2024-02-25

The other D2, the devil may cry too. Right. Oh, God, they just did the math wrong. I mean, we did have that one guest who claimed that Dark Souls 2 was the superior game in the series. I was talking to this guest recently, and it's amazing how different of an opinion we have, despite me and him having very similar tastes in games. We were going through Bioshock Infinite and discussing it, and on release it got some incredible reception. But now, at least ten years after the game was released, now it's kind of become more and more clear in hindsight that there was a lot of questionable design choices. And I was talking to him about that, and he, I don't know, at least compared to popular opinion, he's very much against the tide. He was also an advocate for Bioshock 2, when that was largely hated upon. On release it was. I listen to my patron saint, Matthew Mitosis, to decide my opinions. It's difficult to be disconnected from what everyone else is saying and gathering your own opinion. I do think there's a nice charm to it, but if you're looking out to be critical, some do feel pretty flat before you. So it's a difficult line to tread for me, to sit down and just enjoy a game that I want to enjoy. And if I want to have a critical eye at the same time... I'm in. Yeah, I mean, that's my point. There are things that I enjoy. And we had this discussion about guilty pleasures, right? I don't know, if it wasn't you that was a firm believer that there's no such thing, it's just pleasures, no guilt behind it. This is the problem of having so many conversations. Is there anything specific about Elden Ring you do not enjoy? They weren't as inspiring as before. I heard a lot of complaints for the second game, was that the bosses became a lot more streamed. The bosses were more streamed, they were just large humanoid characters. So the bosses were somewhat samey in comparison to the first game. Really? Yeah. Okay. I think there has been a rise in immersion gameplay that way. There must be a result from Breath of the Wild where they realize that it's a very satisfying process to be able to... ...itself, looking at or being told a very rigid system that you have to use. You kind of put logic and realism into the back of your mind and figure it by yourself forwards. I found it amazing that it just worked by... For me, at least, doing Breath of the Wild, I could just throw some wood on the ground, a piece of flint and hit it with my sword made out of steel, and that created the bonfire. It makes so much sense, but it was never explicitly told to me. I really do wish I could play it. I did buy the game, but even though... I did have it at least a year after its release, and the performance was too poor for me to play. I had multiple crashes. That would be difficult because I love using shields and spears in Dark Souls games. I know Halberds were big in the first one. I'm looking down. I'm having flashbacks to Dark Souls 3. We used to have a lot of duels. Spears are... Actually, spears are the ultimate medieval weapon. There's nothing close to it. That's the pussy ways of fighting. That's true. I don't really think magic has added that much to Dark Souls. Okay, do you believe that Dark Souls has depth when it comes to its combat? Like depth, yeah. God forbid that, please. How sick is that? Why have I never done a magic build? You get a magic build! Is it? Because it just does damage, and there's a... It does damage, and there's stuns. It doesn't add anything more to the gameplay. Okay. It just seems like a longer, more convoluted way to get the same result if I just whack somebody with my stick or poke them with my spear. Okay. Like... Yeah. That's my thing, though. I lost my point. I'm sure for immersion and intrinsic value, there is something behind going for a magic build. It has a pretty dope aesthetic. But just for gameplay, there's no... It doesn't add anything that just regular sword and shield does, at least from what I've experienced. Hahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha Fair enough. I don't know, I think there's just, I'm not a creative enough person to come up with examples on the spot, but it feels like there was, it feels underdeveloped, or there was missed potential. If I tried to scrape ideas from other games, like, as a Magic user, you would think there would be a wider range of approaches, you know, things like, yeah, I mean, with Elden Ring there probably is. I, like, you know, like I said, I haven't played the game. I tried, but I couldn't make it work. But you, you know, like, you would be able to do things. A little bit more, like, if you could, like, do some hypnosis, you know, and, or, I wish I was, you know, I could come up with better examples on the spot. There is a hypnosis. Okay, that makes me feel a little better. Mmhmm. Yeah. I mean, that is sort of the archetype, though. Yeah. Okay, well then, that makes me feel better. I mean, I think that's, yeah, I don't want to bash Dark Souls too much for it, because now that I think about it, the combat, you know, it isn't the most complex thing in the world, and it doesn't need to be. It doesn't need to be. Mmhmm. Yeah. Just deal damage. Oh, okay. Yeah. Yeah. Shit, maybe I should go down to my local Keeper and add some it points. Okay. Okay. Okay. Okay. No. I still dislike how fast-paced, you know, other direction Dark Souls went. I wish that there was, you know, if you're running around as knights in full armour, and, you know, you should be able to roll and jump and be as dexterous as you are. What was that? Oh, no. Is that multiplayer? Oh. Wait, is that PvP? Is there PvP in there? No. Get out of here. I don't know if this is a good or bad example. I can't bring it up. But full armour, you know, was something I did get into for a while. This was a while after its initial release, where I got it on the PlayStation 4. But in that case, I did enjoy the melee PvP aspect. With the, you know, it had the three directional moves. And... Yeah. No. No. Maybe. You know, no, but this is systemic in every genre. You know, if you ever played Battlefield games, you remember how Battlefield Backup 3 2 felt. You know, it was slow, it was good, and then Battlefield 3 came out, and everyone was this super-athletic, scaling walls, jumping, sliding. Same with the Call of Duties. You know, we got that stereotype that with Zoomers, when they play video games, they have 200 APM, and, you know, everything happens at such a fast pace nowadays, compared to before. Mm-hmm. No. No. Alright. This has warmed me up a little bit. Let me just grab a drink, and... I have been recording, but this is just to warm up. New start. There you go. Ooh. I was going to ask, what kind of editing do you do for these podcasts? Yeah, no, because I was listening to it, and there was a... I think it was either Jinyan or somebody was having a little coughing fit, and I was surprised I was in there. Yeah, it was just a little jarring. Mm-hmm. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. No, I didn't mention that. Okay. Okay. I don't hear anything. This is the thing, though, because Discord has a, you know, you have a threshold to sounds that are or are not captured, and when you use the audio recording, suddenly you get much more, like, diegetic background, you know, sounds that we don't recognize or hear while we're recording. Yeah. A little chilly still, but it's a good morning. Is that what you do as you're gathering? Yes. Okay, let's hang out. Let's have some drinks, you know, get some pizza, some za, and do some tech support. Okay. Okay. Okay. A key activity. Okay, got my foot in. I don't know, a key activity at lots of festivals was tech support. Okay. Like a mix-up. Yeah. Okay. Okay. So you became, like, the sound engineer at this event? Okay. It's like when your mom calls you. Okay. These things tend to be surprisingly difficult. I've worked on a few events, and it does make sense why you need a dedicated audio engineer, somebody to control lights, and somebody to control the stage. You would think it would be pretty simple just to hook up a bunch of speakers and make sure they're all connected and just go from there. Okay. Okay. Okay. Straight to the hard-hitting questions. Just say you love the trolley question. Just say you love the trolley question. This man who studies psychology. Okay. The modern age? I mean, wouldn't it be just, like, a repaint of the same fundamental questions? Okay. We should probably describe what Discord is. Skype. Is it VOIP? I thought it was voice IP. Oh, voice over IP. Yeah, yeah. Uh-huh. Okay. That's going to go down. Peacefully, isn't it? Oh. Okay. Whoa. Sorry. Sorry. This is so much of a distraction. I'm so sorry for that. Still warm-up. Still warm-up. Okay. Hmm. Okay. Okay. Okay. Giving up the responsibilities. Hmm. Hmm. Varied. Very varied. Yeah. I mean, if you think of the stereotypes, I don't think the one who does all the work, the one who tries to plan, the one who, you know, just jokes around. I think I've filled pretty much all those roles at some point. In my experience. In my experience so far, I think the responsibility I tend to take upon myself is making sure everyone's on the same page. Because it bothers me that everyone has ideas and wants to kind of contribute, but the main issue, at least I've noticed a lot of the time, is that nobody wants to be the one who says, okay, you do this, you do this, you do this, and we understand or have a more coherent following of what's being covered by each of the members. So it becomes more like, you know, four individual projects on one cohesive group project. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing. Because I, at least before I used to take that role upon myself, but now, especially the last couple group works that I've been part of, I've been one of the, you know, I have not taken that mantle, been on the side, you know, given things to do, which is also pretty nice. Especially my last group where I had one guy who did actually all the work, which was, you know, from one point of view, very nice. From this other point of view, you start getting a little guilt ridden, but, you know, as long as everything's agreed upon, it's okay. Yeah, that's what our standard meetings end up being. Him just explaining what he's done, again, and trying to explain the overall structure, so we could, in some feeble attempt, try to be productive as well. But, of course, everything was for naught, because he would just carry on and squander, yeah. Okay. Okay. All right. All right. Okay. Have you ever had a bad experience in a group where there was, like, some confrontation or a major disagreement that you have to figure your way out of? Okay. Okay. So not very focused meetings, then. No. Okay. Okay. There must be a balance in that, because in my experience, it tends to be the polar opposite. It'll be somebody will give input or give an idea, and nobody wants to kind of go against it, you know. So we just end up going with it further on without really reflecting too much on, you know, the principle. Mm-hmm. All right. This is a common thing you do get in job interviews as well, though. At least in my experience, if you do bring up, you know, like, the York Group projects, they were asked, like, have there been any, you know, incidences, and how did you tackle those? I've forgotten what the acronym was again, but there was, like, a strategy where you're supposed to be able to answer these sorts of questions in a very structured way. Yeah, in the start. Christ's sake. Mm-hmm. I had one poor experience. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. All right. I've lost track at this point. I was trying to focus in on the job searches. Yeah. Yeah. You guys have been sucked into this, you know, like, middle management, Cycle101 bullshit that I'm certainly... I'm not against in principle, but... Okay. For example, I'm covering a class now where it's... you go into development methods, and this is more abstract, you know, like Scrums, Agile, you know, those sorts of concepts. This might be a little vague and technical for our listeners, but anyhow, we go... Yeah, best way to perform work, or how to work collaboratively on a larger problem. And in theory, they sound pretty sound, pretty logical, just different approaches of doing things. They're not too complex. The problem I have is that, even the lecturers admit this, for every company, for every work culture, and for every sensation of the use of these methods, it's not a pure following, or tends not to be a pure following of these frameworks themselves or these methods. It always becomes some compromise of, you know, a mixture or, you know, a vague following, but, you know, not as structured. And I feel that these things are, at least now that I'm learning, are just... I wouldn't say pointless, but... It's just somebody sat down and thought about, okay, when we make this, you know, what are we doing? And then just creating acronyms for them, just putting it down into words, and now I'm sitting here learning these things. No, no. No. I think it would make more sense, though, yeah. It's like the question of categories, you know, in media. I mean, I understand it makes things more, you know, digestible when it comes to communicating about these things, but the actual practice doesn't really matter. These are usually taken on a case-by-case basis. So I struggle to see the inherent value of learning these things when, at the end of the day, if I start an ad company, they will have their own ways of doing it, and that's what I'm going to, you know, that's what I'm going to do. Yeah, but how is that going to affect me? No. No. Yeah, I think that's the crux of my issue here, is that this is a lot more of a managerial focus, like, you know, point of view when it comes to these problem-solvings, and it's not a major, you know, it's not a big interest of mine to manage. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's just, yeah, like I said, like a digestible way. It's taken all these ideas, throwing it into an acronym. But I... Yeah. It is true. They should have responsibility, and if I... My qualm is more of a personal qualm, where I just don't find it interesting. I don't really see the inherent value. Like, it's just so ill-defined, I believe. Not ill-defined, but the fact that when you actually see it in practice work differently, it becomes such a letdown. I mean, I understand it's useful as a framework, so you understand where things come from. But... Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Yeah. No, I mean, if I was to start managing my own project, I'm sure it would become very useful. I think my other issue is that this is another exam where I'm not allowed to have any resources, so I'm going to have to memorize that A, sprints last two to three weeks, and all the roles within the sprints, where you have the task master or the task owner, and then you have the... I don't know, just all the different steps. Because... Mm-hmm. Yeah, but that's... Yeah, that's why you need to know, though. It's... I think this is why I enjoy this. I ended up studying computer science, is that I leant towards trying to understand systems. I enjoy understanding more than memorization. And this is a lot more memorization than understanding. So, it's bothering me. We have... No, it's... We're having a project now where we're supposed to apply these things, but it's like what you said. We have a group now, six people, and what we do is that we organize it ourselves in our own logical way. And then in our report, we copy-paste the template of Agile Scrum, in the roles, what was done, how they want it to be formatted. I hope they don't see this podcast, by the way. We do follow some of the principles, because they do make sense logically. It's just the amount of... breaking it down to its individual steps and following it very strictly is not enjoyable. It's not fun. Okay. Where were we? No! Not the Scrum Master role, please. Yeah. I guess there's no escaping it. Maybe just by personality, I'm more of a fluid-form way of... I enjoy fluid-form way of working, more structured. You know, there's no... I'm a free man. Okay. It's still free. We just kidnap you and interrogate you just to make sure that we're all on the same page and that you're conforming to our structure. A little bit sucks. Okay. Yeah. Yeah, it's one of those things where I can understand that it's very difficult to teach by theory. And it's much more tangible once you actually do it in practice. But... But isn't it reasonable that if you are going into higher education, you should be able to manage smaller group projects by yourselves. I mean, the whole point is that you're supposed to be more independent in your own studies and responsibilities. There's not a teacher there making sure you're doing the homework every week. Well, for some classes, at least. In principle, yes. I mean, this is the same... It'll be the same thing. If I was teaching about how to work in group projects, this is what I'll be complaining about on the podcast. Just, ah, this doesn't make sense. Why do we have to go through this theory of how to work in a group, even though in practice we all end up doing, like, you know, forming our own methodology anyways. It's just pushing the goalpost somewhere else. Survival of the fittest. Just throw them the task and let them organize themselves. I don't understand the point of teaching them the correct way. Either they get to do it, either they do it or they do not. Okay. Okay, but that's the problem now with the value of higher education, right? Because this wasn't a mandatory thing to have. I don't think higher education is supposed to be something you, you know, mandatory. That is mandatory in principle. Yeah. Yeah. And I think those that do go to university would be careful of organizing themselves, right? Well, I mean, what's the point of... What's the value in it if they can't? It... Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it would definitely be useful, especially if it's something that is practiced upon, then, of course, that's more experience for you. But I don't like these questions because the answer is always yes. Like, if, you know, idealistically, we will learn everything, everything we would ever need, you know, in this kind of safe space before entering the work market. I don't like being on this side of the questions or the topic. I just like to complain, not problem-solving. No. No! I felt... I was linking that to what Bernardo said before with why, you know, why do I have this embarrassment, feeling of embarrassment when I tell people about this podcast. And, you know, it's somewhat to do with shame and not being proud, but I think that goes... Like, if I take that further along, it's that a lot of the cases, my opinions or the way... at least the way I argue them aren't really well formulated, and therefore I'm not proud of what I'm saying here. Yeah. And that's just because it lacks pre-work. I mean, this is... I'm not... The fault clearly lies upon me here, but because I'm not putting in the pre-work of knowing the topics beforehand and then doing due diligence, you know, research or forming opinions that I could... Go on. Yeah. It depends on how much I know about a topic. It's sort of... Like, now I think about my presentation style. I don't like going through notes one by one, following a script, but if I can, you know, if I got a good understanding of a topic, it's a lot easier for me to formalise, you know, my opinions and the arguments for, possibly against. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's kind of the thing I brought up in previous seasons where I... I mean, this is more of a personal difference that I don't... I don't really feel like the topic form suits as... You know, it's not something that I enjoy as much as free-form chatter, which is why I feel like, you know... That's why I feel a little uncomfortable for the opinions I throw out, because I know, like, this is half-baked. It's not fully thought out. And if I was going to be very satisfied, then it would be like, okay, idealistically, I'll do some pre-work and I'll have a good idea, because then it will be more engaging when we talk about these things. I need to love the opinions that I bring out. Yeah. Oof. I don't want that. No, maybe I'm a bit more of an idealist and I want the things that are out there to be more representative of what I actually think and feel. Stop. You can always dream, huh? That's good to know that there's at least light at the end of the tunnel. I do think that there is, you know... No, you're right that there's something... There's value in being comfortable and being able to talk about things on the fly. But... Then it kind of goes back to what I would think that's at least how I would idealistically do it. Going back to idealistically is that it will be just conversation and then you take out the nuggets, the golden nuggets, and then stitch them together as an episode. If we're not going to be... Right. Okay. I hate to go back to this example, but like the Yogscast or the podcast, the Yogpods, there you go, where they were just talking and then... Because it could be a long time between each of the conversations, but there would be a golden nugget that they would take and they would use. It's interesting now that I think about it because I think they've gone towards a more structural topic approach like how we do it. Okay. No. Okay. That was a side tangent right there. Yeah. Cool. Oh, fuck. Oh, fuck. Yeah.