons kind of like
biplanes and World War One, but then you put them
(29:10):
in the Napoleonic Wars. Great book series called the Temporary
Series from Naomi Novak is now going to be a
role playing game. It's going to be a crowdfunding that's
going to start in twenty twenty six and hoping for
a full release in twenty twenty seven. Outside of that,
Diablo two is the Diablo video games, but they're mostly
(29:32):
focusing on Diablo two is also getting an RPG. And
in our more less indie but still not quite D
and D, we have Starfinder, which is the space epic
that goes along with Pathfinder second edition, so you get
like a lot of they're looking for like Star Wars
(29:53):
and Guardians of the Galaxy esque type stories that gets
put into Pathfinder are some of those big announcements. The
biggest announcement that came out is that the new season
of Critical Role has announced a couple of changes to
the lineup. So campaign for starts October second, twenty twenty five,
(30:17):
and it has been confirmed that Matt Mercer, the longtime
dungeon master of ten years, will not be the dungeon
master for the next coming season. In fact, he's going
to be a player, and Brennan Lee Mulligan from Dropout
will be the new dungeon master for the next campaign. Wow,
a crossover, So there's a big crossover. Apparently this is
(30:39):
going to be the main games, not a short epic,
so that means you'll probably be seeing Brennan Lee Mulligan
on Critical Role for a couple of years. For this
new campaign setting, it's apparently a whole bunch of new
folks that are be coming in, but there are also
a lot of the old cast that'll be rocking it.
(31:02):
And one of the coolest things about it, they are
beginning to divorce themselves from Watsea and Wizards of the Coast.
So Chris, oh goodness, I can't remember their last name,
Chris Perkins and Jeremy I can't remember his last name,
but they have actually left their positions at Wizards of
(31:24):
the Coast with D and D and they are now
officially with the Critical Roles indie publishing house for Daggerhart,
So they are now in charge of their games development
and Daggerhart is going to be prominently displayed. So they
are not completely cutting ties, but they are switching systems
(31:47):
and doing a full creative control with some of the
heaviest hitters in the TTRPG space.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
So those are some big things that's interesting. So I
don't not understanding the politics.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Of all of this.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Is this like an upgrade for Brennan Lee Mulligan, Like
Critical Role has its own like cottage industry of rules.
Brand's going to be dungeon mastering them through their own
rules system.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Is that?
Speaker 4 (32:15):
What I'm hearing is that they are.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Still releasing some more info about it. So it's looking
like the way that these are happening is that they're
using some interesting twists on the system, but they'll be
transferring away it seems like they'll be transferring away from
(32:39):
from Dungeons and Dragons fifth Edition and more prominently featuring
Jack Daggerheart, which they created, and you know, long time
fans of the game, they're trying to change that out.
One good thing about one thing I did not mention,
Dropout has confirmed that old BLM running Lee is not
(33:02):
going to be leaving Dimension twenty, So dropout, we'll still
have a Dimension twenty for our d twenty heads.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Oh he's just busy. Well, good for him and good
for them. Yeah, yeah, wats He's in an interesting spot
because I mean they are They're a shell of themselves.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
You know.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
In many ways, Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons
is the only thing that makes Hasbro profitable, and to
that end, Hasbro is trying to pump that for as
much as they can. So, speaking of Starfinder, Magic the
Gathering has just released. It's called Edge of Eternities. It
is a same idea space fantasy, very much kind of
(33:43):
they didn't lean too heavily on specifically Star Wars. It's
very like kind of big picture, cosmic, trippy seventies sci fi.
Though I did just lose a game to what was
very clearly a Star Destroyer, and it was It's cool.
It's very much they're expanding out. But they've also like
(34:04):
half of their sets for Magic are now crossovers, so
not their own worlds. Avatar the Last Airbender is coming.
The big announcement they've had they're starting a series of
Marvel crossover sets, so they're starting with a Spider Man set,
but they've promised that there will be others. They are
(34:25):
they have Magic card versions of Infinity Stones. They're falling
into this, which as a you know, I can appreciate it,
and this is something that for years Magic fans because
the system is interesting. In the color system is you know,
very like green lantern rings. You always want to see like, well,
what color would this character be if you're into that
sort of thing. So seeing Marvel heroes poured it over.
(34:49):
And as somebody who used to play a little bit
of the versus system, I never thought i'd see the
day when superheroes would just be in the Magic rule system.
That's very cool. What's very silly because Disney sucks. We
might have talked about this before. We always talk about
Disney sucks before, but this specifically, they're full on in
the crossover for paper Magic, you can buy the cards,
(35:10):
which means there's fifteen million kinds of different kinds of
booster packs and collectors and super expensive and blah blah blah.
It's a collectible card game, okay, but Disney already has
like four Marvel mobile games, so they did not let
Wizards of the Coast use the same stuff digitally. Now
(35:30):
I play Magic almost exclusively now through their Arena video game,
which I really enjoy. Which means there's going to have
to be a legally distinct spider set or something where
they use all those same cards, but they have to
re skin them, which is terrible. It's one I want
(35:51):
to play with the Spider Man cards online. I don't
want to have to go out and buy a bunch
of physical cardboard anymore. Out of the space for that,
I don't want to talk with people. But so again
to go back to social anxiety as both but it
is now a huge breaking point for the game of
you now have totally different part of one of the
(36:13):
hallmarks of the game was the digital experience is the
same as the physical experience, just with cool animations played
from your phone. Really convenient. Having to have these separate
versions is just basically a big fuck you too. Like
it speaks to the fact that Wizards just got kind
of big timed by Disney. They just did a Final
(36:35):
Fantasy crossover. That was fine. Tifa and Cloud and Sepherroth
are on cards in the video game, no problem. They're
doing Avatar, that's fine. But Marvel said, oh yeah, we'll
give you the IP for your physical cards. I'm sure
that getting a big cut of those profits. There's a
lot of money to be made in the digital game too,
But nope, you can't have our our license for the
(36:56):
mobile game because we've got other mobile games. I hope
that will change, but if he doesn't, I'm not playing that.
That's bullshit. I'm not doing it. It's a real bomber.
But it speaks to Disney was also trying to briefly
create this Lorcana game, which was had all kinds of
(37:16):
issues because it was ripped off from somebody else and
was meant to be like a magic gathering killer that
did not come to pass. So yeah, we've got this
weird split in digital versus paper magic with these Marble cards,
which is massively disappointing and will be massively confusing if
you are a player who is new who's getting excited
(37:38):
by like, hey, Spider Man, Well, how does this game work?
Oh you mean I can play it on my phone?
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Great?
Speaker 4 (37:43):
What do you mean I can't play with Spider Man
on my phone? Huh? What's this Spider Monk thing? Instead,
it's gonna be a nightmare. So we'll see how it
pans out. But it speaks to Hasbro, you know, draining
the Wizards of all of their magic and just trying
to pump cash. And that's where we're at. So moreticon.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I'm looking at Hazard's a publicly traded company, so they
have their full like yeah, revenue and expenditures on their website,
and everything is losing money on a year to year basis,
So like Magical Gathering revenue decrease nineteen percent, and Hazbro
(38:28):
total gaming which includes D and D decreased five percent,
tabletop gaming decreased twenty two percent, film and TV ninety
eight percent, and then family brands, which I'm not sure
what that is, probably like toys, yeah thirty. What has
increased and what they're leaning into, according to this report
(38:52):
is digital gaming, specifically Monopoly Go increased revenue twenty two
percent on that specific line item, which is like it,
which spells like the most bad faith like so well, basically,
what I'm saying to just come by these two updates
is that it is possible that dagger Heart could surpass
(39:16):
like Dungeons and Dragons if Hasbro who is now looking
at these trends, and they've been losing money on Magic
the Gathering, they've been losing money on D and D
while it being their most valuable asset. I mean, they've
lost way more money on like the fucking Transformers movies.
By by a long shot, they could just cash in
(39:39):
on like mobile gaming and do that like that that
paid to play stuff, and then dagger Hard or Candle
Obscure or any of these other systems could be like
aggressively pushing to become like the new standard bearer like
basic defaults two TRPG format.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
What I'm hearing is sell Wizards of the Coast to Sam.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Reich, What a wild what a wild place to go
profit sharing with gaming? Yeah, you know, brave New Worlds.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
That's pretty nuts though, I because and this is also
surprising too, because they debuted a new rule set for
D and D, so I would have assumed that they
would have increased that they would have increased revenue last
year at the very least from from their D and
D brand, but they did not.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
So one of the things that and again this is me, uh,
I'll take off my well researched hat and put on
my conspiracy theory that I still research pending. When it
comes to D and D beyond. They had a big
push for their AI assist feature. Now this could be
(40:58):
and again we'll have to look. Look, all of these
AI assist features were initially pushed as they are saving
money in certain areas because it was ostensibly free, and
over the last six months and will continue to see
this trend, it's very much frogs in a pot where
(41:23):
a lot of the things like open ai and some
of these other US based AI companies, Microsoft and some
of the other ones are beginning to turn up the
amount of money even in the business, especially in the
business to business licensing, how much it's going to consistently cost.
So they could be losing money because they were saying, oh,
this is we're saving on labor. But the rate seeking
(41:46):
behavior in terms of the economic terms, rent seeking is
just jacking up the prices. So now they are losing
money because they aren't getting the constant new subscribers, and
it's the cost of running some of these services is
just going up, even as software as sales.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
I am so excited to see where we're at this
time next year, and like seeing if ai has just
become totally untenable and too expensive and people have been
forced to stop using it.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
They I'll tell you the the the official company line
is that revenue for Magic the Gathering decrease due to
the lapse of the Lord of the Rings set, So
they started printing fewer and they're phasing out the production
of that particular set this year.
Speaker 4 (42:47):
That as I understand that that was massively popular.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
No, no, that that, but that's what I'm saying. So
they're they're they're they're printing fewer of that because another
thing that they have to consider is how do you
maintain value in the secondary markets.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Yeah, and they've created this bizarre inflation of reprinting cards
and secondary card market value and people treating Magic cards
like stocks.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
But yeah, that was a massively popular set, and then
when they started to print fewer of those cards, they
start to obviously lose revenue and whatever whatever replaced it
wasn't as popular as that set. I guess was it
the Horror movie?
Speaker 4 (43:32):
Yeah, I mean there were a bunch of they're they're
printing like six sets here, it's too many. That's the
other sort of player burnout of their positions. Well, not
everything for everybody. You don't have to buy everything, you
have to get up on anything. But Magic players are
notoriously completionists and detail oriented as the game is, and
so just getting burned out by Look, there's just too
(43:53):
much stuff and then being all like half crossover and
they're still desperately trying to play with the big boys
of IP of You know, how do we make our
own stories matter when half of our cards are SpongeBob
fighting Optimus Prime?
Speaker 3 (44:11):
Now is that a real card?
Speaker 4 (44:15):
It's a real thing you can do. SpongeBob was in
like a very limited special like they call them secret
Layer sets, but there's no there as yet is not
a full SpongeBob set, but given that Avatar exists, they
might do other Nickelodeon.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
You say that you're going to mess up and we're
going to turn this into a Magic the Gathering Update draft.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
Yeah, we are, We truly are getting to the point
of yeah, absurd, all like those Avengers endgame fan cuts
where you've got all of like ridiculous other characters popping
out of the portals. That's what it feels like playing
magic Gathering sometimes.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
Wait a second, SpongeBob square pants and this is Wizards
of the Coast. Maybe I'm being trolled. Here is a
legendary creature who categorized as a human wizard.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
Yes, because since it was not a full new set release,
they didn't go as far as creating a new sponge
creature type. I think he is a partial re reskinning
of an existing card, whereas Optimus Prime had a brand new,
full on design.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
So there's like no SpongeBob deck.
Speaker 4 (45:30):
It's just like, yeah, it's like a set of like
twelve cards that are themed.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
SpongeBob Commander deck would be you can do it.
Speaker 4 (45:39):
They can have a bunch of jellyfish yep.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Blue green deck because green is summoning.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
Right, yeah green, lots of creatures and nature and yeah,
that would be perfect.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Patrick is Patrick is a human warrior.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
Yeah, so they if they were to do a full set,
then you'd get like Starfish idiot or whatever.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
I don't know wait, wait, wait is this a fun game?
I don't know. Maybe you have maybe you do have
what it takes to do this. What so I already
told you Patrick and SpongeBob, human Warrior, human wizard.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
What is the well?
Speaker 3 (46:20):
What is that their class that is there?
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (46:23):
There? They used to be called races and classes. Now
they're just types.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Yeah, okay, so what type do you think Gary the
Snail is.
Speaker 4 (46:35):
That's weird, but there actually are a bunch of snails
in Magic, so I'm hoping he is just simply a snail.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
I would say maybe an maybe an artifact.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Because Gary is a slug, which is magic type horror.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
He is definitely a reprint of a slug horror from
Innustru the Gothic car set, where they just give them
a new name. Yeah, I think that's what went on there.
Whereas like all of this, Doctor Octopus is going to
be a brand new card designed specifically for Doctor Octopus
and it'll be like a human octopus doctor or something
(47:15):
that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
And Sandy Cheeks is just a squirrel because I guess
that's a type of match.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
Yep, they got plenty of squirrels.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
That's awesome. Well, it's that time of the show, it's
time to get raction, get.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
Well.
Speaker 4 (47:32):
Speaking of slow slide towards fascism and spider Man, I'm
going to recommend Pleasantville. I think Pleasantville is a required watching.
This brilliant film from nineteen ninety eight, with the first
fifteen minutes explain why Toby maguire got cast as Peter Parker.
And it's really clever. It's got a beautiful color to
(47:55):
black and white transition that the director of the Wicked
Movies uh specifically pointed out as like an inspiration features,
among other people, a very young uh our boy from
Fast and the Furious Paul Walker. Really really smart film
(48:18):
about rebelling against heteronormativity and puritanism, and I none of
us are immune to propaganda. I think it's a really
nice sort of injection of of really countercultural thinking. Because
(48:38):
it's from nineteen ninety eight, it's it's just technically excellent
the way it's put together. As a fan of film
and TV, and I imagine that you are if you're
listening to this podcast, I think you'll really appreciate it
on a technical level as well as a narrative level.
So yeah, beautiful film, really smart and Uh, get on it.
(49:02):
Watch that movie if you haven't already, have either of
you seen it?
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yes, yeah, I saw it when I was eight.
Speaker 4 (49:09):
Definitely worth it, Definitely worthree.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Watching Reese Weatherspoon was really it was an interesting, interesting
film and interesting takes.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Yeah, that's so cool. There's like absolute chaos happening upstairs.
My my, my daughter is up there playing with her cousins.
So my wreck would be task Master series nineteen. Just
(49:42):
finished watching that. Task Master is a British panel show
that is hosted and created by Alex Horn and Greg Davies,
who are both sort of like British comedians, and at
this point it's kind of like legendary British comedians. I'd
watched a couple of seasons just based on comics I like,
(50:05):
like I like Nish Kumar's fantastic British comic. James A.
Caster is a really great British comic. And basically it's
a show that every British comic has done at some point,
and they will often talk about it, like within the
context of podcasts like my series of task Master where
I did this. The interesting thing about this series of
(50:27):
task Master is that it's the first series that featured
an American who was flown overseas to do the show.
They've had Americans before, but they've been like transplanted Americans
who are like expats who live in the UK. This series,
(50:48):
they brought over Jason man Zukis. Jason man Zuka's famous
for in the League just like Absolute Chaos. It is
such a it's such a fun element to have him
in the show because there's a lot of ways that
(51:11):
like an American could really ruin that show, particularly if
they don't like blend in with kind of British comedy,
a lot of British comedy, sort of like Rings this
alternative comedy to like American sensibilities, and Manzukas is like
upright Citizens Brigade. It's sort of like alt comedy scene
(51:32):
has been doing that for like thirty years at this
point as a like a veteran kind of like a
legendary improviser in the US, and went over and absolutely
fit right in and manage to have like his American
identity be a part of the joke but not like
(51:54):
the entire thing.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
So like.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
His brand of cho was very much of trying to
like break the rules, and it was interesting to go
because task Master is kind of about breaking the rules.
They'll give you an impossible task with a billion twists
and if there's a way for you to find a
loophole in the task, then you It's just like it's
(52:19):
just like amazing experience because the way that they designed
the tasks and the game design of that show is
so impressive and the fact that it's like a comedy show,
I think belies how also genius, like the gamesmanship and
the craftsmanship is but like his whole thing was like,
(52:42):
so for this task, the best thing that we could
do is go play in traffic. And there was there
were there were these like in the UK they have
I can't remember what they were called, but they're like
safe safety people who are on the sets of productions
and stuff like that. And apparently they talked to him
so much and it became like a running gag on
(53:05):
the show and at one point Greg Davis, one of
the hosts, goes, this is the nineteen series of the
show that we've done. I've never even heard of these
people being consulted like the safety No, it's.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
Never been crazy enough to get them involved.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
He's trying to light stuff on fire, he's trying to
get on the roof of the building. He's trying to
play in traffic, like you know, American stuff. So it
was very It's very, very, very funny, and all the
other four comics on their Fatielle Cory is an amazing
Moroccan British comic, Rosie Ramsey whose husband did the show.
(53:46):
Matthew Baton, who spoiler alert, won but it's like he
was always gonna win because he won every single episode,
so it's not that much of a spoiler. Stevie Martin,
who's a great stand up comic, just like a Murderers
Row cast and really really fun. I think I think
you would enjoy it if you haven't seen Task Master,
because it has that thing of like, this is a
(54:09):
funny show, but sometimes you don't even laugh because you
are interested to see what the twist of the task is.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
It is very.
Speaker 3 (54:21):
Teddy if you don't watch it. It's very drop Out coded,
to the point where Alex Horn has appeared on Dropout
in a cameo kind of setting, and like Dropout fans
are waiting for the crossover to happen because it's kind
of like the British version of that sensibility, really good clips.
(54:46):
I think Series nineteen would be a great place to start.
It's really really good.
Speaker 4 (54:50):
Well, I always like to cut through a kitchen, so
that kind of adversarial game design with funny people is nice.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
For me. I'm going to break a little bit from form,
and I would recommend a couple of things. This with
the recent push with Windows ten is losing its support
for Microsoft, So for all of our Windows listeners Windows
(55:21):
with a Windows eleven, you have a feature that I
find awful, so I would recommend turning off this particular feature.
It is called Microsoft Recall. It is an AI assistant
tool that records everything you do on your computer. It
is a performance sink and memory sync. So the thing
(55:42):
I would recommend is to do the following things. First,
back up all of your just regular files onto an
external hard drive, anything that you don't want to lose. Next,
open your settings window that's either on the start button
or you can press Windows KEYI go to pro Privacy
and Security. Click Privacy and Security on the left of
(56:03):
the sidebar, Go to activity history, scroll down and click
on the button, and then you'll see an option labeled
let Windows collect my activity from this PC. And unclick
that option to disable recall. Just a quick heads up
while disabling this will make it so it won't store
(56:25):
everything you do on your computer in perpetuity. It doesn't
remove the underlying functionality, so there are still going to
be traces within the system, but you can still disable
it so it won't collect all of that area. For
you corporate users, you have to go onto the Group
Policy Editor, and some of your security team may have
(56:50):
removed this functionality from your computer. But if your security
team has not removed your ability to get rid of
your Group Policy editor, just go in there to Windows
key r and run your dot MSc file that will
enable you to find it. Go under into Policies administrative
(57:13):
ted plates, and under start menu and taskbar you can
look for the policy titled don't keep a record of
where I've been. Double click that policy and set it
to enabled, and you'll be able to change that if
you use the Group Policy Editor. That's everything on your
machine and not just your individual user profile. So those
(57:37):
are some things to keep keep an eye out for,
so I highly recommend doing that, And yeah, that'll be
my wreck for today.
Speaker 4 (57:48):
Public service announcement. Don't let them spy on you.
Speaker 3 (57:52):
Yeah, this has been get TechEd support like get TechEd.
It's good, So do all that stuff and that'll do
it for this episode of It's just as bad. We'll
see in the next one.
Speaker 1 (58:06):
Bye.
Speaker 4 (58:10):
It's just a bad.
Speaker 3 (58:16):
It's like a pirates port.
Speaker 4 (58:17):
Your brain, Robin Nalis, no joking open in your mind
with the probot, so you're woken. Hitting hydra halen hairs
had for time, for head.
Speaker 3 (58:23):
Of reasons, for more than with the soldiers, with them
and for all seasons.
Speaker 4 (58:26):
Listen closely while we share our expertise in Catholic comments, culture,
Dean streetuition to the multiversity, not it'syco teaching. Perfect balance
when we snap and fine gents into your ears does
the shoulders when we speak Purple men versus and speech
for Randy Savage Randals with their mortal technique
Time. It's like a clown.
Speaker 2 (00:01):
No, don't this little page he's bagging boarding Batman and
the gut are like a maze story tellers me some fellas,
we some felons. Isn't amazing. It's like a Pella bear
sella because this shit is so contagious.
Speaker 1 (00:09):
Mouths on the.
Speaker 2 (00:10):
Summer Reason Pilot got the shelf, while the cycle spinning
knowledge on the getty like appro beat the babble the rabbit.
Don't step to the squad, we get activic and hate.
It's like a steplapart. You don't like fish talk?
Speaker 1 (00:20):
Do you hate? It's a matl we.
Speaker 2 (00:21):
The cuttle fish Killers tender Pools on the taping the
Greatest Spider Stars. If you cherish your life, Bucky Barneshit
squad spraying leg and your pipe.
Speaker 3 (00:36):
Hey, everybody, welcome to another edition of it. Is It's
just bad?
Speaker 1 (00:38):
Is It's just bad?
Speaker 3 (00:38):
The best podcast you've never heard of? The host, Professor
mouse Joint is always by the sea because my loogist,
Hey there, yes, dude on the precipice. On the precipice,
that's like that sounds the There are conventions coming up,
so we're on the precipice of inventions coming up.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Seventy two hours remain at the point of this recording.
By the time this is out, I will be probably
massively feeling massively overwhelmed in a dealer's room, like just
complete overload looking at a bunch of stuff. I really
like going to these cons, but it's specifically like you
(01:22):
get into the big dealers area and it's just, you know,
it feels like an airplane hangar of lots of different booths,
and you know, from like comic book conventions, comic books
and anime and mang are the worst kind of thing
to have at a convention dealers area because there's a
(01:43):
million booths and each booth has boxes, and you're like,
if I actually want to do this, it's going to
take four hours to like rifling through boxes long boxes
of books, and so we like just don't do that.
You know, I'm there for the art, I'm there for
the weird stuff, I'm there for the panels, I'm there
(02:04):
for the programming, and we'll just basically skip the the
dealer stuff. And it's it's weird because it used to be,
especially some specific anime cons, there was stuff that like
this was the only place you could get this stuff,
you know, imported bootlegged fan lation and if you want,
(02:27):
and you know, some of these cons have agreements even
with distributors, and like this is the first place to
get it. See it here first, hard to find. The
Internet has kind of broken that wide open, and like
it's not you know, I look at any of these
like special edition books and manga and DVDs and like, yeah,
(02:47):
if I was really in the market for a specific
N sixty four cartridge, that would be a decent place
to go hunting for it. But also mall found. You
can even like through Markari, I think you can get
onto Japanese eBay kind of, and you know, so like
(03:09):
that kind of stuff isn't really as relevant as it
once was. And with the long slow slide into fascism.
The other thing, especially anime cons, was like you know,
specialty hntai and weird adult stuff, and though as cons
have gotten bigger, that has become less prevalent also, and
(03:34):
so you know it used to be you know, you
go right into the dealers and there's a big old
Yawi booth right there, and that policies are changing and
that's getting shut down into like well, you can't have
a full adult only a booth. Only twenty five percent
of your stuff can be adult themed, which, if you're,
like going back to what we were just saying, a
(03:56):
manga booth, that's fine because if you have like a
giant box of seventy five percent non porn and the
other twenty five percent like that's that you can probably
still get away with that not too difficult, but it's
it's a bummer with the I've seen this a lot
of cons that I used to go to of the
slide into it's family friendly, and what that really means
(04:19):
is get your you know, filthy pervert, anything that isn't
Disney approved out of here, Like, well, that's not a
full expression of this culture, so we'll see.
Speaker 3 (04:33):
Also, it's also it also goes to the point of
what you're saying too is like as a vendor, like
famously the industry for which the Internet has revolutionized and
totally destroyed physical media is pornography. Yes, so like why.
Speaker 4 (04:50):
Why I mean why I mean? I mean, I mean
all of these things are collectibles in one way or
the other, whether it's you know, your fancy blu ray
of whatever that is, U could be Gundam could be
Gundam themed porn, so you're that's a fair point. And
then you get into, yeah, media of any kind essentially
(05:14):
unnecessary to look at physically, and so you switch to
you know, specialty art and so like what's nice is
that you get the dealer's room, sure, and then you've
also got the artist Sally, and that's where we spend
most of our time. Is the handmade stuff. The this
artist likes this anime but is also schooled in art
(05:39):
nouveau is really big, you know, in the last ten
years of like there's an art nouveau version of sailor
Moon or something, and so it's interesting to see artists
who are trained in other classical styles or just other
styles remixing their work. And you can get stuff there
that's not just official art from the show that you
(06:02):
like and that that's kind of where what I'm into
and that that's an interesting kind of crossover stuff. So
we'll do that. And you know, luckily this con still
has adult panels of various kinds, you know, the after
hour stuff and just so it's not all totally kid friendly,
but there's also a great game room. We spent a
(06:24):
lot of time last year playing pinball. I'm probably gonna
go do that again. I will probably get my ass
absolutely handed to me in a round of Marvel Marvel
versus Capcom at least once. Sure, despite uh getting that
for the switch, have I actually played it?
Speaker 1 (06:40):
No?
Speaker 4 (06:40):
No, I haven't opened that yet, so I don't want to.
Speaker 3 (06:44):
There is that there's a specific type of person who
is one of the worst type of people who are
too good at a video game and then ruin that
experience for everybody.
Speaker 4 (06:58):
Yeah, and they were in camp at at the arcade
machine in the game room and like you know, old school,
just sit there until they're beaten and they just spend
all day there. I'm like, if that's your thing, there's
a whole rest of a convention you could also be
hanging out.
Speaker 3 (07:14):
But like, why why do you want to be the
person who plays this game NonStop beating nubes all day?
Like why can't the nubes just play each other? Right?
Speaker 4 (07:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (07:25):
God, Yeah, I might be friends with a couple of
those people.
Speaker 4 (07:29):
It's nice going with other nubes and be like none
of us knows how soul Caliber works.
Speaker 3 (07:33):
Let's truly grabbing the controller, being like, uh, which one
which button do I press?
Speaker 4 (07:43):
That's a fun experience. Do you enjoy that?
Speaker 3 (07:46):
So do you do you find this? I find because
I go to different conventions like like un like professional
conferences and stuff. But do you find this because you
do a lot of preparation in a in a more way?
Do you find yourself like dreading the week before? Like
(08:06):
why the fuck did I sign up for this ship?
Because it always happens to me where I'm like Jesus Christ,
like I have to get on a plane, I got
to go to a place. Yeah, I got to do
a presentation, I got to do all this stuff. And
I don't even want to be doing this.
Speaker 4 (08:23):
Absolutely. I mean I'm like staring at the schedule double
and triple booked of like there's three time slots where
everything I want to go to is happening, and trying
to make those choices and waiting for the schedule to
actually get on the app and we don't even we
don't even travel for these like we've because I'm so
anxious about it, like thinking about getting a hotel or leaving,
(08:47):
and especially with any of the cosplay we're doing, bringing
any of the stuff with us, Like I don't want
to handle any of those logistics. And if there's people
who do it, you know, semi and you can my
thoughts of professional cosplays, I think, you know, sort of
an oxymoron. But the folks who do that have you know,
big cases and road trips with all their warblow foam
(09:09):
and they do it. And yeah, we've I don't know
if I'll maybe I'll be ready for something like that
in the future, but even without doing a panel, yes,
absolutely like this the weeks ahead of time, like why
did I what am I do? And part of that
is like if I had just spent the last six
(09:31):
months preparing a little bit at a time, I wouldn't
be feeling this way now, the con crunch being a
every con attendee's bane. But you know, it's a growing
process and the learning process.
Speaker 3 (09:46):
Well it is a growing process. But I've been doing
this for a long time at this point, thirteen years,
and it never it never gets better every time, like
the way that it works for us. And this is
(10:06):
this is similar with the convention, because you know, the
conventions are happening months and months and months beforehand.
Speaker 5 (10:13):
Yes, but the problem is that you like you're like, okay, yeah,
definitely going in my case, you submit a proposal, they
accept it or rejected, and if they accept it, then
it's like you're on the hook.
Speaker 3 (10:26):
Now I have to do it kind of thing. And
then it's like so like this year, going at LA
to do a panel that I that I convened, and
it's like that's a fucking six hour flights a different
(10:46):
time zone. I'm going on a weekend. I'm coming back
and teaching. I have to like recalibrate my body, my wife,
my co which means my daughter, my co which means
that her sleep is gonna get like so it's, yeah,
this whole is this whole weird thing that it's an
added level of stress, whereas before it was already stressful
(11:07):
enough where I'm like, you're you're doing like your job,
the job that you get paid for in addition to
and now I'm doing this other thing. And so then
you have to like write a paper and then get
your slides together, and then there's a whole like kind
of like mythologized idea of like the academic on a
plane writing the paper on the way there, because of
(11:30):
course you haven't done any preparation beforehand, and I can't
do that. I will get so stressed out. I need
to have something I have. I have this thing where
I have a draft that I would not want to
jump off of the building if this were all I had,
And so I like to finish that version of the
(11:52):
paper like two weeks beforehand, so that so that I
know that I have something, like like, if I can't
do anything for two weeks for some unforeseemed circumstance, I
have something that I won't want to kill myself if
I delivered in public, and then refinements all the way
(12:13):
up until the day. But the whole time I'm just like, God,
why did I do this? And then you realize the
reason you do it is because after your thing is done. Yeah, yeah,
you're chilling, You're you're supporting your friends, you're seeing your friends,
unless you're like a true narcissist, like the the the
least interesting and most stressful part of the entire process
(12:36):
is like your thing, But then everybody else's stuff.
Speaker 4 (12:39):
You want to you know, you want to be there, absolutely.
Speaker 3 (12:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (12:42):
And this is the thing about what these fan conventions is.
It is essentially the same structure. And we've done a
panel ourselves before and had the same experience like trying
to get dressed up and then also do the panel,
Like that's a lot, But the most people who do
panel are they get a they get an entry for it.
(13:02):
It's like that's why they're doing it. Like I'll do
my panel and then I get to have the rest
of the convention to chill and support my friends and
go see stuff. And it's just for the free entry.
That's interesting and mall doesn't go to a lot, doesn't
like go into a lot of panels at these because
most of them are set up by people who just
want the free entry, and so there's this like a
lot of them are sort of intro level of like
(13:24):
this is just some random person. Would you trust this
random person? Would you follow them on Tumblr? Like that's
fair point. I don't know, like why do I actually
want to hear what they have to say? But you
can kind of tell from the descriptions like, oh, this
person's an academic. Like last year we went to one
that was like a setup about the feedback loop between
(13:46):
anime directors who post World War two started seeing European
art house film and like then you know Cowboy Bebop
being an example of like being super in influenced, and
so they had a lot of really good film clips
like oh, this is like a high school art teacher
or something like. They're full on academic and those are awesome,
but you have to kind of cherry pick which ones
(14:08):
those are just based on what does the subscription sound like.
And yeah, when I have done those, that is so stressful.
And then once it's over, great, now I'm having a
great time.
Speaker 1 (14:21):
Yeah, in my previous life, when I had to do
a lot of the similar, similar, similar panels to you
mouse the thing, because I was so low on the
academic rung, they also made me do like the university
would be like, hey, you also need to do a
poster session when you get back to like justify us
(14:42):
paying for this. So all the times, like they would
be like, all right, your presentation at this convention is good,
or the trade show is going to be kind of
in the middle, so people will go to it and
we can get the good press, but you need to
also go to at least three or four and like.
Speaker 4 (15:00):
And I give a presentation about the presentation plus.
Speaker 1 (15:03):
When I get back. So it was like I would
always have to be like man because none of the
it's hard to At the time, I didn't have enough
colleagues where I knew them, and I couldn't be like, hey,
can you send me your slide so I can write
this ahead of time. I had to like be there
with notes and like not hungover, because the big things
with the camaraderie at those are like, yeah, these are
(15:25):
academics who are like this is partially vacation time, which
is just an unavoidable thing. And suddenly you're like, all right,
well it's past seven. It's time to treat this like
it's past seven in a foreign city, you know what
I mean.
Speaker 4 (15:40):
Yeah, that is something that I'm very fortunate to be
able to have a fair amount of PTO I can
take and from previous year's experience, Like I am. The
convention starts Thursday night and goes through Sunday, and most
of the things I want to do are after hours.
I'm gonna be on like vampire time all weekend, Like
I'm taking Thursday off and the following Monday and Tuesday's
(16:02):
noting like have an actual weekend after the convention. It's
gonna be so burned out. And that's you know, after
years of trying to do this and then go directly
back to work. It's not working.
Speaker 3 (16:15):
Yeah, the in in graduate school and we had similar
things like that, Teddy, but they wouldn't cover the cost
the full cost. They would cover like you know, five
hundred dollars and if the you know, the conferences in
Montreal or something that might cover two nights of the
hotel maybe probably partially cover two nights of the hotel.
(16:38):
You so have to get there the other nights and
stuff like that. And so, I mean I remember doing
like what what people who go to cons do of,
but in graduate school, trying to become like a professional
and car pulling up to Toronto with five people and
(16:59):
we all stay in the same room and like prepare
our presentations and stuff, and it's like, so, I mean,
it's it's dehumanizing. Is too strong, there's too much mustard
on that. Because we had fun and stuff like that.
It's like a nostalgic memory, but it was there were
(17:21):
like those realizations that you had are like epiphanies of
like why am I doing this? Like it's just worth it?
Speaker 4 (17:29):
Yeah, it's so weird, given like that we've all done
these academically, and then going to a fan one and
they're like yeah, this is great, but also super stressful
and like oh kind of overwhelming. What do you mean
I want to do this for work? And then you know,
going I went to my big company convention thing and
(17:51):
they're like, this is there's no cosplay here, this is lame.
Who am I hear? But then if you do a
budget for work and then and I think this is
probably your experience, MoU says, you've gone to fewer of
the fan ones, like you go to enough of these
professionally to be like, no, I'm not going to spend
my free time doing this.
Speaker 1 (18:10):
Also, yeah, especially from people who vend at the fan
ones who are like it's hard. Once you go to
enough of them, you're like I've seen this panel thirty
different times. I'm just gonna stay here, or I'm like,
oh I have beef with this one artist and they
like sat me next to like it's it's those weird,
(18:31):
Like oh right, yeah, it's.
Speaker 4 (18:33):
A whole separate stage management business of it.
Speaker 6 (18:37):
Absolutely, yeah, there was there was like Prisbee always is
is very insistent on trying to get me to go
to con the fan conventions, and I would like to
go as his friend, but I just can't.
Speaker 3 (18:52):
I can't do it. It is such a stressful thing.
The commute is bad, and then all so the experience
is kind of bad when you get down there. And
there's also like there are different modalities that people sort
of tap into when they're at conventions and and Prince
b is very much like I mean, he has such
(19:16):
a it's kind of like an imaginative kid like way
about him where he loves he loves the whole thing.
He like walks onto the floor and he's like the
vendors are doing.
Speaker 4 (19:33):
It's like in an Fao Schwartz in Times Square. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:38):
Yeah, the artists are drawing and they're doing custom stuff
and I can get something, and it truly is I
think there's a Jois de vive there that I don't have,
where he's like the artists are drawing things and like
they're only gonna draw twenty of these and I can
get one and then I can give it to you
and then you got to figure out what to do
with it. And like I'm literally looking at a wall
(20:03):
of posters that Prince Vy has gotten me at conventions
and stuff, and like that modality I think is is
is not my speed. And then there's the modality of
like being a cosplayer and then also like wanting to
go to panels, which I also find to be very
(20:24):
I mean, Prinsby would send me photos of how long
the lines were that he was waiting in, and I
was like, I mean, I'm happy for you that you're
excited to be there, but that looks like hell to
me to go watch people talk and it's always the
(20:45):
same people.
Speaker 1 (20:45):
And he loves it.
Speaker 3 (20:46):
He loves going to see you know, every time Bill
Lamar every time, or Rob Paulson every time we'll do
the Animaniac fucking song like that kind of shit. And yeah,
that that's like the conference lifestyle that I don't understand
because yeah, I've been to so many conferences, and the
(21:08):
more you go to them, the more it is like
go there, do your obligation, support your friends, and then
you know, let's get some tacos in La or like
if we're in Atlanta, like let's go hit up some
some some local stuff.
Speaker 4 (21:23):
Yeah, I will say.
Speaker 1 (21:26):
I was going to say that the thing that I've
begun with in my current role when I've had to
do one particular trade show that makes me feel like
my soul is dying a little bit. There are it's
it's interesting to find the pockets of cool people within
those communities because sometimes either new or just folks that
(21:50):
you there there, some of them are just so large
that you there's no way to meet everybody. So it
is I will say to the Prince be of it all.
When you do get to find those truly inspired and
just really cool people, it is a really it is
a nice treat. And there are those like there are
(22:11):
a couple of activists that I ran into at one
of the trade shows that like they got thrown out
because they were and it was it was just a
cool like hearing about some of their I don't want
to get too specific on a thing that's going up,
but like they had a couple of anarchist distros that
(22:32):
they were like, no, we're tech and we like we
know tech well enough, and we are also of this
political mindset and you're like, oh, you are are doing
some cool stuff, and they were. There are just those
people who are before the shine has left some folks's eyes,
like they're like, I'm really interested in this type of
(22:54):
reform and you're like, oh, it's really nice. I want
to support you. I really hope you don't get too
sick in two years and like it. There are some
really lovely connections you can go for networking. Now, Yeah,
if you're just going for networking, it can be like
I've left with this stack of business cards, so now
I have to recycle the stack of business cards and
(23:16):
that will probably get a little draining, but you know,
there's still a little bit of a magic to it,
especially when you see some cool stuff.
Speaker 4 (23:24):
Yeah, that's interesting. There's the kind of a con meticulture
and meta gaming that happens of we're just talking about
going to panels, going to dealers, going to artists, but
then there's this repeated like I'm not even there for
the stuff anymore. I'm there for the people and like
the con regulars, and you know, there's this very specific
experience I'm going for. And that's especially especially true for
(23:49):
things like the Supernatural conventions where show's over for now,
and some of those people it's not even about the show.
It's about this like communal experience of the actors have
their own kind of gimmicks now that are divorced from
talking about their characters, like they've already answered every question
(24:09):
anybody could ever possibly ask about all fifteen seasons of
that show, and so now they're like doing pajama parties
and you know, like tarot readings or whatever, and some
there's a certain amount of like super fandom that you know,
you find connection community there that is tangentially related to
(24:32):
the thing you were starting to go there in the
first place. And I think that's you know, cosplay has
a bunch of different motivations to it, but I think
one of the most sort of authentic and cool ones
is using it as an icebreaker, to your point, not networking,
but like it's a shortcut to finding people with similar
(24:52):
interests and then being able to like chat with them.
And especially in this kind of like sad, lonely, decentral
less digital world, it's still a good opportunity to like
meet somebody physically and check out a conversation. Now, whether
or not I have the social anxiety to like allow
that to even really happen for real, we'll see. But
(25:14):
it is a nice opportunity that conventions are unique in
being able to pull people together like that.
Speaker 3 (25:23):
That that that has reminded me of this bizarre dimension
of the academic convention. So there are some conventions like
the big ones where you'll go to the convention and
there will be people meeting having formal like business meetings
(25:48):
with editors about books and like book contracts, and also
like interviews for jobs. So it instead of being so
there was this there in certain disciplines, including one that
I'm in, there's this way that everything is sort of structured,
(26:08):
of like the calls are put out in the summertime,
and then by the time the annual disciplinary conference comes up,
that's where we'll interview and whittle down the finalists. Zoom
has largely sort of replaced that, and then we'll have
the campus interviews afterwards.
Speaker 1 (26:26):
And then.
Speaker 3 (26:29):
There are offshoot sort of sub disciplinary conventions that have
now gotten kind of bigger and rivaled even like the
more central disciplinary conventions that have issued that as being
like this is too intimidating, it's making people who have
social anxiety feel like unwelcomed in these spaces. It's making
(26:54):
it's making the conference a little too scary. But then
what what has now happened at those is that junior
faculty have no access to senior people and so there
is no networking that is possible because the culture of
(27:14):
there of that is, and I have seen and been
witnessed to some like really awful behavior from senior faculty
who who are who just kind of like dismiss graduate
students and stuff like that, as being like, you don't
understand what this is, like, I'm just here to have
drinks and talk with all my other friends who also
(27:35):
won the National Book Award kind of bullshit. And it
has it has created like a different toxic environment where
I mean, it's very interesting where it's like now people
are like, can we have some formal networking happen at
these things so that like people can meet people post.
Speaker 4 (27:55):
COVID Informal networking is just super clique?
Speaker 3 (27:58):
Yeah, yeah, because everybody just want to hang out with
their friends. You know, I honestly guilty, but still it's
not great.
Speaker 1 (28:07):
Speaking of some of these cons, we mind if we
flip over to some happy con stuff.
Speaker 4 (28:13):
Sure? Yeah, and San Diego Comic Con just happened. Some
of them might be happy.
Speaker 3 (28:18):
I don't know, I thought you were going to I
thought you were going to hit us with the let's
slip over to some pros. Oh I like it?
Speaker 1 (28:27):
Well, yeah, actually said get into the pros along with
the San Diego Comic Con. There was gen Con that
happened last weekend. So this is our t TRPG update corner.
I just made up that. I don't think that is
uh copywritten, but you know, we'll.
Speaker 4 (28:44):
See us now. We will not ever figure that out,
but just keep doing.
Speaker 1 (28:50):
So. A couple of big things, uh. Gen Con announced
a couple of big games that came out. First, we
have a Temorar role playing game, the book that I
was telling you about with dragons and the Napoleonic Wars.
So it's dragons, but they treat dragons kind of like
biplanes and World War One, but then you put them
(29:10):
in the Napoleonic Wars. Great book series called the Temporary
Series from Naomi Novak is now going to be a
role playing game. It's going to be a crowdfunding that's
going to start in twenty twenty six and hoping for
a full release in twenty twenty seven. Outside of that,
Diablo two is the Diablo video games, but they're mostly
(29:32):
focusing on Diablo two is also getting an RPG. And
in our more less indie but still not quite D
and D, we have Starfinder, which is the space epic
that goes along with Pathfinder second edition, so you get
like a lot of they're looking for like Star Wars
(29:53):
and Guardians of the Galaxy esque type stories that gets
put into Pathfinder are some of those big announcements. The
biggest announcement that came out is that the new season
of Critical Role has announced a couple of changes to
the lineup. So campaign for starts October second, twenty twenty five,
(30:17):
and it has been confirmed that Matt Mercer, the longtime
dungeon master of ten years, will not be the dungeon
master for the next coming season. In fact, he's going
to be a player, and Brennan Lee Mulligan from Dropout
will be the new dungeon master for the next campaign. Wow,
a crossover, So there's a big crossover. Apparently this is
(30:39):
going to be the main games, not a short epic,
so that means you'll probably be seeing Brennan Lee Mulligan
on Critical Role for a couple of years. For this
new campaign setting, it's apparently a whole bunch of new
folks that are be coming in, but there are also
a lot of the old cast that'll be rocking it.
(31:02):
And one of the coolest things about it, they are
beginning to divorce themselves from Watsea and Wizards of the Coast.
So Chris, oh goodness, I can't remember their last name,
Chris Perkins and Jeremy I can't remember his last name,
but they have actually left their positions at Wizards of
(31:24):
the Coast with D and D and they are now
officially with the Critical Roles indie publishing house for Daggerhart,
So they are now in charge of their games development
and Daggerhart is going to be prominently displayed. So they
are not completely cutting ties, but they are switching systems
(31:47):
and doing a full creative control with some of the
heaviest hitters in the TTRPG space.
Speaker 4 (31:55):
So those are some big things that's interesting. So I
don't not understanding the politics.
Speaker 1 (32:01):
Of all of this.
Speaker 4 (32:02):
Is this like an upgrade for Brennan Lee Mulligan, Like
Critical Role has its own like cottage industry of rules.
Brand's going to be dungeon mastering them through their own
rules system.
Speaker 1 (32:15):
Is that?
Speaker 4 (32:15):
What I'm hearing is that they are.
Speaker 1 (32:18):
Still releasing some more info about it. So it's looking
like the way that these are happening is that they're
using some interesting twists on the system, but they'll be
transferring away it seems like they'll be transferring away from
(32:39):
from Dungeons and Dragons fifth Edition and more prominently featuring
Jack Daggerheart, which they created, and you know, long time
fans of the game, they're trying to change that out.
One good thing about one thing I did not mention,
Dropout has confirmed that old BLM running Lee is not
(33:02):
going to be leaving Dimension twenty, So dropout, we'll still
have a Dimension twenty for our d twenty heads.
Speaker 4 (33:10):
Oh he's just busy. Well, good for him and good
for them. Yeah, yeah, wats He's in an interesting spot
because I mean they are They're a shell of themselves.
Speaker 1 (33:21):
You know.
Speaker 4 (33:21):
In many ways, Magic the Gathering and Dungeons and Dragons
is the only thing that makes Hasbro profitable, and to
that end, Hasbro is trying to pump that for as
much as they can. So, speaking of Starfinder, Magic the
Gathering has just released. It's called Edge of Eternities. It
is a same idea space fantasy, very much kind of
(33:43):
they didn't lean too heavily on specifically Star Wars. It's
very like kind of big picture, cosmic, trippy seventies sci fi.
Though I did just lose a game to what was
very clearly a Star Destroyer, and it was It's cool.
It's very much they're expanding out. But they've also like
(34:04):
half of their sets for Magic are now crossovers, so
not their own worlds. Avatar the Last Airbender is coming.
The big announcement they've had they're starting a series of
Marvel crossover sets, so they're starting with a Spider Man set,
but they've promised that there will be others. They are
(34:25):
they have Magic card versions of Infinity Stones. They're falling
into this, which as a you know, I can appreciate it,
and this is something that for years Magic fans because
the system is interesting. In the color system is you know,
very like green lantern rings. You always want to see like, well,
what color would this character be if you're into that
sort of thing. So seeing Marvel heroes poured it over.
(34:49):
And as somebody who used to play a little bit
of the versus system, I never thought i'd see the
day when superheroes would just be in the Magic rule system.
That's very cool. What's very silly because Disney sucks. We
might have talked about this before. We always talk about
Disney sucks before, but this specifically, they're full on in
the crossover for paper Magic, you can buy the cards,
(35:10):
which means there's fifteen million kinds of different kinds of
booster packs and collectors and super expensive and blah blah blah.
It's a collectible card game, okay, but Disney already has
like four Marvel mobile games, so they did not let
Wizards of the Coast use the same stuff digitally. Now
(35:30):
I play Magic almost exclusively now through their Arena video game,
which I really enjoy. Which means there's going to have
to be a legally distinct spider set or something where
they use all those same cards, but they have to
re skin them, which is terrible. It's one I want
(35:51):
to play with the Spider Man cards online. I don't
want to have to go out and buy a bunch
of physical cardboard anymore. Out of the space for that,
I don't want to talk with people. But so again
to go back to social anxiety as both but it
is now a huge breaking point for the game of
you now have totally different part of one of the
(36:13):
hallmarks of the game was the digital experience is the
same as the physical experience, just with cool animations played
from your phone. Really convenient. Having to have these separate
versions is just basically a big fuck you too. Like
it speaks to the fact that Wizards just got kind
of big timed by Disney. They just did a Final
(36:35):
Fantasy crossover. That was fine. Tifa and Cloud and Sepherroth
are on cards in the video game, no problem. They're
doing Avatar, that's fine. But Marvel said, oh yeah, we'll
give you the IP for your physical cards. I'm sure
that getting a big cut of those profits. There's a
lot of money to be made in the digital game too,
But nope, you can't have our our license for the
(36:56):
mobile game because we've got other mobile games. I hope
that will change, but if he doesn't, I'm not playing that.
That's bullshit. I'm not doing it. It's a real bomber.
But it speaks to Disney was also trying to briefly
create this Lorcana game, which was had all kinds of
(37:16):
issues because it was ripped off from somebody else and
was meant to be like a magic gathering killer that
did not come to pass. So yeah, we've got this
weird split in digital versus paper magic with these Marble cards,
which is massively disappointing and will be massively confusing if
you are a player who is new who's getting excited
(37:38):
by like, hey, Spider Man, Well, how does this game work?
Oh you mean I can play it on my phone?
Speaker 1 (37:42):
Great?
Speaker 4 (37:43):
What do you mean I can't play with Spider Man
on my phone? Huh? What's this Spider Monk thing? Instead,
it's gonna be a nightmare. So we'll see how it
pans out. But it speaks to Hasbro, you know, draining
the Wizards of all of their magic and just trying
to pump cash. And that's where we're at. So moreticon.
Speaker 3 (38:03):
I'm looking at Hazard's a publicly traded company, so they
have their full like yeah, revenue and expenditures on their website,
and everything is losing money on a year to year basis,
So like Magical Gathering revenue decrease nineteen percent, and Hazbro
(38:28):
total gaming which includes D and D decreased five percent,
tabletop gaming decreased twenty two percent, film and TV ninety
eight percent, and then family brands, which I'm not sure
what that is, probably like toys, yeah thirty. What has
increased and what they're leaning into, according to this report
(38:52):
is digital gaming, specifically Monopoly Go increased revenue twenty two
percent on that specific line item, which is like it,
which spells like the most bad faith like so well, basically,
what I'm saying to just come by these two updates
is that it is possible that dagger Heart could surpass
(39:16):
like Dungeons and Dragons if Hasbro who is now looking
at these trends, and they've been losing money on Magic
the Gathering, they've been losing money on D and D
while it being their most valuable asset. I mean, they've
lost way more money on like the fucking Transformers movies.
By by a long shot, they could just cash in
(39:39):
on like mobile gaming and do that like that that
paid to play stuff, and then dagger Hard or Candle
Obscure or any of these other systems could be like
aggressively pushing to become like the new standard bearer like
basic defaults two TRPG format.
Speaker 4 (40:01):
What I'm hearing is sell Wizards of the Coast to Sam.
Speaker 1 (40:04):
Reich, What a wild what a wild place to go
profit sharing with gaming? Yeah, you know, brave New Worlds.
Speaker 3 (40:18):
That's pretty nuts though, I because and this is also
surprising too, because they debuted a new rule set for
D and D, so I would have assumed that they
would have increased that they would have increased revenue last
year at the very least from from their D and
D brand, but they did not.
Speaker 1 (40:35):
So one of the things that and again this is me, uh,
I'll take off my well researched hat and put on
my conspiracy theory that I still research pending. When it
comes to D and D beyond. They had a big
push for their AI assist feature. Now this could be
(40:58):
and again we'll have to look. Look, all of these
AI assist features were initially pushed as they are saving
money in certain areas because it was ostensibly free, and
over the last six months and will continue to see
this trend, it's very much frogs in a pot where
(41:23):
a lot of the things like open ai and some
of these other US based AI companies, Microsoft and some
of the other ones are beginning to turn up the
amount of money even in the business, especially in the
business to business licensing, how much it's going to consistently cost.
So they could be losing money because they were saying, oh,
this is we're saving on labor. But the rate seeking
(41:46):
behavior in terms of the economic terms, rent seeking is
just jacking up the prices. So now they are losing
money because they aren't getting the constant new subscribers, and
it's the cost of running some of these services is
just going up, even as software as sales.
Speaker 4 (42:07):
I am so excited to see where we're at this
time next year, and like seeing if ai has just
become totally untenable and too expensive and people have been
forced to stop using it.
Speaker 3 (42:25):
They I'll tell you the the the official company line
is that revenue for Magic the Gathering decrease due to
the lapse of the Lord of the Rings set, So
they started printing fewer and they're phasing out the production
of that particular set this year.
Speaker 4 (42:47):
That as I understand that that was massively popular.
Speaker 3 (42:51):
No, no, that that, but that's what I'm saying. So
they're they're they're they're printing fewer of that because another
thing that they have to consider is how do you
maintain value in the secondary markets.
Speaker 4 (43:03):
Yeah, and they've created this bizarre inflation of reprinting cards
and secondary card market value and people treating Magic cards
like stocks.
Speaker 1 (43:12):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (43:14):
But yeah, that was a massively popular set, and then
when they started to print fewer of those cards, they
start to obviously lose revenue and whatever whatever replaced it
wasn't as popular as that set. I guess was it
the Horror movie?
Speaker 4 (43:32):
Yeah, I mean there were a bunch of they're they're
printing like six sets here, it's too many. That's the
other sort of player burnout of their positions. Well, not
everything for everybody. You don't have to buy everything, you
have to get up on anything. But Magic players are
notoriously completionists and detail oriented as the game is, and
so just getting burned out by Look, there's just too
(43:53):
much stuff and then being all like half crossover and
they're still desperately trying to play with the big boys
of IP of You know, how do we make our
own stories matter when half of our cards are SpongeBob
fighting Optimus Prime?
Speaker 3 (44:11):
Now is that a real card?
Speaker 4 (44:15):
It's a real thing you can do. SpongeBob was in
like a very limited special like they call them secret
Layer sets, but there's no there as yet is not
a full SpongeBob set, but given that Avatar exists, they
might do other Nickelodeon.
Speaker 1 (44:30):
You say that you're going to mess up and we're
going to turn this into a Magic the Gathering Update draft.
Speaker 4 (44:38):
Yeah, we are, We truly are getting to the point
of yeah, absurd, all like those Avengers endgame fan cuts
where you've got all of like ridiculous other characters popping
out of the portals. That's what it feels like playing
magic Gathering sometimes.
Speaker 3 (44:53):
Wait a second, SpongeBob square pants and this is Wizards
of the Coast. Maybe I'm being trolled. Here is a
legendary creature who categorized as a human wizard.
Speaker 4 (45:07):
Yes, because since it was not a full new set release,
they didn't go as far as creating a new sponge
creature type. I think he is a partial re reskinning
of an existing card, whereas Optimus Prime had a brand new,
full on design.
Speaker 3 (45:27):
So there's like no SpongeBob deck.
Speaker 4 (45:30):
It's just like, yeah, it's like a set of like
twelve cards that are themed.
Speaker 1 (45:35):
SpongeBob Commander deck would be you can do it.
Speaker 4 (45:39):
They can have a bunch of jellyfish yep.
Speaker 1 (45:43):
Blue green deck because green is summoning.
Speaker 4 (45:46):
Right, yeah green, lots of creatures and nature and yeah,
that would be perfect.
Speaker 3 (45:51):
Patrick is Patrick is a human warrior.
Speaker 4 (45:54):
Yeah, so they if they were to do a full set,
then you'd get like Starfish idiot or whatever.
Speaker 3 (46:00):
I don't know wait, wait, wait is this a fun game?
I don't know. Maybe you have maybe you do have
what it takes to do this. What so I already
told you Patrick and SpongeBob, human Warrior, human wizard.
Speaker 1 (46:16):
What is the well?
Speaker 3 (46:20):
What is that their class that is there?
Speaker 1 (46:23):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (46:23):
There? They used to be called races and classes. Now
they're just types.
Speaker 3 (46:28):
Yeah, okay, so what type do you think Gary the
Snail is.
Speaker 4 (46:35):
That's weird, but there actually are a bunch of snails
in Magic, so I'm hoping he is just simply a snail.
Speaker 1 (46:41):
I would say maybe an maybe an artifact.
Speaker 3 (46:45):
Because Gary is a slug, which is magic type horror.
Speaker 4 (46:54):
He is definitely a reprint of a slug horror from
Innustru the Gothic car set, where they just give them
a new name. Yeah, I think that's what went on there.
Whereas like all of this, Doctor Octopus is going to
be a brand new card designed specifically for Doctor Octopus
and it'll be like a human octopus doctor or something
(47:15):
that's crazy.
Speaker 3 (47:16):
And Sandy Cheeks is just a squirrel because I guess
that's a type of match.
Speaker 4 (47:19):
Yep, they got plenty of squirrels.
Speaker 3 (47:23):
That's awesome. Well, it's that time of the show, it's
time to get raction, get.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
Well.
Speaker 4 (47:32):
Speaking of slow slide towards fascism and spider Man, I'm
going to recommend Pleasantville. I think Pleasantville is a required watching.
This brilliant film from nineteen ninety eight, with the first
fifteen minutes explain why Toby maguire got cast as Peter Parker.
And it's really clever. It's got a beautiful color to
(47:55):
black and white transition that the director of the Wicked
Movies uh specifically pointed out as like an inspiration features,
among other people, a very young uh our boy from
Fast and the Furious Paul Walker. Really really smart film
(48:18):
about rebelling against heteronormativity and puritanism, and I none of
us are immune to propaganda. I think it's a really
nice sort of injection of of really countercultural thinking. Because
(48:38):
it's from nineteen ninety eight, it's it's just technically excellent
the way it's put together. As a fan of film
and TV, and I imagine that you are if you're
listening to this podcast, I think you'll really appreciate it
on a technical level as well as a narrative level.
So yeah, beautiful film, really smart and Uh, get on it.
(49:02):
Watch that movie if you haven't already, have either of
you seen it?
Speaker 3 (49:05):
Yes, yeah, I saw it when I was eight.
Speaker 4 (49:09):
Definitely worth it, Definitely worthree.
Speaker 1 (49:10):
Watching Reese Weatherspoon was really it was an interesting, interesting
film and interesting takes.
Speaker 3 (49:19):
Yeah, that's so cool. There's like absolute chaos happening upstairs.
My my, my daughter is up there playing with her cousins.
So my wreck would be task Master series nineteen. Just
(49:42):
finished watching that. Task Master is a British panel show
that is hosted and created by Alex Horn and Greg Davies,
who are both sort of like British comedians, and at
this point it's kind of like legendary British comedians. I'd
watched a couple of seasons just based on comics I like,
(50:05):
like I like Nish Kumar's fantastic British comic. James A.
Caster is a really great British comic. And basically it's
a show that every British comic has done at some point,
and they will often talk about it, like within the
context of podcasts like my series of task Master where
I did this. The interesting thing about this series of
(50:27):
task Master is that it's the first series that featured
an American who was flown overseas to do the show.
They've had Americans before, but they've been like transplanted Americans
who are like expats who live in the UK. This series,
(50:48):
they brought over Jason man Zukis. Jason man Zuka's famous
for in the League just like Absolute Chaos. It is
such a it's such a fun element to have him
in the show because there's a lot of ways that
(51:11):
like an American could really ruin that show, particularly if
they don't like blend in with kind of British comedy,
a lot of British comedy, sort of like Rings this
alternative comedy to like American sensibilities, and Manzukas is like
upright Citizens Brigade. It's sort of like alt comedy scene
(51:32):
has been doing that for like thirty years at this
point as a like a veteran kind of like a
legendary improviser in the US, and went over and absolutely
fit right in and manage to have like his American
identity be a part of the joke but not like
(51:54):
the entire thing.
Speaker 1 (51:56):
So like.
Speaker 3 (51:58):
His brand of cho was very much of trying to
like break the rules, and it was interesting to go
because task Master is kind of about breaking the rules.
They'll give you an impossible task with a billion twists
and if there's a way for you to find a
loophole in the task, then you It's just like it's
(52:19):
just like amazing experience because the way that they designed
the tasks and the game design of that show is
so impressive and the fact that it's like a comedy show,
I think belies how also genius, like the gamesmanship and
the craftsmanship is but like his whole thing was like,
(52:42):
so for this task, the best thing that we could
do is go play in traffic. And there was there
were there were these like in the UK they have
I can't remember what they were called, but they're like
safe safety people who are on the sets of productions
and stuff like that. And apparently they talked to him
so much and it became like a running gag on
(53:05):
the show and at one point Greg Davis, one of
the hosts, goes, this is the nineteen series of the
show that we've done. I've never even heard of these
people being consulted like the safety No, it's.
Speaker 4 (53:19):
Never been crazy enough to get them involved.
Speaker 3 (53:22):
He's trying to light stuff on fire, he's trying to
get on the roof of the building. He's trying to
play in traffic, like you know, American stuff. So it
was very It's very, very, very funny, and all the
other four comics on their Fatielle Cory is an amazing
Moroccan British comic, Rosie Ramsey whose husband did the show.
(53:46):
Matthew Baton, who spoiler alert, won but it's like he
was always gonna win because he won every single episode,
so it's not that much of a spoiler. Stevie Martin,
who's a great stand up comic, just like a Murderers
Row cast and really really fun. I think I think
you would enjoy it if you haven't seen Task Master,
because it has that thing of like, this is a
(54:09):
funny show, but sometimes you don't even laugh because you
are interested to see what the twist of the task is.
Speaker 1 (54:18):
It is very.
Speaker 3 (54:21):
Teddy if you don't watch it. It's very drop Out coded,
to the point where Alex Horn has appeared on Dropout
in a cameo kind of setting, and like Dropout fans
are waiting for the crossover to happen because it's kind
of like the British version of that sensibility, really good clips.
(54:46):
I think Series nineteen would be a great place to start.
It's really really good.
Speaker 4 (54:50):
Well, I always like to cut through a kitchen, so
that kind of adversarial game design with funny people is nice.
Speaker 1 (54:59):
For me. I'm going to break a little bit from form,
and I would recommend a couple of things. This with
the recent push with Windows ten is losing its support
for Microsoft, So for all of our Windows listeners Windows
(55:21):
with a Windows eleven, you have a feature that I
find awful, so I would recommend turning off this particular feature.
It is called Microsoft Recall. It is an AI assistant
tool that records everything you do on your computer. It
is a performance sink and memory sync. So the thing
(55:42):
I would recommend is to do the following things. First,
back up all of your just regular files onto an
external hard drive, anything that you don't want to lose. Next,
open your settings window that's either on the start button
or you can press Windows KEYI go to pro Privacy
and Security. Click Privacy and Security on the left of
(56:03):
the sidebar, Go to activity history, scroll down and click
on the button, and then you'll see an option labeled
let Windows collect my activity from this PC. And unclick
that option to disable recall. Just a quick heads up
while disabling this will make it so it won't store
(56:25):
everything you do on your computer in perpetuity. It doesn't
remove the underlying functionality, so there are still going to
be traces within the system, but you can still disable
it so it won't collect all of that area. For
you corporate users, you have to go onto the Group
Policy Editor, and some of your security team may have
(56:50):
removed this functionality from your computer. But if your security
team has not removed your ability to get rid of
your Group Policy editor, just go in there to Windows
key r and run your dot MSc file that will
enable you to find it. Go under into Policies administrative
(57:13):
ted plates, and under start menu and taskbar you can
look for the policy titled don't keep a record of
where I've been. Double click that policy and set it
to enabled, and you'll be able to change that if
you use the Group Policy Editor. That's everything on your
machine and not just your individual user profile. So those
(57:37):
are some things to keep keep an eye out for,
so I highly recommend doing that, And yeah, that'll be
my wreck for today.
Speaker 4 (57:48):
Public service announcement. Don't let them spy on you.
Speaker 3 (57:52):
Yeah, this has been get TechEd support like get TechEd.
It's good, So do all that stuff and that'll do
it for this episode of It's just as bad. We'll
see in the next one.
Speaker 1 (58:06):
Bye.
Speaker 4 (58:10):
It's just a bad.
Speaker 3 (58:16):
It's like a pirates port.
Speaker 4 (58:17):
Your brain, Robin Nalis, no joking open in your mind
with the probot, so you're woken. Hitting hydra halen hairs
had for time, for head.
Speaker 3 (58:23):
Of reasons, for more than with the soldiers, with them
and for all seasons.
Speaker 4 (58:26):
Listen closely while we share our expertise in Catholic comments, culture,
Dean streetuition to the multiversity, not it'syco teaching. Perfect balance
when we snap and fine gents into your ears does
the shoulders when we speak Purple men versus and speech
for Randy Savage Randals with their mortal technique
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