Aloha, I'm Marcia Joyner and we are navigating the journey. It is dedicated to exploring the options of choices and the end of life. Every life is unique and as such every passing should be unique. So we are here to understand all of the different options we have at the end of life. The choices that we can make and how we get there. Last week we talked about the state and it's interfering as I like to think. Maybe I missed something there but that's the way I feel about it. And today we are going to talk to Mary Steiner, my dear friend, my new best friend. She is the Hawaii Campaign Manager for Compassion and Choices, a non-profit organization based originally in Denver and which is committed to improving care and expanding choices at the end of life. My dear friend, Mary Steiner. Marcia, thank you so much for having me on today. This is very exciting and it's just wonderful to be able to get the word out to our community about what we're doing. Now tell me about you are one of the oldest organizations working to remove the obstacles to choices and options we have at the end of life. So tell me about the organization, how it got started and what you do. Compassion and Choices started many years ago and it has been through several iterations and different names. Many of you might know the Hemlock Society as one of its names and over the years it became Compassion and Dying and then it became Compassion and Choices. The organization was set up initially to advocate for what everybody knows as death with dignity and we now call medical aid and dying. And that's the option to be able to have a prescription written for you at the end of your life if you're terminally ill and mentally capable to take a pill and end your life peacefully. So that seems so normal. So basic. Yes, so basic. So what is it that's the impediment? What is it that keeps us from getting there? Well I think that there are a lot of things that keep us from getting there. Just to say one more thing about Compassion and Choices over the years because I would be remiss if I didn't that we support, we educate and we advocate. We advocate on certainly medical aid and dying and we work with individuals who are terminally ill and we also work with doctors to explain the issue. We're now spread out into the working with the federal government on helping Medicare to get more involved in end-of-life issues and we're working now with people to get them to be able to talk easily, more easily about their end-of-life and dying and talking to families. It's really important that this be a shared experience and that all and the family should be brought in as a whole for support. It should be spiritual and a family decision. I feel that way. I think that dying should be as sacred as birth. This is all a part of life. I was born in the country in a little place called Brazil, Indiana and at the very time that I was born in the same bed that my mother was born in, my grandfather who was a hundred years old was dying and so the whole issue of having him in the same house at the same time, there was no issue. That was just the way it was done. Well, we did. Yeah. Right. Right. And that's one of the ways I keep track of when he was born because you know the date is. But there was no issue about that and it was a sacred thing. I think that what's happened over the years in yours and my lifetime is that we've seen the technology has been able to keep us alive much longer than it used to and that sometimes that's, I mean mostly that's always a really good thing. I mean they're coming up all the time with treatments for different kinds of cancers that people can now beat cancer, can live for a really long time after they've suffered cancer. But on the other hand, sometimes enough is enough and it's too long and it can be painful and there needs to be a system in place to say that's it. I've had enough. I'm in, I'm in insufferable pain. I really can't do this anymore or put my family through this anymore. Do you have, you mentioned talking to doctors, do you have a way of educating doctors about this? Doctors are trained to save lives and they do all kinds of things even when it shouldn't be done. You know they keep, they keep giving you treatments and they keep giving you treatments knowing that you're at the end. But there's something in them that says we have to keep going. Do you talk to the doctors and say well wait a minute, maybe this treatment isn't the right thing to do? Maybe, I don't know, how do you do that? We think, well the Hippocratic oath says do no harm, which most doctors have interpreted over the years as saying they can't help a dying patient to any further because then they would be doing harm. I think we need to be looking at it and saying well perhaps what they're doing really is more harmful. And so there's a fine line there and yes we do talk to doctors and Compassion and Choices has someone on the national level who that works with a group called Doctors for Dignity and they are all physicians and they are all physicians who believe in medical aid and dying and are working within their own local societies as well as with the National AMA, American Medical Association, to move medical aid and dying into the mainstream. So with the AMA and the doctors and the hospitals and all of that stuff and maybe I'm being cynical, how much of this is just making more money? It costs an awful lot to keep doing treatments and doing treatments and doing treatments when they know that that's not going to work, that this is the end. How much of that? I don't necessarily agree with that position. I think that at least the doctors that I know and talk to and my own doctors really care about the people that they are caring for almost to the point where they can't let them go and that's the opposite end of that problem. It's like well let's try one more thing. Let's do another thing. Let's see what we can do to make you, to keep you alive a little bit longer. Now let's go back to looking at this nationwide, this whole idea of allowing people to make choices, allowing people to decide how and when this is the end. How do Americans across the country feel about this? Have you done polling? Do you have statistics? How many people? The polling has been very favorable by people across the US where I believe it's a Gallup poll where 70% of Americans are in favor of medical aid and dying or death with dignity. In Hawaii, the last poll that was done is in 2011 and 73% of people here were in favor and we're in the process now of polling again as we move toward the new legislative session. Wonderful. Let me just take a break here and allow our audience to call in if you choose to ask Mary a question. The number is<PHONE_NUMBER>. If you want to ask Mary a question please, she's the expert and we would love to have you talk. Now in other states across the country how are their laws being handled or are there? It's really a multitude of different ways that this has been passed. It's been passed by legislation in a couple of states. It's been passed by ballot initiative in a couple of states and in the case of Montana, it was actually decided in the courts. For example, and I think a really very recent example was the election in Colorado. What was that? Two weeks ago now, which some of us may or may not want to remember, but that election proposition 106 was on the ballot and people voted in favor of Prop 106 to allow medical aid in dying by 65%, which was very high. But interesting, it was exactly just about exactly where the polling had been before the initiative was undertaken. So that was a very positive response. What about other states? Washington DC right now has just passed through the Washington District Council and to get anything through the Washington DC Council, it basically takes, it literally takes an act of Congress I understand. It does. So eventually it will go to Congress and will have to be approved. But in the meantime that's how they've chosen to do it. And well, where are we with the Congress? Do you know? I have not, we don't know with our new Congress where it's going to be. I shudder to think. We do know that it won't be done before the new administration takes hold. And other states, you said, what was it? California. California did it in the legislature and that was just effective. I think it was last spring, it had been effective. And in that case, Governor Jerry Brown actually signed it into law with a statement and I wouldn't pretend to be able to quote it. But essentially what he said is I'm not sure that I would take advantage of this, but I can't stop other people from taking advantage if that's what they feel they need to do. I think that is my position, that we as a public should not be able to stand in your way of how you want to choose this. This should be, that's what we're talking about. This is your choice. It's a choice. I think it needs to be shared again with your family, with your doctor. I think going back to what we were talking about earlier, it's extremely important for you to talk to your doctor very early on to find out where your doctor comes down on this issue and to let your doctor know how you feel. I mean that's part of the whole getting the word out about this to begin with. I know I said it to my doctor and she said to me, I agree. I hear you loud and clear. Well I had the same conversation with the doctor and needless to say she wasn't surprised. No, of course not. Yeah, I don't want to be wired up and in the hospital with people I don't know and all of this stuff. And so no, she was really sweet about it. She should have not surprised. But unfortunately here in Hawaii the doctors really are unable to help you legally. Hospice helps a lot and I would never want this anybody to say well I'm going to do this instead of hospice. Medical aid and dying is not in place of hospice but it is just another option among a spectrum of options. So let's talk about hospice and palliative care. What are they and what are they not? Let's start with what they are. What are they? Probably there are other people that could speak better to that. I know that palliative care and hospice care, hospice care particularly is to, you can enter hospice if you're terminally ill, same as with medical aid and dying what we're proposing. Six months or less to live and you can go into hospice where they will help you treat your pain and help you end your life peacefully. But they will not provide you the medication that you can do it on your terms. And that's really where the difference comes down. And palliative care is? Palliative care is a whole spectrum of pain relief. Palliative care could be somebody who needs to be relieved of a pain that they're going to get over. I'm having a knee replacement. Help me with my pain. On the other hand if I'm terminally ill or I was just reading today about people who are taking chemotherapy and palliative care is turning out to be very helpful to people, some people on chemo as well. We have to take a break and when we come back we are going to delve into something new, brand new, and that is truth and treatment. I just read about it yesterday so this is brand new and hopefully we can find out what truth and treatment is. Aloha. My name is Josh Green. I serve as Senator from the Big Island on the Kona side and I'm also an emergency room physician. My program here on ThinkTech is called Healthcare in Hawaii. I'll have guests that should be interesting to you twice a month. We'll talk about issues that range from mental health care to drug addiction to our health care system and any challenges that we face here in Hawaii. We hope you'll join us. Again, thanks for supporting ThinkTech. Hello and Aloha. My name is Raya Salter and I am the host of Power of Hawaii where Hawaii comes together to figure out how we're going to work towards a clean and renewable energy future. We have exciting conversations with all kinds of stakeholders, everyone who needs to come together to talk about renewable energy be they engineers, advocates, lawyers, utility executives, musicians or artists to see how we can come together to make a renewable future Tuesdays at 1 p.m. We're back and as I said earlier we're talking to Mary Steiner from Compassion and Choices and I just got an email yesterday and apparently Mary did too just yesterday about truth and treatment. Now I'm going to read this to you because I'm not really familiar. Truth and treatment seeks nothing less than to shift fundamental attitudes and restore a vision of patients as authorities on their own values and preference. It will reframe the patient-doctor relationship so doctors can turn those preferences into realities and that is a new brand new way of looking at this issue learning to talk to the doctor learning what it is how you the two of you can work together. Now Mary is here as I said earlier from Compassion and Choices and they are one of the organizations that has worked so hard for so long to pass laws in different states. So tell me where we are in Hawaii. Okay that I can talk about for sure. In Hawaii we are working right now with legislators across the board to develop some to develop their support determine what their support is for medical aid and dying we're working on with the legislation drafting legislation we're working with other organizations to all be together when to so that we can move forward as a society if you will of Hawaii to make this become law in the 2017 session. So how can we the public what can we do how do how do you see us as the general public with making these choices and how can we assist in with the legislature I'm not sure where how we should what you think we should be doing. I think that we should be contacting our legislators and saying that this is an issue that matters what we're hearing from legislators right now is they're a little confused because they're saying well where's this coming from what do you mean where's it coming they don't know that people are actually advocating and contacting us contacting other organizations in town to say this is something that that we want we want to be able to have a prescription to get medication if we are terminally ill and mentally capable. So so they're saying where's this coming from as it's an organization rather than the public they need to hear from every one of us so that's right that's where you our audience can help you can help you can help by writing letters to the editor saying that this is an important issue if you happen to have a story if you yourself are ill and want to share your story we will be we are looking for stories because we find as what happened within California with Brittany Maynard last year she was a young woman who was terminally ill with brain cancer and when her story came out she people just I mean it was so heartbreaking she was 29 years old and dying and she did get a prescription she moved to Oregon to be able to get that prescription which is what are the impetus of making California pass the law so we're looking for stories because I think it always personalizing an issue is really the best way to get something to pass so if you have a story if you have a loved one who had what we would call a bad death which is a really bad term I apologize but there are bad deaths painful deaths horrible deaths let us know you can always contact me and I will know where to take that information I believe that before my like our website I think was up there and my email address is msteiner at compassion ended choices dot org and I'll take it from there and if you want to talk about it on the air we would love to have the stories absolutely yes please call us let us know we would love to have you talk tell your story on there so everybody can share the good the beautiful stories the not so beautiful stories but we do we would like that we would like to share with Mary and the other organizations these stories the issues that people have had to deal with when it comes to the end I think that's a wonderful opportunity of what thank you for for opening that and and we would also like to share your stories if you're willing with with our elected officials because they also need to hear it and if you're shy we could take it and and just record you or we could video you or whatever you would be most comfortable with preferably would love you to come down to the legislature this session and provide your own testimony because that is by far the most effective but we're also looking for letters to the editor we're looking for op-eds we're looking for people who are willing to stand up and say that they support medical aid and dying I think this is a wonderful opportunity and I'm losing my my head set here so I and huh no I don't know I can't hello and welcome to the Savvy Chick show on Think Tech Hawaii I'm the weekly host at 11 a.m Honolulu time I'm very excited for the next six weeks we have the Aspire series which is all about the coolest careers I could find and interviewing and getting insights from these amazing people who want to share it with you and help you live your dreams look forward to seeing you on the show hello huh my name is Ray Tsuchiyama I was raised in Kalihipalama proud graduate of Farrington High School and I want to say that Think Tech is a great program brings people together and creates a really great community of concerned citizens for the future of Hawaii thank you Hawaii Asia in reveal I am Johnson Choi the host I'm looking forward to see you next month December 15th Thursday 11 o'clock right here again you know let's go back to uh the doctor prescribing something for you to take uh how safe is it what is it and how does it work and who is eligible to receive this drug I'm going to work backwards a little bit because to be eligible you must be terminally ill mentally capable to make your own decision and you must be able to ingest the medication yourself which is what makes this different than say euthanasia yeah you have to be able to take it yourself so so a person that is has dementia of Alzheimer's is not eligible sadly no they're not eligible for this yeah type of prescription no yeah so so I can't as a family member I can't coerce you into you know we can't get rid of grandma right no and and and believe me we're not we're not advocating to any kind of coercion of any kind at all in fact if you look at the Oregon statistics where a medical aid in dying has been in effect for 20 just 20 years now I was reviewing the 2015 health statistics and there has not been one not one single account of any kind of claim of coercion at all and I believe there have been very few mentally people that have been referred to in 2015 I think there were four people that were referred to to psychologists or psychiatrists because to check their mental capacity as well so you have to be of sound mind to do this right and and also you have to be able to swallow the medication yourself pretty much yeah and doctors when we get to the point of being able to pass a bill here which we hope will be in 2017 that's what we're counting on everybody everybody please we that we will be working with doctors and training them on what it is they need to do and what they need to know and reviewing the clinical criteria for them so that they know the what to write for and how to do it and we'll be working with pharmacists as well because they'll be needing to fill these prescriptions so that they're safe they're effective they've been proven as what I'm saying they've been very well proven again and going back to Oregon which is where we have the longest amount of statistics so they've been extremely set extremely proven I don't want to say now going back to Oregon how many people in the 20 20 years 25 years how many people have been given the prescription and how many people have actually done it as a percentage of the overall people that have died I can only tell you it's a very small percentage I can tell you that in 2015 which I did my studying on 218 prescriptions were written and 132 people actually ingested the medication because that's another issue is that not everybody who gets a prescription actually takes that prescription so if I get the prescription does that give me a certain level of comfort that I am now in control I think that's exactly what people feel is that they can if it gets unbearable then they are in control and can and can end their own lives yeah and what happens is but people don't want to die which again which is why this is not suicide or assisted suicide as it's want to be called because people do not want to die they don't want to take medication they put it off as long as they possibly can because they want to be with their families and they want to be with their loved ones that you hit on a really scary word and that is suicide please tell us what how this is not I actually use two two words I think that are scary one it was suicide and the other is euthanasia and this is neither one of those because euthanasia is when somebody does it to you right um which is why when you know we when dr kivorki and had done was to set up a machine and actually inject somebody this is not that this is not suicide because people do not dying people do not want to die they don't want to take their own lives sometimes they have to in states where there is not authorized medical aid and dying that gets so unbearable and that they do end up taking their lives by violent measures so this helps violent deaths go down in regular suicide rates one this is in legal well you know mary it's a pleasure having you now for those of you that mary is about to enter the world of artificial knees and I love it official welcome I'm welcoming you into the club of people that have new knees mary is going to have her surgery pretty soon and so we wanted to talk to her before she goes off into this new world before she goes into this new world and you will love it I trust me you will love the new knees I can't wait you can't wait can't wait thank you so much all of you for being with us today again we need your help we need you to talk to your legislators to call us if you want to tell your story we would love to have you on the air so we can get your story out we need you the only way we're going to make this happen is with you again thank you so much and aloha


Good evening, ladies and gentlemen. May I begin by expressing my gratitude to the Brain Foundation and its donors for the bestowal of this research gift? Which will allow our research team at Royal Melbourne Hospital and the University of Melbourne to conduct our exciting project, Brain Glutamate Imaging in Stroke and Correlation with Post-Stroke Seizure Risk. In expressing my thanks, I also speak on behalf of my research collaborators, Patrick Kwan, Terry O'Brien, Bernard Yann, Brad Moffat and Andrew Neal, all of whom are enthusiastic about the possibilities of such a project. Stroke is one of the most important causes of epileptic seizures in adults. While several factors leading to the development of epilepsy after stroke have been identified, predicting which patients will develop seizures after stroke remains difficult. One biological factor which may influence seizure risk is elevation in levels of glutamate, a chemical integral to electrical transmission in the nervous system. Excessive glutamate activity has been implicated in a variety of brain disorders, including stroke, epilepsy and brain injury. Our research team plans to explore the role of glutamate in post-stroke seizures, utilizing MRI technology, employing two techniques called Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy and Glucest. Glucest is a very new technology developed by a research team at the University of Pennsylvania in the United States, with whom we will be collaborating to process our imaging data. Glucest has excellent spatial resolution and can produce maps reflecting glutamate concentrations in different brain regions. We are privileged to have access to an MRI machine which can perform this new sequence, and we will be the first research group to test this modality in stroke patients.   That is, an objectively measured characteristic which can help predict seizure risk after stroke. The importance of identifying a biomarker such as glutamate, is that we can then focus on strategies not only to treat, but also prevent the development of seizures in this instance through modulation of the glutamate pathway in the brain. This concept, however, has been one of the great challenges of neurological research for many years, with no treatment yet shown to effectively prevent the development of epilepsy in those at risk. Given the high incidence of post-stroke epilepsy, this represents an area of great clinical importance. Furthermore, glutamate has been implicated in several forms of acquired epilepsy, such as that related to head injury or brain tumours, and our underlying study question is therefore relevant to a much broader area of research. We aim to recruit patients and begin acquiring scans within the next few weeks. I look forward to being able to update the Brain Foundation as our study progresses, and I'm confident our research will contribute to a better understanding of post-stroke epilepsy, and potentially to the development of neuroprotective or preventative treatments. Thanks again for your generous research gift.


Hey everybody, what's going on? I am Greg Sussman joined today by Tom Vecchio Fandl He's here to give out some NFL player props that he likes going into this season. What's going on Tom? I'm doing good You know NFL is right around the corner last few drafts last few bets get in before the season starts Absolutely, we're nine days away from the beginning of the NFL season So let's get those last-minute bets in there including a guy that I've been targeting in fantasy football leagues And that he's Adam Thielen. He's over under total for touchdown receptions this year. It's six and a half You got a plus money right now over the Fandl Sportsbook. That's something you're in on Tom. Absolutely the over on six and a half I've also been targeting him in some best fall drafts And really the question I keep asking myself is who's gonna compete with Thielen in the passing offense They traded away Steph Diggs and right now they'd be rolling out outside of Thielen They'd be rolling out Kyle Rudolph Dalvin Cook, BC Johnson and the rookie Justin Jefferson and that really just you know Keeps bringing up this question like Adam Thielen is gonna have 150 targets. He's gonna have you know, nine eight nine ten touchdowns I think that's it the realm of possibility if we look back to last year He had six touchdowns and I was only in ten games He missed a few due to injury the year before he had nine in that monster year 2018 That was with Steph Diggs We're getting him at plus money and he is the guy in the passing offense for Minnesota So it take the money take the over lock him in draft him whatever you can do get some feeling this year Maybe it's too chalky. Maybe I'm just too invested But Adam Thielen clearly my guy this year along with you Tom for all the reasons that you mentioned over and everything He's the guy for Kirk Cousins He is the guy in this Minnesota offense alongside Dalvin Cook never too much Adam Thielen here this season Let's move on out to Vegas and we'll chat about a rookie and that's Henry Ruggs He was the first water sea rebel he's selected this year in the draft and it surprised people But that means the raiders are high on him and from all indications in training camp this year He's been awesome He's over under total on touchdowns is a four and a half another number that you get it plus money over the fandom sportsbook You're in on Henry Ruggs Absolutely, and like you said that the training camp reports on him have been strong and the and OC Greg Olson and John Gruden have been talking about using him in the slot using amount wide all of this is a good indication now Initially, we have him at number fire projected for just over four touchdowns Which is you know good for a rookie We know that the raiders need to pass the ball a lot or they should be with their weak defense But last week we got the note that Tyra Williams is dealing with a labrum issue But he's going to rehab it no surgery and he will play and then you know kind of like with the Thielen situation The question I'm asking about rugs in the back of my mind is what happens if Williams isn't good to go What happens after one two weeks? He takes a weird hit and then he's gonna be out Is rugs now the guy in Vegas for the raiders who they already said they wanted to use on the outside on the inside It doesn't matter so four and a half seems pretty low for a player who could be falling into more opportunity Henry Ruggs is a game breaker at least the raiders hope so and whether Tyra Williams is hurt or not He's not gonna stand in the way of rugs Hopefully dominating this season you only a couple of good games four and a half is not a super high number If he can stay healthy that Derek Carr to Henry Ruggs connection may be strong One last player to chat about today and it's someone that we're not going over with You're actually going under with Zach Erz and his touchdowns at numbers at seven and a half Which seems like a lot obviously Dallas Goddard is there But you look at that Philly receiving core and it's not Existed with all the injuries that they have right now making Zach Erz once again Probably Carson Wentz his primary option you still believe seven and a half touchdowns is too high of a number though Yes, you know they're dealing with injuries this year or you know be before the year even starts But they were dealing with injuries last year and he only ended with 10 and now we have to factor in Carson Wentz is dealing with a lower body soft tissue injury. They lost two offensive linemen You know the emergence of Dallas Goddard last year So if we look back to last year like I said only six touchdowns They were without Deshaun Jackson Aglor missed time at the end of the year Jeffrey missed time at the end of the year It was what Greg Ward jjaw and Matt Collins They were rolling out there as their wide receivers and we still only saw Six touchdowns from Zach Erz So if we're dealing with more injuries this year, which is comparable But we now we have injuries to the offensive line and to Carson Wentz Why would I be encouraged to take the over? So I'm you know banking on the under here It's not great to say I don't want to see a player underproduce But if we're looking at a similar situation the under is the spot to go for Erz You can definitely see a player underproduce It's going to be you money, Tom And that's what Zach Erz is going to do under seven and a half touchdowns here this year In spite of the wide receiver injuries because the offensive line is already banged up so banged up So is quarterback Carson Wentz under seven and a half touchdowns for Zach Erz just seems safer And that is minus 130 right now over at the Fanville sportsbook That's going to do for us here on the hurry up Tom. We appreciate the time. Good luck with these bets, man Seeing you Thank you very much. Tomorrow. We'll be joining my Megan Nunez as we take a look about her favorite bets of the day for Tom Becchio I'm Greg Sosman. Thanks so much for watching football seasons here. Everybody get excited. We'll see you tomorrow for another edition of the fan duel hurry up


What's up everybody I'm the man goose you are awesome and today we're going to be talking about the fall of gigantic now There's some facts some rumors some suspicions a lot of stuff that we don't know and we never will know because we're not a part of The motega team and those are the only ones that really know and you know, it's all clouded by NDA and I of course know you know, I never played gigantic So I know the least amount of this of anybody so I've brought in the turtle duckman and failco punch to help me out So the turtle duckman tell us a little bit about yourself brother. Hey, my name is turtle. Uh, I am a I'm a game artist in training right now. I play gigantic ever since Pre-alpha, so I've been playing it for a long time following the game It was one of if not my favorite games just ever and so I'm really excited to talk about Unfortunately, how it fell down and Also joining us from the team at project stamina is failco punch. How you don't failco? Hi, you have a really nice radio voice. Has anyone ever said that to you a couple times. Yeah So, yeah, I'm Velco punch. I'm the art director on project stamina I'm an artist. I do you I UX on mobile games professionally and I Was so obsessed with this game that I would bring my entire PC home during the play tests So, you know during breaks so I could be sure I played it I also was one of the coaches that would be there at packs helping them out teaching people and I streamed this game And if you've seen this game, you probably recognize me as the person who raged a lot in all of her videos You probably recognize a lot of failco's work on her YouTube videos because I use that a lot as a background Thank you once again failco for allowing me to do that since I have zero gigantic footage Then also before we get into the meat potatoes of this I wanted to give a shout out to everybody in the project stamina discord that participated in the conversation that brought This about everybody likes a little shout out. There was meow storm debonk Lubberjack Requiem Leah a mastica retro the plat potato pouty cotton tail and flim so thank you so much for engaging in this Conversation with us and if you are not part of the project stamina discord I'll have that linked in the video description below and you can jump in there and talk with us but we had this list that total duck man posted of Various reasons why gigantic failed and I did a little bit of research added a little bit to it and We're going to go through these one by one and discuss them starting with a Gigantic was originally going to be a Microsoft exclusive and was meant as promotional material for Windows 10 However, they didn't get the game ready by the time that Windows 10 launched so the rumor is this isn't I can't back this up I couldn't find any factual evidence of this but The rumor is that Microsoft pulled their a lot of their funding if not all of their funding yet still held motega the company that made gigantic Responsible for their end of the contract. So I don't know much about that. Turrell duck man. What do you know about that? Yeah, so like you said a lot of it's a lot of its rumors We know that they needed funding eventually because perfect world had to save them from bankruptcy And so we know that something took away the funding that they were originally given to by Microsoft whether or not that was Microsoft pulling consistent funding Or Microsoft just gave them a bunch and they wasted it at all. That's kind of impossible to figure out unless we have and had a motegan here but You know the game wasn't originally Windows 10 exclusive It actually No, it was a lot of the game was actually built. It was something completely different.  It was completely different game There's like art floating around with the characters. Marguerite had weapons Margaret weapons inside Margaret's have Marguerite still had weapons at the very beginning or gigantic didn't he? I'm trying to remember. So I'm pretty sure on his like on the video that Show cased him. He still had it.  Yeah, it was it was very different It was like too ambitious. It kept changing like What it was over and over again So during that time before the deal for the windows 10 deal They were kind of flailing around like they didn't know what the game was going to be They wanted to make something different and I think they lost a lot of time and money like in that stage and Then so like when windows 10 like that deal finally came through they got much needed money But it kind of screwed them over in a lot of ways because oh All of a sudden all this coding like they had the chat feature in the game long before that They had to rewrite all that stuff. There wasn't chatting that game for a while They had to like remake the game from the ground up after that deal So and that's a that's something as the turtle duck was saying was that because of all those rewrites They ended up with a lot of spaghetti code, right? Yep, so there was a lot of there was a lot of like rewriting the code because they had to make it work with it's W UWP I think the Universal Windows platform. Yeah, that's what it is Because Microsoft basically told them okay now you have to make your game run on our platform But they were still using Unreal Engine 3 and they so they had to like combine those and make them work with each other and So they Basically, they lost a lot of development time to that that that led to a lot of the spaghetti code They kind of had to rewrite the whole engine to work with that thing not to mention When Microsoft didn't tell them how to how to code in that in like that system Because the documentation just wasn't really great. So they had to like figure out a lot of stuff on their own Which led to a lot of bugs that they just had no idea how to fix because it was just there was so much technical debt that they They just couldn't fix a lot of things And for people who aren't super savvy to programming technical debt is basically where you have a bunch of systems that you build up By themselves not thinking about how they'll interact with the whole System as a whole and then you have to go back and fix those and rewrite them basically to make them fit fit with the whole So the more systems you have that don't work with each other And are kind of like roughly in the more technical debt you have Okay, so that was kind of the first domino that started the the chain It seems um, would you agree with that felco? Yeah, I would say like it might have been a godsend to get that money at that time But I feel and I'm not entirely sure but it it sounds kind of like They didn't get the extra people they needed to help them actually reach the goal and reach the milestones that Microsoft wanted for them. So that kind of It makes me mad, but What can you do? We're all mad Yeah, I get mad about paragon this one. I can look at a bit more objectively. I think Yeah, especially like if you I feel bad that you haven't gotten to play it, but at the same time like you have Dodge the bullet of just like the pure despair that I felt when this game Yeah, that's true The worst part was when they announced that the servers were shutting down six months before the servers actually shut down So you were just playing the game like hollowly like I can't try because there's no reason to get good at the game anymore Yeah, and the final stream. I I just have to the final stream was the final stream people couldn't even get into their accounts so And was hosted by motiga. It was was hosted by so fetched at that point all of motiga had been fired It was the full like extent of like how much things have crumbled like you couldn't even log in for your last few games man Yeah, it was a really good stream though. Yeah, that sounds that sounds terrible It sounds way worse than what happened with paragon. Oh, yeah Gigantic was like such a cult such a cult A lot of vertical fans Yeah And so we just like we we all love the game so much that uh, it made it that much worse When it eventually came crashing down. Yeah That whenever paragon went down a lot of my subscribers were like, hey, you should you should try this gigantic game. Um I instead went with smite, which was a Not not a good decision.  I'm out He didn't probably dodge the bullet of grief like we were saying. Yeah, I guess so yeah Now we got project stamina. So hopefully you'll get the experience Hopefully so hopefully so The alpha has the the one little alpha test session I did was amazingly fun And I just cannot wait for another one Me either. I'm excited. It's coming along good At least, you know, I will say this like Project stamina at least like we can look at gigantic objectively now and be like, okay Like they have so many amazing ideas Like how do we take that and skip the part where we're like trying to figure out what this game is like Like over a long span of time. So At least for us like that's really helpful Although I really really would have loved to see gigantic as the game raid so bad Yeah I think it would have been cool.  You're fighting it. That's fun I like giant monsters back in raid. It was a believe it was a totally pve game, right? Or was it so? Yeah So I think because like they were the idea that was that they were trying to make like mmo raids into like a whole game Just that Okay kind of like Monster hunter Yeah, it was kind of like monster hunter if the monster was less of a Less of like an npc like a creature you were fighting and more of like an entire set piece Kind of like dauntless actually now thinking about it which came in later. I wonder if they were inspired I think it was it's closer to like the siege fights in monster hunter probably where Uh, you were fighting though you were fighting the monster But a lot of it wasn't just like a lot of it wasn't attacking Uh, it wasn't just like okay the monster's in the middle of the arena and you fight it It was like the monster's moving around and you have to like dodge as huge attacks Uh, so it was closer to like fighting the dalamadur Uh in monster hunter which honestly they probably got a lot of uh, A lot of inspiration for like, uh, gren the naga guardian from that Well, well speaking of other games Um, that's that's one that's part of our list here is the launch of gigantic was kind of overshadowed by not I wouldn't even say similar titles, but they from the outside looking in looked a bit similar, which was um Overwatch battle born and paladins and that could have led to a lot of people never checking out gigantic Especially with blizzard dropping such a huge game as overwatch and you know overwatch's first person It didn't have nearly the depth that gigantic did However, you know, it's still a hero shooter sort of and and a lot of people would have looked at both of them Saw that, you know, you get to choose different heroes that have different abilities And they would have you know, just went with overwatch because it's blizzard and blizzard has tons of money to to spend on advertising and such Yeah, I know that I actually When both of the games back in like 2015 when both of the game like right after packs 2015 Uh, which was when like was that no That was overwatch was or overwatch was like in its like it had been announced But it was like in beta and it was like in closed beta I remember I applied to I applied for the gigantic closed beta and I applied for the overwatch closed beta And I was really I was probably equally excited for both. Uh Unfortunately, I well fortunately probably because I I didn't get into the Overwatch closed beta but I did get into the gigantic closed beta So that might have honestly been a deciding factor for me whether or not I played gigantic luckily I got pushed towards gigantic. Uh, but I definitely think uh that overwatch Was similar enough in its general Goal of pick a character like pick a main like smash bros Learned your character like other mobas but more fat like other mobas like league But more fast paced and it like you said the fact that it was made by blizzard And they just have like like blizzard could launch Anything and people would play it which is unfortunate from an indie game perspective but uh, that's just kind of how large game companies are these days and so Definitely, I think that paladins probably a little less because I think that paladins Uh, piggybacked off the success of overall I feel like paladins would have been might have been less successful if overwatch hadn't Been a thing right. Yeah, it was like a free to play like a free. Yeah, exactly That's what that was like where paladins got a lot of it's a lot of its player base was like people who like Overwatch looks cool, but I don't want to pay full price for a multiplayer game You know one of the the real edge of overwatch was just so it was very easy to just pick up You could really just be dropped in Play any character and like you pretty much know what to do where to go in gigantic the learning curve There's a lot more factors to learn it was a lot harder for Players just to like get into I remember telling my friends like hey, you should play gigantic with me And then they're like nah, I've you know, I've been playing overwatch a lot And it's just like you could not get them to switch It was heartbreaking just because that game, you know, it looked good. It's functioned correctly Gigantic had a lot of bugs We had a lot of bugs although some of them were beneficial Like all the woo animation cancels which were hilarious. Let's not talk about that character. No Woo needs to be brought back Well, um, I actually got into the overwatch closed beta. Um And I had never even heard of gigantic I think I would have preferred gigantic to tell you the truth because I like a game that has a little bit more depth to it and Overwatch I played all through the beta. Um, it released. I bought the game and I have not touched it since I remember I know my friends played overwatch a lot and I went through the same thing as you with failco Where I was trying desperately to just come please play this game. It's so good. It's free Just download it. I got them to play like three games with me and they just never played it again Uh, and I think it Like there's just a mentality of like you play this one multiplayer game and you're like, I'm a league player I'm An overwatch player and you don't want to play other games that are in that similar vein for whatever reason Uh, and so it makes it it made it really hard to try and show the game to people because they're like Oh, that just looks kind of like overwatch but uh with melee characters And that should be really cool But but for some it might be a bit sunk cost fallacy people are like I put all this time in overwatch I don't want to move to a whole new game playing a multiplayer game in my opinion takes a lot of like time commitment to get To to play a multiplayer game consistently is like I remember uh at its peak I was playing gigantic like three hours a day every day. I would just like that that was my free time That's what I do. I would get home and I would go. Okay, cool launch gigantic turn on the stream Let's play. Uh, and that was like the the the best days Uh, like I'm not gonna lie like there were days when gigantic was out like My work from home. I was just playing that game all night Don't tell anybody that but Well, you just told Something interesting that like overwatch did Was they had the ability to switch out people who were leaving matches, which I think was Huge it it turned it into more of like a casual experience But it was easy if you weren't having fun you leave it's okay. The team will probably be okay.  I'm leaving like gigantic wasn't for those people Yeah, it hurt it a lot. Yeah, definitely and that uh goes into more of like a core design of gigantic is like you look at gigantic, uh, because we're comparing it to overwatch right now overwatch games are like Seven to ten minutes. That's your match in gigantic They can go anywhere from five to 35 minutes and so a lot of people like if they're uh losing or if they're in a stalemate or like They just have to leave because they've been playing for so long and their mom is yelling at them or something like that They'll have to they'll have to leave and it had no system in place to prevent that from happening it had like there were there were Like penalties for deserting the game But they usually were less time than the what would have if you hadn't stayed in the game Uh, which is like if like they were usually like it was like One minute and five minutes and then 20 minutes But like if you left one game that was going to go on for another 20 minutes And you only have to wait five minutes to play again and that game was like a slog That's like that was just a better deal for a lot of people And that made it really like leave people leaving the match was really frequent and it might have been partially because of like, uh Just people not taking the game seriously. I know I see that a lot in like, uh, when I play like I just played The beta for bleeding edge and I know that was a terrible problem where people would just leave Uh, and then just because they didn't care because oh, it's a beta. Whatever. I don't care So like that might have contributed to people leaving. It also could have been M&R stuff, which I know we have on the list to talk about later So but there was no Safety net for that when someone left they left and the way gigantic was structured as a game It was very hard to win a 4v5 game, which is another issue Um, well, let's move on here to one of the other problems When the game launched on steam you had to download arc As well as the game in order to play it um I don't like having to download anything other than the game whenever I'm I know it's kind of dumb but Like if if I go to download a game on steam and it's telling me you need to download This or that this other thing just to play this game. I'm like not done. I'm going to move on to a different game So I think yeah, we played a little bit of a part in it Yeah, definitely. Uh, I know I hate downloading things in general. So Uh, if if I hadn't already been invested in the game, I probably wouldn't have downloaded it because of that Yeah, I remember the arc launcher. No one liked it. I remember like And at the time I think the game still didn't have like in-game voice So you not only had, you know Your extra launcher step you had to go into discord and find a way to talk to your teammates Yeah, so now I think it I think it did have it before yeah, I think I think it had in-game voice at that point, uh, although it wasn't great Sorry, all the timelines are blending together in my brain Yeah, there's a lot of a lot of a lot of builds a lot of versions But yeah, like the arc launcher I wish it didn't have to exist but Hey, it's not on my computer anymore It's on my computer for a long time after gigantic closed just didn't want to get rid of it So, um, the next one here Uh, what we were talking about earlier where they had the spaghetti code and they were never able to go back and fix it It led to a bug. I guess, um, you guys confirmed this one for me Where you you couldn't play on pc unless you had eight gigs of free ram It was six gigs of free ram, but because it needed to be free ram you basically needed eight gigs ram to run the game Uh, because most most computers go from four to eight to sixteen Right, and you also need ram to just have your computer on like some small amount of ram is always used So you mostly needed like eight gigs Uh, which was yeah, definitely a problem Yeah, and I know for me sometimes I would have problems where like the game would have like a memory leak and Lead to memory leaks were definitely So that you know, those are kind of problems that you you don't really want to have They're kind of like blockers. They should be blockers to a game like being out, but they They had a problem kind of like getting Big problems like that fixed quickly enough and they became really annoying for a lot of people. Yeah I mean from what I saw there's workarounds for it.  You know Yeah, it kind of it kind of like makes the case for itself. You know, it's like Hey, I'm gonna make this like really annoying to download and play and That kind of like yeah Yeah, the other the other problem with it was that it just everybody Took that and they just Crushed the game in reviews Like there was a lot of there was just a lot of negative reviews I don't think I can actually find the page Anymore to see all the reviews now I don't think we can search for it because it's off steam Uh, but there was a lot it had like the game ended up with like mixed like the mixed reviews thing When you look at on steam, which is basically a death sentence on steam Especially when you're like an indie game that no one knows what it is And it's uh, you're basically the only advertising gigantic had was going to PAX a couple years But they only they only did that a couple times and that only gets they only hit so many people You get you can you can show a lot of people your game at PAX, but only so many And that's on our list too the the poor reviews.  They're going to see everybody else Just given a you know terrible reviews and they're just going to review it terribly themselves just to be fun And people like being right in that situation They like to say this game is dying this game is is dead and then they want to be proven correct on that So, I mean that's just a weird sort of internet thing that we have Now and it's kind of a mob mentality and I think that In light like if I if I look at a game on steam and I see mixed reviews. I'm moving along Yeah, it's it's really unfortunate because There would be times where you're watching a streamer play gigantic They're in queue for a while and then they like they're they look at the camera and they say dead game Like you're saying that to everybody watching like you're Declaring how you feel about the game. Of course, everybody's going to feel that way and Yeah, why would people pick it up after you say that like people would come back Because they're obsessed with it because they were you know, they thought they were good at it or whatever or just because the game was Pretty fun. It was fun. But it's like Everybody soon had that negative kind of energy and like the discord in the community and it kind of It kind of snowballed its way along Yeah, self-fulfilling prophecy Yeah, it was definitely it was definitely palpable in like the discord was just like the mentality like for the veterans It was a joke Uh, but for a lot of people it wasn't uh, and I know I tried my hardest never to like Uh joke about ha ha dead game, uh, because I uh was one of the people who are like guys stop That's what's making people not play because we're calling it a dead game I know for me a lot of the reason I'll play a game is for its future like I I'm not a hyper competitive person But I like playing a game to get better at it to then be able to Play it for a long time.  I'm not gonna continue that relationship.  When it's not going anywhere, right? So we kind of jumped ahead there, but let's let's head back to the the gameplay issues and this is the one where you guys can really educate me on this and uh So doc you were saying the main game mode was laid out in such a way that it was very easy to feed which led to frustration Yeah, this one, uh, might be a bit contested This was just my opinion from playing the game for a long time I know a lot of a lot of veterans and a lot of different people Uh, who played the game had Varying opinions on how the main game mode worked whether or not it worked whether or not it was good Whether or not some parts of it were good or the whole thing needed to be changed uh for me the I really liked the game and I think that overall Holistically, it was a really good game mode But there were pieces of it mainly the fact that The whole game mode was based around power And so power was the entire thing because you couldn't win the game if you didn't have power And that was like the whole point of the game and that's a really cool like avenue that they explored But what it led to is like Dying like going back to comparing it to overwatch dying in overwatch loses you a bit of pressure on the objective Which may which has the potential to be Utilized by the enemy team to further their winning of the game in gigantic dying directly and Revocably push the enemy team towards victory like because auto wounds were a thing because guardians dealt damage to each other on attack Getting power was always a hundred percent of the time Guaranteed to push you further to victory Whereas uh, so dying in the game Always helped your team and they didn't need to capitalize off of it at all Uh, if they did capitalize off of it It was even better for them, but they didn't they weren't uh, there wasn't that chance that they didn't unlike a lot of other games where dying just kind of like Is you're not there to defend anymore. So now they can keep pushing forward Uh in gigantic it directly added numbers Uh in a very countable sense to the enemy score almost Uh, which is kind of like team team deathmatch is that but in gigantic since it was so much longer Uh than like a normal team deathmatch and it had so many other things that were kind of like The tendrils stretched out all over the place and just meet it a problem Yeah, like to that point it was kind of like you would get in a game and you would immediately be able to tell who was new to the game and It would almost be like you would have to start babysitting them and making sure that they Weren't just going off on their own and getting killed or you know The game didn't really lend itself to teaching you in a lot of ways It was like here's a bunch of points on the on the map Maybe go put something there people would summon a thing leave it and leave and that thing would obviously get killed and so it would be kind of like this race between You trying to like corral your team to do the right thing with using only one ping that you had available to you and It became kind of like frustrating Even if you knew the game to watch your team either run into the enemy monster, you know like and get annihilated or Put things down leave them and then just like kind of give the enemy team like free kills free power Yeah, frustrating for like both sides, and I'm sure the new players were like They just wanted to know what was going on Yeah, and because the power was so Because you basically you basically needed 10 kills for a rampage like that's how many max you needed But but really since over the course of a rampage you'd almost always get at least two power orbs Just because of the way the gamer was set up So really you only needed like six kills and so now if you have somebody that dies 20 times in a match They've given the enemy Like three rampages just that one person dying and so One person Was able to shift one person feeding a lot was able to shift the balance of the game Substantially, which is kind of where I think the main problem with this point lies Is that one just that one person feeding was enough to basically throw the game Hmm I mean there need to be repercussions for for for deaths, but it does sound like Yeah, you always want a little bit too much Yeah And I mean like most games, you know, obviously the person who's the weakest link is going to determine the game Right, but in this game there just wasn't enough to teach people what to do And I think you know in the game wasn't around long enough for them to learn either So it just became like if you wanted to play and you knew how to play You either had to direct the shit out of your team Or you have a good chance of losing And then uh next up as far as gameplay issues, um Apparently the MMR system Was, you know, so long at high at high ranks that it encouraged smurfing Which is a problem in quite a few games. So I mean Falco, I'm sure you were you were pretty high ranking there. Did was smurfing an issue? I mean, I did it too I mean honestly like It The frustrating thing was Was that you know, you would start learning the game and then the game was released, right? And the MMR system was put into place and if you were part of the beta or the alpha you had a lot of knowledge Like over everybody else you would easily like kind of breaking through the ranks And there there became times where you wanted to play with your friends and you were both somewhat higher on you know, the top 100 You would wait for half an hour even more Um just to get a match because the discrepancies in MMR were that different and that really sucks Because you want to play um But so it definitely encouraged smurfing and encouraged like making a new account and In a way. Yeah, you're like, oh I can try a new character do this, but you know You went back to your characters you liked and won a few games, right? You get pissed off and then you just switch to your main and you're like, I want to show these guys how it's done Yeah, right and I mean I'm not saying it's a good thing. You know, it's not it's not like the right thing But there was kind of like a trend of people doing it And so you would run into other smurfs. You were like, oh, I wonder who that guy is It it wasn't great, but in a way like even if you did smurf you would still have the Totally new people on your team and literally having to carry a team by yourself. That was kind of fun but At the same time, it's like am I ruining the game right now? Like is this a bad thing? That's gonna be a terrible experience for those newer players Like I mean if you're fighting smurfs against smurfs, that's all well and good for you.   Yeah, I was but you know, um, yeah Smurfing is never like a good thing. I think it definitely led to new players getting frustrated.  I have no excuses. I was just following the trend Yeah, although who can I don't think anyone really blames you honestly It definitely wasn't a good thing to do But when you Have this game you love and you're sitting in queue for 30 plus minutes. Like that's just ridiculous It was terrible I could not use my main account because it would be like 40 minutes and motiga broke my account They unlocked all the skins and they were like, don't show this So I was like, okay never using this again Oh Now I just remember that one clip of so fed she's like, uh, the command to unlock infinite money is like dollar sign Get money one thousand It wasn't but she said it on stream one time and it was just a meme. Oh no Uh, well, let's move on to the next problem here. Um So the workflow system led to each build requiring 30 days to approve So like trying to fix bugs and do patches and stuff took 30 days I believe I believe so, uh, again that one is a little A little less confirmed, but I'm fairly confident in that it's just like that's what the xbox approval time is Like it needs to go you need to submit a build and then that build needs to be approved Through xbox so that it can then be put on the xbox store And that approval process takes about a month and that's why they did monthly updates and those were the only updates we got were every month they had an update and while that's fine for some games For a game like gigantic where there were a lot of bugs and the meta shifted wildly and like some characters were broken Then some characters were useless and then they needed.  Uh, but there were there were a lot of bugs That just couldn't be fixed because they needed they couldn't fix it until the next build was out And on top of that what would happen is they needed to They needed to put things into the because I was talking I believe it was to so fetch about this they needed to put Builds like to the approval process Like months in advance. So like when we got like a February build that February build was put into the approval process in like November so like They there would be bugs in it that they'd had already fixed but couldn't talk about because like They because it was already they couldn't they couldn't uh because everyone was complaining about build bugs that were already fixed But weren't in the build yet because the builds were so Uh so far away from they were they released so far away from when they were actually like put into the approval system And there was that led to like confusion between the devs and the players and people complaining about bugs that were might or may not have been there Uh, and just if people found a bug in a new build Then they'd have to wait Other mother bug fix and that definitely led to like there was definitely a couple times were like, oh, whoops I guess ashling's just broken because they accidentally had to put a bug in that gives her two cat ores Now I don't want to play that now. I don't want to play the game anymore because Cat or or everyone's playing ashling and there's no way to fight against her Uh, so I definitely think a lot of people probably left due to things like that Or like when ramsey was broken back when he could just how he could just take you for 300 poison Oh, yeah, there are definitely a few things that I mean like all new characters, right? They're always overtuned But yeah getting rid of that it it took a long time and that character That character was really nasty And if there was a ramsey on the other team didn't matter if they were good or bad at that character He could slice through you like and then there was vadas Luckily most people didn't know how to abuse her like the cut like samurai toast or like the couple other people That were absurd vadasi players. You just see them on the other team. You're like, well Let's waste 15 minutes. I guess Yeah, the vadasi had the laser beam while she was healing people. It's just Yeah, there are a lot of things characters could do in that game that found abuses for Definitely and then Because of the approval rating being so or approval time being so long I think that a huge piece of multiplayer games being able to thrive especially in specifically in the multiplayer games because like AAA multiplayer games Because they're AAA multiplayer games and that's just kind of uh Symptom of the industry we're in right now is like people will always play Uh triple play games kind of goes back to my point earlier about game longevity People will always play triple play games because they always know people will play AAA games And so they always know this game will be here.  It's another platform fighter similar smash bros. Uh but I've lost my train of thought It went too off the tracks You get the point though was people uh wanted No, I definitely lost my train Let's move on to the next one then which is uh the one that you'll see the most when you search If you were to search on this topic, which is uh, they secured 20 million dollars from uh, perfect world entertainment and then they just kind of blew it all on conferences and I'm setting up massive Rooms at different conferences like like packs and stuff like that. Um So that all that that 20 million dollars was completely gone by the time that the game launched Um, what do you guys know about this velko? I know we were talking about this a little bit earlier yeah, um Our perfect world was really interested in Trying really hard to keep the team to make the game but The team I think wanted to finally do some marketing. They finally wanted to you know, bring the game to conferences they would As much as I loved it like they would fly people out From the community to coach at packs me being one of those people And they would put them up in a hotel, which is like amazing but I felt like that was the wrong move like it was like too early to do something like that when their games still had a Lot of problems and you know, they didn't have a lot of like post launch content They didn't even have a lot of tutorial stuff in place at that point Um, so what you're saying is that you're the reason that gigantic failed like I killed gigantic. Sorry Shit All killed gigantic. I mean like um It was rezzo having the top like three five out of the top ten spots on the leaderboard There Oh, yeah, they they also tried really hard to get like pay top streamers to play the game and advertise the game We had people like lyric who actually played the game and I remember them telling us do not Fight these guys.  That's you know, that's their business Like it was absurd how much they paid for him and then nobody came from that. Yeah It was really frustrating. Yeah Or people came to project stamina from you models that people came to gigantic from lyric And there were like 40k people watching that stream. Yeah, it's true And it was disheartening, you know, like uh, you go to a convention you teach people about the game They wait in line for half an hour 40 minutes. Then they never play again Yeah, it's just like it had no way to kind of keep people playing I guess because there was only one mode, you know the entire time and they're Like I'm really curious like where some of that money went other than just conventions because it seems like Maybe they didn't hire all the people they needed Uh To really get that code done Uh, but I mean, hey, you know, I can't complain. I got to Stay at a hotel and get some sway I always wanted to do that And the game wasn't around long enough for me to get good enough to do that Yeah, well try being a girl streaming the one game, you know, I mean that I think um I was talking about this earlier.  Why didn't they just Spend money on fixing the code and making the bank game better That's how everything works, isn't it the history is written by the winner and all that jazz It sucks because like I don't want to call their team down at all Like they they were a bunch of amazing artists and they had very creative ideas It's just I feel like this game is just too ambitious for the timeline Like maybe if they Had more done before the microsoft deal or maybe if they didn't have to rewrite the game This would be a completely different conversation But it seems like there were so many things in their way by the time they got to this point I wonder what the energy of the team was at this point. It must have been really low Yeah, there was also Oh, sorry. I was gonna say um There was one point when I remember talking to so much monsters. He was the character I think the lead character or figure mother and he was saying that they made like character mastery skins For no money. They just did it because they wanted us to have them That's like where they were at the end of that cycle. Like people couldn't get paid Yeah, well, I mean perfect world came in. I mean there. Yeah, there was that whole like, uh, Whole super inspirational. I mean less inspirational now that the game's dead but went at the time it was super inspirational where, uh At the at the end when they ran out of microsoft funding There was I think it was a whole month, right? Uh, it was some ludicrous amount of time for what happened where everyone just came to like like they had they Uh, I don't know who exactly made the announcement But somebody came out onto the studio floor and they were like we're out of money. We can't pay you uh, they obviously didn't say it like that, but that was the message that happened and Everyone still showed up to work mix the next day And they did it for a month or some amount of time close closest to that Where they just showed up to the game with no pay because they were that passionate about it and Luckily within that time they were able to secure the funding from perfect world. Unluckily it didn't go anywhere but People were really passionate about the project, uh, which is Just unfortunate that it ended up not panning out. Yeah, it's the kind of the same way with paragon the team itself behind paragon amazing the, um People in charge over there at epic not not so much Yeah, and it it's hard when you have to you know, work for a publisher Like there's timelines you got to hit and if you're not going to hit them It either the approval process is going to take even longer or I mean they're going to lose confidence in you and possibly Stop funding you so People invest money and they expect a return and if they're not getting a return they have every right To pull the money Yeah, you know, that's why project stamina is in a good spot right now because it's working On no timeline basically so you guys have free marine to just Make it as good as possible For as long as possible Other people might disagree with you Why the fuck is the game not out yet? Yeah, phelco. Why don't we have 17 playable characters? Hold on, let me code right now Where's all of my concepts? I sent you all my concepts Why am I not a character model yet? I'm sorry. I'm so bad Let's move on now to uh Said it was very large heart very large very large to herd the game Very hard to learn in the game and uh, there was no tutorial system That's a that's another problem that paragon shared and uh There was it had a confusing ui. So can you guys explain that a bit? I don't know which one of you wrote that one Uh, I wrote that one. Um, phelco Yeah, like when the game first launched there wasn't a tutorial at all for it. It was like Really and you know, it's a hard game to learn. There's two monsters It's kind of like a base, but it's not there's points to control kills also factor in there's something called wounds You got to move forward and attack the enemy garden with your garden There's a lot going on here. Um, and there's also your ultimates and the fact that all of your abilities upgrade Not just once but twice and you can make different builds You know with each character There's a lot of stuff and it was very difficult to find all this information unless you were actually playing the game Uh, because you were like people would sit there. I I would see this all the time They would be like trying to upgrade the character trying to read it in the middle of battle And they're like, I don't know what i'm doing and you're like, I wish I could help you like when the game was in Was it alphar or beta? There used to be actual coaches that they would have to Like training sessions. Yeah, but like a group of people that have been playing the game Just community members for a while would sit in discord and you could ask them Hey, i'm interested in learning margrave. Like what would you suggest that was back when that was back in mumble, wasn't it? I don't know. I remember discord. Maybe question mark.  No because game fox would just record Oh, you're right. It's not it's obviously not arc. I can't remember anyway um Like something like that was so cool like being able to talk to people who were good and they actually gave really good advice and It was easier to learn the game. I just wish something like that carried You know through to the to the end and maybe in a way like that's on us as community for not like doing that more and helping people But it's like at the same time your game really should have that in place because There's a ton of things to learn about each character Yeah, tutorial is definitely the the company's responsibility not the players. Yeah, so To that point the game did have a tutorial it I believe it came out later on so so uh a big thing with the game is that it kind of soft released quote-unquote like a year or so Before like the actual official release when it released on steam But it was in basically open beta for a long time and when it transitioned to release that didn't there wasn't really a change much But at some point they did in they did put some point before the actual like release date The official release date. They did put in a tutorial Uh, it wasn't a great tutorial. It did Go through some things and they did require you I believe to do it before you were allowed to play any matches Uh, that might have been a turnoff for some people Having to do a tutorial before you are allowed to do anything But they did have it, uh, I think personally and I'm probably biased because I played the game for so long So I I know it I don't think that a lot of the systems were super complex, but they definitely weren't portrayed. They weren't Shown to the player in a very Intuitive way like the only way to see upgrades was in-game You could not see upgrades out of the out of the match. So you had to sit At some point in the match or in the practice arena you had to sit and read through everyone's abilities You couldn't do that on their hero page Uh, you could only see their like base abilities in the descriptions. And so that was one issue I there was There was not a ton There was definitely ui in place to tell you when you had a level up points They weren't it wasn't super like in your face Which I like in some regards because it's not super in your face in other regards It probably led to people being a bit more confused. There was also the whole talent system Which had a ui element In the bottom right that was always there, but you can only click on it after you hit level five And so the only difference between when you couldn't click on it When you could is that it went from having a lock icon over it to having Like a five icon and it like flashed a bit and so There was a lot of there was a lot of like They they tried they really tried you could tell how hard they tried to portray the game And like to give people all the information they need to play it But they just it was just kind of a swing and a miss Yeah, and you had creatures too. So there's like a whole other element to learn Like who where do I summon this like does this actually work here? But that was also like Kind of the fun of like figuring those things out But most people just would run right past the summoning circles and not even do that like so many games I'm like, oh great. Yes. I'm on summon duty again Yeah, and then like you only had you only had a limited amount of creatures So you didn't want to be on summon duty for every point because it's like I can't Summon any more bloomers guys. I only have two bloomers. Someone has to summon a point Uh There was definitely I think creatures were a really great mechanic I don't think they were implemented super well just because of like, uh the way they interacted with power mostly because it was like So there were points where like upgrading a creature was throwing the game because If they kill it they get such a huge power swing that they just can win from there There were points where Summoning a creature at all was was throwing the game because they would kill it And so while yes, that sometimes could be shown as like, hey, this is uh It's an advanced mechanic to decide whether or not to summon or upgrade a creature Uh In reality it just led to a lot of people summoning and upgrading creatures that then died and then through the game and fed power Yeah, and like You know I definitely give them credit for trying a lot of different things I remember how they did power change throughout like the entire game's life cycle How creatures were summoned change they even changed the maps and like positions of the giant monsters Uh at first on one of the big maps Actually, no all of the maps the guardians were very far back Yeah No one could even get to them when the time came it took forever to get across the map They realized that pushing them forward make made the games like take a little shorter time And it was a lot easier for people to be like, oh, there's the giant monster I don't have to go to a death trap to get to it now. I'm going to go to it so In a way like I'm really glad that they did end up refining a lot of the things but It was unfortunately like a little too late at that point. Yep, a little too late Can't and they couldn't like like I do think that if they didn't weren't changed by the one month approval time they probably could have like Uh, I mean I have a philosophy in just anything when I want to approve something It's rapid iteration. It's just like try something didn't work try something else didn't work Try something else. Cool. That works move on to the next thing And I think like if they could have just been constantly be like, okay Put out this update two weeks later guardians are too close move them back a couple feet Still too close move them back a more and just kind of like Really fine tuned a lot of the pieces of the game. They probably could have They could have gotten into a better point the moving the guardians forward was a double-edged sword because yes It made games take less time But it made guardians a lot more intrusive So like you'd be trying to storm the enemy's uh back point and you just can't because the guardian is shooting you Oh my god, and guardians were really really strong. Let's talk about guardians for a second. Oh, yeah All right.  Oh, I think that might have happened to me once that wasn't super common But it wasn't super common Well, I guess we all have to leave who leaves last they win Yeah, yeah Yeah, there was a lot of problems with the guardians Like I still uh same with creatures I think the guardians were such a cool idea conceptually and I could talk For hours about the ideas I have for how to make guardians more, but I won't do that here but I think A lot of issues people had with them is that they did too much And also too little at the same time like they did Too much damage So it was basically if you got close to them You couldn't you couldn't pursue people Close to their guardians because the amount of dps they could put out is insane And that's not necessarily a bad thing because your base should be a safe haven for you to retreat to Uh, but since they were so close to the battle now after they moved them up It would made it really hard to kill people because they could just uh because the ttk and gigantic was high And I I still stand by that's like my favorite part about the game compared to other games besides the like The the movement is the fact that the ttk was more than 16 milliseconds But because it was so high combined with the fact that guardians were so close after the change You could just run back to a guardian and it's like well Yes, I can't get that kill even though I chased them all around the map and I like did all these cool things They still just got back to their guardian And it doesn't matter and it made it was even worse for people Uh like Amani uh like on on ghost reef She could literally sit under her guardian and have Have line of stake to most of the map and you couldn't do anything because she was Underneath the guardian and you could not hit her.   Basically, they just throw you across the screen Uh, and it would basically keep the functionality of them being safe havens to retreat to but wouldn't also give you the other team power Which goes back to the fact that power was not a great system So there's a lot of things that like there's a lot of things about them about the game that interwoven to cause just this mess of a great game out conceptually but one that just Just missed the mark in so many ways that it just cascaded down to the game failing All right, well, I think that's going to that's going to about wrap it up I think we we've hit all the topics that we were going to and and and more than than we were going to as well Which is which is good. It's a good thing. But before this spirals into just talking about the gameplay issues Actually, let's talk about Let's uh, let's start wrapping it up here. Um Toro duck and failco I'll give you guys an opportunity to to to make your last comments and You can plug any social media you want to if you have a twitch or youtube channel or I don't even you know Whatever whatever you got go go ahead. So I told that duck. Let's start with you Uh, yeah, I mean I have I have a twitch twitch.tv slash the turtle duck man Uh, I don't stream a ton there But I am planning on streaming project stamina basically every day when it comes out. So look forward to that I guess, uh, you can follow me on twitter at the turtle duck math without the end because twitter doesn't let me have All of my characters. It's very annoying Uh But yeah, uh, just look out for me in the project stamina community. I'm always talking love talking with people Thanks so much. All right one and uh failco Hi, um Thanks a lot for allowing me to be on your awesome youtube show And uh, I'm failco punch everywhere. So if you're looking for me on twitter, I'm there And I'm also going to plug project stamina, uh, you know Check our website out project stamina dot com and You'll be hearing a lot more news from us the entire team project stamina On twitter um very soon. So yeah Yay, it's good to hear So that's going to wrap it up. Um Talking about these kind of things is beneficial because it does help teams like project stamina avoid some of the potholes Some of the sand pits and pitfalls whatever you want to call them That that motiga fell into and let's hope that they don't and uh, if you are interested in project stamina, like I said I'll have all their social media linked down in the video description below But for now, this is the man who's signing off you guys. Have a good one Bye Man


Ladies and gentlemen, the railroad hour. Here comes our star-studded show train. American Railroads presents transcribed the charming Broadway musical Irene, starring Gordon MacGray and his guest star Dorothy Warren Scholl. Our choir is under the direction of Norman Luboff, and the music is prepared and conducted by Carmen Dragun.  And now here is our- And good evening, ladies and gentlemen. Tonight we're bringing you the story of one of the loveliest young ladies in the history of the musical stage. Her name? Irene. And Dorothy Warren Scholl is here to play that unforgettable gal. I'm a fellow named Donald Marshall, and my hobby is collecting money. The whole thing opens right in the middle of a party at my Fifth Avenue mansion. And by the way, you're all invited. As you all know, our latest fad here on Fifth Avenue is genealogy. That means, of course, tracing our family backgrounds, climbing up our family trees until we find William the Conqueror. You know, sometimes you climb your family tree, and all you find is bark. That's called bonking up the wrong tree. In the art of genealogy, we find the pedigree of your family tree. And if it comes in all an ant, as a plant, we can make them. I'm interested in this new hobby. Really, it's so important to know who people really are. Oh, I don't know. But Don, reading always shows. Oh, incidentally, I have a business problem to discuss with you, Don, and I know you'll help me. Why, sure. You see, I've put a lot of money into a new shop, a Maudiste. Madame Lucy. I brought her from Paris, but nobody's heard of her yet. Well, what can I do? Well, the secret of this business is to get good-looking young girls to wear clothes where other people will see them. Then they inquire who made them, and the ball is rolling. Well, Bob, it's rather a delicate subject to suggest to a gal that she changed her Maudiste. She might think, uh, I didn't like her clothes. Well, I guess I'll think of something. I beg your pardon, Mr. Marshall. Yes, Clarkson? There's a girl from the shop about the seat cushions on the veranda. You remember you complained they were made too small. I'll be right out, Clarkson. Excuse me, Bob. Yes, yes, of course. It's okay to me. Well, hello. Hello. Mr. Marshall here wished to complain about the cushions. Clarkson. Yes, Mr. Marshall. Uh, Clarkson, you can go. But the complaint? I have no complaint. Yes, sir. What's your name? I'm the girl from the shop by Reno Dare. I know your name. It's Marshall. You know you're one of the loveliest girls I've ever seen? Oh, no, not in this old shirt waist and this 98-10 half. I hope you don't mind. But I've been peeking at all the really lovely girls at your party. Those gowns. Oh, they're dreamy. Gowns don't make any difference. Oh, yes, they do. I had a gown once. It was Alice Blue. One of the women who comes into our shop gave it to me. It was just a cast-off. But do you know that it originally cost $85? Well, now imagine that. I took it home and pressed it and fluffed it up and, oh, I felt like a princess. Well, where's the gown now? It's gone. I wore it out. It just faded away. Oh. Oh, I wish you could have seen me in it. It was so wonderful. I even used to put it on a hanger. My ones had a gown. It was all... Sounds wonderful. Oh, clothes make a lot of difference to a girl. Even if I do live on 9th Avenue, I love beautiful things. I've got a great idea. My mother says I should be careful when strange young men get ideas. Well, now don't worry about that. Listen, I'm going to see that you get not $85 dresses, but $300 dress. $300 dress? Why, you're going to look like a million dollars. And it won't cost you a penny. Oh, gee. Now, listen closely, Irene. Have you ever heard of Pygmalion and Galatia? They are vaudeville teams? No, no, no. He was a sculptor and she was a statue. But she was so lovely and so fascinating that he fell in love with her. He decked her out in the most beautiful raiment. And she came to life. And they loved each other forever after. Oh, I don't believe it. We're going to deck you out, Irene, with gowns and jewels and hats and slippers. You're going to be Cinderella. You're going to be Galatia. Oh, gee whiz. How much do you make a week at the shop? $15. Well, you're making $25 a week right now. And all you have to do is wear beautiful clothes, go to parties, and tell everybody you bought them in Madame Lucy's. Oh, it's like a dream. Remember, it's our secret. We'll start the ball rolling right now. Bob, hey, Bob, I think I have the answer to your problem. I'm putting my foot down. Oh, Mother. Why, a girl in this very tenement house with a model for clothes and hat. And it was her ruin. She got used to fine feathers and wanted to be a fine bird.  An old crow. All right, Mother, all right. And didn't I have enough experience with your old man? He had to get a job in a distillery. Oh, daughter, did he love his work. Like everything they made. Never hurt him until it killed him.  Just out to sit on the fire escape. Oh, gee, I guess all a gal can do is dream.  This isn't a fire escape at all. It's the rampart of a castle. We build our castles in there. Garbage cans over there. And that isn't Mr. Mahouly's washing flapping in the wind. It's Mr. Marshall. Don, on a white horse come to serenade. There's a cat. What Mama says? I'm going to be that galatee, a gal. Cats and gloves, underthings, overthings, everything. Now this town is ever seen. Oh, mademoiselle O'Dea. Do you have a color preference? Oh, yes, blue. Alice blue. Love my problem, ladies and gentlemen. Such boy. You always said that yourself. Reading always shows. Don, which O'Dea family is that? Uh... The O'Dea's. You don't mean it. Yes, I do. Well, Don, I tell you, she's so fascinating that I'm positively falling in love with her. All the other men at this party seem to have the same idea. Just listen. Gentlemen, gentlemen, please, one at a time. Oh, I'm having a lovely time. And it says it should be, Miss O'Dea, because we all think you're the loveliest girl in the world. Gentlemen, I thank you. I only hope that at midnight I don't turn into a pumpkin. Just a moment. In short, the answer was the railroads. The magic key which unlocked and opened up for settlement, cultivation, and development, the new lands west of the Mississippi. Yes, and today, America's railroads are still the cornerstone of transportation in this country. They move more tons of freight more miles than all other forms of transportation combined and do so at a lower average charge than any other form of general transportation. And just as the rich dividends which the Louisiana Purchase have paid the nation could not have been realized without the construction of the railroads, so the country could not continue to prosper and develop without the continuing existence and efficient operation of the railroads, the nation's number one form of transportation. Two of the Lawrence and Lee version of Irene, starring Gordon MacGray as Donald Marshall and Dorothy Warren-Schold as Irene. Our business is booming. Every woman in town is buying her clothes at Madame Lucy's and all because Irene has been the toast of every party. Well, I'm happy that you're happy. Oh, you have no idea. I, uh, I'm in love with the girl, too. I've asked her to marry me. Yeah? What did she say? She said she'd let me know. And, uh, meanwhile, I've been investigating her family tree. Oh. What'd you find? Well, I've had the top genealogy expert make out a chart. Paid him $500. Don, it proves she's an aristocrat. $500. Bob, if you paid a thousand, they would have said her father was the Prince of Wales and her mother was Queen of Romania. You, uh, don't approve of genealogy? What good is a fancy family tree? Makes you feel like a potato. This part of you is underground. Well, all right. Here's your dear history, all on this scroll. Let me have that. Uh, I'll be right back. Irene. Oh, Irene. I'm right here, Mr. Marshall. Oh. You having fun? Oh, yes. I wish it could last forever. You know, I've kept a diary, so if anything happens, I'll have something wonderful to read about, at least when I'm an old lady. You know what I have here? A history of your family. Oh, dear. Does it tell about Pop and the Distillery and about Uncle Gus and the Jersey cops? Oh, no, no. Look, it's all about queens and princesses in Ireland. It's all poetry. Oh, it's like a fairy story, and I'm in it. Once a king of Normandy When a queen of Arcadee Then they settled or The shameless came then Kathleen Sham was born in then Ireland Michael came before In a little bit of solemn sweetness Irene, a dainty slip of rare completeness Manor is a magnetism Eyes of youth inviting Dancing by with glancing eye The plush of her exciting siren The sorghum captures hearts to charm them Careful, don't beware They're followed by her scent Up she goes, down she goes Everybody's pet Nearer far there you are Captured in the net Artifity which Irene oh dares Irene, a little bit of solemn sweetness Irene, a dainty slip of rare completeness Manor is a magnetism Eyes of youth inviting Dancing by with glancing eye The plush of her exciting The sorghum captures hearts to charm them Careful, don't beware They're followed by her scent Up she goes, down she goes Everybody's pet Nearer far there you are Artifity which Irene oh dares So nice, I wish it was true I wish it was for real I hate masquerading when I'm with you But I'm the one who made it all up That pig guy Pig million? Yes Did his gal ever have to go back and be a statue again? Or could she keep on pretending she was a girl and keep on being in love with him?  Well, the party's almost over and I'd like the last dance with the most beautiful girl here I'm awfully sorry, Bob. I promised it to Don You know, I always said the last part of the party was the most fun of all I wouldn't change your disposition though I may have the intuition You're not so much to me that I should care But did you show a little gratitude in me? Oh, didn't you? Lookin' shenanigans Just exactly what's going on here Oh, Mother Mother Mother, how did you get here? That fine Irish cab driver who snoozes on the corner of 8th Avenue told me where you've been hiding off to my fine lady So this is why you quit your job in that shop to mix with these swells I'll come home with you right now, Mother I should think so Get out of those fine feathers and come back to Roost on 9th Avenue Irene Don't say anything, Don, please Well, this certainly changes the whole picture I obviously can't marry you now Well, nobody asked you to What if a guy like me stood in line and waited and maybe someday if she thought he was good enough for her then, well, maybe she'd want to go through life with him Do you hear that, Mama? Mr. Pygmalion here is asking me to marry him It sure sounded that way You have lovely ears, Galatier That's saying to preserve it Look at them two They're in love Oh, yes, Mama And it's just like in a fairy tale Lovely Dorothy Warren's show will be back in just one moment In the meantime, our thanks to Jeanette Nolan, Tom McKee and to our entire company Irene with music by Harry Tierney booked by James Montgomery and lyrics by Joseph McCarthy was dramatized for the railroad hour by Lawrence and Lee The railroad hour is brought to you each week at the same time by the American Railroads Marvin Many factors work together to make the Louisiana Purchase pay the natural resources of the territory the ventures of the pioneers the vigor and determination of the settlers and the initiative and ingenuity of men and women by the millions but it's safe to say that none of these factors nor all of them together could have produced a magnificent result we see today had they're not coming to being at just the right time a system of high volume low cost self-supporting transportation by rail and it is equally safe to say that the productiveness and prosperity of the purchase could not continue without the continued services of the railroads Thank you Marvin and now here again is our delightful guest Dorothy Warren-Scholl Thank you Gordon Oh it was really great fun Well Dorothy we liked you so very much that we want you to come back next week and the week after that and the week after that Invitation accepted What are we singing next week? You just listen Sounds like music for a love story, Gordon That's right Dorothy We're gonna do a brand new musical version of Sir James M. Barrie's wonderful romance Quality Street Can I be Phoebe Throssell? Well you can be Phoebe Throssell if you let me be the dashing Captain Brown Sounds like it'll be fun on Quality Street See you Monday Gordon Good night Dorothy All aboard Well dear friends it looks as though we're ready to pull out and so until next week in the railroad hour premiere of Quality Street this is your friend Gordon McRae saying Good night The green was presented transcribed by special arrangement with the Tams Whitmark Music Library Gordon McRae may soon be seen co-starring in by the light of the silvery moon in Technicolor A choir was under the direction of Norman Lubeau and our music was prepared and conducted by Carmen Dragon Until next week this is Marvin Miller saying good night for the American Railroad Now stay tuned for your Monday night of music on NBC Tonight the voice of Firestone features Eleanor Stieber on NBC