Hello, I am once again here to overthink a piece of pop culture and today that is Star Wars, so let's go. This is the introduction song. It's not very good, but it's not too long. Now, Star Wars, I don't need to explain it to you. It is a huge, huge franchise. There's movies which were huge, they now have television shows which are spin-offs, they have video games, books, comics, all kinds of stuff which have spun off. And the expanded universe, which is basically everything outside of the movies, which is no longer considered canon since Disney took it over, is also just huge, but it's not good. Now, part of the reason Star Wars is such a big franchise is that the universe it takes place in is huge. I mean, we have an entire galaxy, which even then that galaxy is not completely explored. Like, you can look on maps of it and they have huge swaths of it or just unknown regions, but even in the known regions there's just thousands and thousands of planets and different alien species and all kinds of stuff to explore. And on top of that, it has thousands and thousands of years of history. Like, the movies, by the time those take place, the Republic is already like 24,000 years old, so you have a lot of room to work with there, but the lore goes back even further than that. Like, this world is huge and so it's easy to see how there's so much potential to tell other stories outside of, like, the main movie saga. Now, a lot of the movies are bad because they just kind of focus on this one family. You know, they have all this room to work with, but they just keep focusing on the same couple of people, which is very annoying. But the Disney stuff and the expanded universe are bad because they don't really add anything to this world. It winds up just being a history of the galaxy. Like, yep, here's this war and then here's that war that happened. Here's a time that the good guys came out on top. Here's a time that the good guys were on the back foot and they weren't doing well, but then they also came out on top. Like, at that point, it just becomes rehearsing a list of facts about the setting. Now, a lot of these stories are good on their own. Like, they're still good stories with good characters and everything, so they can be fun, but it's just, what's the point of them? Like, I have not read the Thrawn books, but I've heard they're very good and from what I know about them, yeah, they do sound really great. I've played The Old Republic, which is a very fun game with a good storyline, and I'll admit I do like the Rogue One movie. Like, I'm sure someone's already telling me to kill myself in the comments somewhere, but I mean, it's an okay movie for a long time and then the climax comes and it spikes up and it's just very good. It's very fun. And, again, these are all good stories on their own. They just don't add anything to this world at all. None of them make us see this galaxy in a different light than we were looking before. None of them adds on to the themes of the series or even tries to insert some different themes in there. It's just a list of facts to memorize about the lore, and while the presentation of those facts can be fun, that's all it is. And this does apply to some other franchises too, like some of them which have huge amounts of lore and a bunch of spin-offs and everything, it can just turn into reciting a list of facts about the history of this world and that sort of thing, which is just obnoxious and doesn't really add anything. Now, the Yuzhan Vong storyline, which I think is really good, does come close to this because the Yuzhan Vong, for those unfamiliar, this takes place after the movies and they are a race of aliens which come from a different galaxy and they come into conquer and all their technology is like biology-based, so like their ships and their weapons and everything are biology-based, which is odd, but what makes them even more odd is that they do not have the force in them, like the force is supposed to flow through every living thing and the Yuzhan Vong are living things but they don't have the force flowing through them. And this kind of makes us look at the whole universe and the whole mythos in a different way, like we thought that the force was some universal constant and it isn't, or at least this could make us look at everything in a different way, but they don't really do anything with that idea so the Yuzhan Vong just wind up being an unusual, very powerful bad guy for them to fight. And again, I do like that storyline, it just doesn't really do anything with that idea that it could have done.  And just like, yes, this is the world, this is the universe, this is how it works, which is not how real religions and real myths works. Like those were created by people who were trying to make sense of the world around them and thus those different myths reflect the cultures and ideologies of the people that created them. So it's basically, they're all different ways of looking at the world. Whereas when you have one, which is just confirmed, then that's just like, okay, yep, this is the world and how it works. So there's no real different interpretations that can be had there, it's just like, yep, here it is, it's all given right to you. And this is not even counting the bad Star Wars expanded universe stuff like Emperor Palpatine cloning himself and then inserting his soul into that clone and taking over the remnants of the Empire. So that kind of defeats the whole purpose of the last movie.   And I mean, that just goes without saying now the one really, really good thing in the expanded universe. Well, okay, it's really two things, but they're kind of connected. I'll get to that in a minute. But the one really, really good thing in the Star Wars expanded universe is Knights of the Old Republic, which is an old video game. And it's not just one of my favorite Star Wars things, or rather my favorite Star Wars thing, but it is also one of my favorite video games of all time period. It is amazing for a variety of reasons, which I could frankly make an entire video about, but I'm not going to get into that. It's just a very good game. If you haven't played it, check it out. The story of the game takes place 4,000 years before the films, and it's basically just about a war between the Sith Empire and the Republic. So it sounds pretty standard at first. And in a lot of ways it is, you know, like there are two different endings to the game, but the canonical ending is like the good guys win, the bad guys lose, and the day is saved. And obviously it's about the journey, not the destination. And so like meeting all the different characters along the way and fighting enemies and stuff like that's what makes the game good, but it is pretty standard in some ways. What makes it not standard is the way it deconstructs the whole idea of the Jedi and the whole idea of this universe. The Jedi are not just pure good. Like, they are, you know, fighting against the Sith, and they are trying to protect like freedom and protect innocent people from being killed and all that. So that is good, don't get me wrong. But they are also religious zealots with very, very strict codes of conduct that they follow. And they tend to be isolated from the Galactic community at large so they don't really understand what it's like for regular people to live. And then you also have the Republic itself, which, again, it's better than the alternative, but it is still a deeply, deeply flawed institution. And then it also takes a deeper look at the Sith, because before this the Sith were just the evil guys. Why are they evil? Because they're evil. But in this, again, they're still bad. They are still terrible people, but they have an actual ideology. Like, this is where we see the Sith Code. I don't know, for certain, it's the first time we see the Sith Code. But it was definitely the first time I was introduced to it, and it's one of the first times that it was ever really utilized to its proper potential. The Sith Code is pieces of lie. There's only passion. Through passion, I gain strength. Through strength, I gain power. Through power, I gain victory. Through victory, my chains are broken. Like, this is an actual ideology that these people follow, and what leads them to commit a lot of their heinous actions. This alone takes them from being just two-dimensional evil bad guys, to being an actual force in this galaxy, and becoming more three-dimensional and a bit more realistic and more realized, I guess would be another way of putting it. We also get introduced to the Dark Jedi, which are different than Sith, and they're kind of doing their own thing. Like, they have their own ideology and everything. And they're not that interesting, to be honest, but just the fact that they exist really emphasizes how this is not just a two-sided black-and-white situation. Like, the real world is more complicated. So this whole game, as amazing as it is for like, you know, gameplay and the smaller details and everything, the main reason I love it so much, and why it works really well as a piece of the expanded universe, is that it actually adds depth to this world. And not in a way where it's just like, yep, here's another historical factoid, or here's another planet and the kinds of animals that live on it. It actually adds something to it. Now, the second part of this is that with the game, in order to help promote it, they also released a trilogy of books called the Darth Bane trilogy. And they are fantastic books, by the way. You should check them out if you haven't. These take place around a thousand years before the movies, and they're basically about the rise of Darth Bane and how he's just a very good character on his own, and also how he took the Sith and brought them to the current form that they are when the movies begin. Now, not only do these books go more into the ideals of the Sith and why exactly normal people would follow them, like, it spells it right out for you in the second book. Like, the last line of the Sith code is, through victory, my chains are broken, and it comes right out and tells you the dark side sets us free. That's what they believe. And just like that, a whole lot of things slide into place. Like, it makes sense why not only why so many people would be drawn to becoming like an actual Sith with like lightsabers and force powers and stuff, but why so many people would want to follow them even if they aren't in the best position in this new society. Like, even if they aren't the Emperor of everything, why they would still follow them, because they don't like being restricted. And this is exactly why people follow real authoritarian ideologies in the real world. And just like that, we get even more depth added to this world. You know, it's not just this ideology exists and some people follow it, it shows us why people would start to follow it. Now, the movies kind of did this with Anakin Skywalker. Like, it tries to show how he would go from just being a regular kid to being this evil enforcer of the Emperor. And I think, like, other issues with the movies aside, I think this is partially done well, like the birth of Darth Vader scene. And by that, I don't mean the one where he like first gets burned and you see him in a suit and everything I'm talking about from Attack of the Clones, where he goes off to save his mother and he's too late and she dies right there and then he slaughters all the sand people. That is the true birth of Darth Vader right there. Like, that is when he becomes this evil person and that's a fantastic scene, however else I feel about those movies. However, Anakin Skywalker's fall into the dark side is not really meant to be extrapolated to other people. That's more about just this one guy and how he fell into this. Or at least the way it's framed, it doesn't seem like it's meant to be extrapolated to other people. The Darth Bane trilogy actually shows how normal folks would get brought into this. And Darth Bane creates the Rule of Two, which is also the name of the second book in the series. And for those unfamiliar, the Rule of Two is basically that for a long time, the Sith, there'd be a whole bunch of them and they would all be led by this one leader, one strong man. But because they're all seeking power, that's basically the whole crux of their ideals and their ideology. They would eventually overthrow this guy and they would all fight amongst themselves and that would just leave them weak and divided and they just would not be able to defeat the Jedi. That's why they lost time and time again. And Bane realized this and so he not only killed off all the other Sith except for himself, he created a rule where there would be one Sith master and one Sith apprentice.  And this would continue on and on forever. And the idea was that the Sith would get stronger with each and each subsequent generation until eventually they were powerful enough to overthrow the Jedi and take over, which is exactly what happened with Emperor Palpatine. So Bane saw the flaws in the Sith ideology and then he changed that ideology. So we're not just seeing that these ideals exist, but we're seeing how they evolve and change with time. It makes the whole world feel more dynamic and a lot less stagnant. And that's part of the issue with not just Star Wars, but with a lot of these other big universes and big franchises that I mentioned. They just feel too stagnant. You know, there's very rarely a huge shift to the status quo, which turns everything on its head. And so yeah, the Knights of the Old Republic games and the Darth Bane trilogy actually do something different with the Star Wars universe and that's why they're pretty much the only really, really good examples of the expanded universe. And part of the reason I tied them together is because they came out around the same time and they were meant to promote each other. But also they were written by the same guy. Like the head writer on the game was Drew Carpeit, Carpeitian, and he also wrote the books. And I know he has left Bioware, but he's also written a couple of his own original fantasy novels, which I haven't read. I keep meaning to get to them. I'm sure they're good, but that's just because he's a good writer. And basically that's going to be my hot take at the end of all this. Like the only person who should be allowed to touch Star Wars from now on should be Drew Carpeitian because he's pretty much the only person that can do anything neat and original with it. And I'm sure there's a bunch of angry comments already, so I'll just see you later. Goodbye. Hello and thank you for watching this far. If you did, you have my thanks. And if you see all these names here, those are my patrons. 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MMORPGs are anything but. Now, MMO is kind of a word or mormorca, which is an acronym, as opposed to MMO RPG, which is an initialism, and you better not ever mess that up. But mormorca's are sort of a genre. You think of MMO, what do you think of? You think of like World of Warcraft, Eve Online. You think of certain specific things.  There's all these expectations we have. Well, I'm going to argue that World of Warcraft, in particular, is not actually an MMORPG. Well, I mean, it is. If you take the word MMO RPG to mean the genre of games like World of Warcraft, then yeah, it's in the same genre that everybody calls MMORPG. But if you take, you know, if you actually break down the words, massive, multiplayer, online, role-playing game, it is none of those, or very few of them. Now, we have to pause. This is very important because we often hate on stuff. We had conventions and in panels, we did a famous Beyond Dungeons and Dragons panel many times. So, we are not going to say that World of Warcraft is a bad game. Well, I mean, we do believe that, but we're just not going to say it now. In this panel! So, don't argue with us about it now, save it for when we make the game. I mean, I'm not going to say that you're just leveling up and it's a time investment rather than a skill investment. I'm not going to say any of those things. I'm not arguing that it's a bad game. We would, just not today. I'm only arguing that it isn't what it says it is, that the word MMO is not really a useful term anymore. So, massively multiplayer online role-playing game. We call this a genre yet, isn't it just a list of mechanics?  We have everything we use to describe games. It's usually a list of mechanics that the games involve. Sometimes they're fundamental mechanics. But yet, if we really look at this, why was more of a massively parallel multiplayer graphical proprietary flat-circle-state role character-progressing space with instantiated stateless real-time action-management gameplay and statically-interactive linear world narrative?  So clearly we're not actually listing all the core mechanics of a game like this. We're just calling it MMO and not really thinking about it. So what does massively multiplayer really mean? You know what I mean? How massive does it have to be, right?  It adds up to tens of thousands. Let's talk about that. I mean, I'm a world of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons online. They're instantiated. They have instances. The world kind of shards off. So when you're going on a raid, you're in combat, you're doing all these sorts of things, you're kind of in your own universe, not really interacting with the whole world. You're interacting with everyone in that one raid. You could argue that most of World of Warcraft, while there's some gameplay in there, is kind of like a giant ready room for the raids. A giant chat room. You can walk around with avatars and everything. What's interesting is that the first MMOs didn't have this. The Realm, the first graphical, massively multiplayer online role-playing game in the world, it predated certain other games by a few months. It was put out by Sierra. It's still going. There's scary people in there. It was completely massive. If you walk around, everywhere you go, if someone else is walking, you just run into them. No matter what you do, the whole world is present at the exact same time. It was pretty much exactly like a mud. If anyone ever played a mud, mugs are truly massive. There's no instancing, there's no separating. Everyone can go anywhere as long as you don't die from some horrible monsters or something, right? Now, of course, this led to problems. If I was on a quest, let's say, you'd see this conga line of a thousand people all walking in the same direction, getting them a guffin, walking all the way back. It really broke the illusion of the game, but it was truly massive. Now, meanwhile, World of Warcraft, or Dungeons and Dragons and Online is actually a very good example of this.  And I said, I'm in the main town. I'm in the town square and meet me. And Scott says, all right, where are you? I don't see you. We argue for like 20 minutes on Skype. We look online. It turns out there are like four of the same city.  It's so parallel that the madness is completely ruined. What about Borderlands? Borderlands is in many ways the same game as World of Warcraft. I mean, I've got a character, Scott's got a character. I level up independently of Scott. We join together and go on raids. Those levels are stateful when we come back out. When we're not on raids, we're hanging out in the shared space for Rechette. I can take my character, join your game. We'll play a game now. All the core mechanics of my character progression are the same in Borderlands as they are in World of Warcraft. Yet no one calls this a massive game by any stretch. And the only thing that World of Warcraft has that Borderlands doesn't is the fact that when you're trying to get a game together, you know, trying to go on a raid or build a quest, right? For Borderlands, you have to call someone on Skype. Whereas World of Warcraft sort of has this chat room which is the town, right? And you happen to have your avatar available to you in the chat room. And you've still got to call people on Skype because they never actually sign in. Right, of course. So what about tribes? Tribes was an FPS. You'd have 20 on 20, 30 on 30 games. You could have 40 on 40, 60 on 60. You got big. And also we say massively multiplayer. Does that mean in terms of the number of players or does it mean in terms of the scale of the map? Tribes maps were massive. If you're trying to hoof it as a heavy to the enemy base, that's like a 10 minute run. That's why you got to ski like a real man. Scott brought up the example of Counter-Strike. To this day, the number one game on Steam is Counter-Strike Source. The number two game is Counter-Strike 1.6. It's pretty close. They both have about 60 to 70,000 players at any given time. So is this not massive? I mean, they're just having all these individual servers which are kind of like individual raids that get replayed over and over and over again. But you can go to the Steam lobby. You can talk to people, form a new game, go back and forth. But yet it doesn't have any of the statefulness. I don't level up by killing, you know, Skaggs and Skagg Gulch with my TMP.  I mean, Farmville is online. Farmville is massive. It has billions of players. Is that a massively multiplayer online game? Is anyone actually going to argue that it is? Or if it is, is that actually a meaningful term anymore? We also have to think about what kind of online that it is. For example, Minecraft is online. So is World of Warcraft. I can't just, unless I'm a dirty pirate, make my own World of Warcraft server and play on it, unless I'm a dirty pirate, you can actually do that. But Minecraft, we for Geek Nights, actually one of our friends runs a server and we all hang out on it. If I control the server, that's a very different experience from if Val or Blizzard or someone else controls the server. I mean, I can just make everybody level 100 or whatever level it is that you kids are shooting for these days. Even though it's not necessary, these games, Minecraft and WoW and such, the online player actually interacts in with other players in the same space, the same game space when you're online, connected by the internet. But how about, oh, my favorite game of 2010, Pac-Man CDX. You never actually play Pac-Man at the same time as anyone else. It's a single player game, but there's a leaderboard with everyone's score online. So does that make it online? Is it now an online game, even though it doesn't even have multiplayer, it's just a single player game? Role playing game, a very contentious subject.  That's a role playing game, it's not really online. That's a role playing game. At what point is World of Warcraft a role playing game? Now, you are playing a role. I have my avatar, I walk around, I do my stuff. I'm playing this role. But I mean, how many character decisions am I making that are mechanically backed up by the game, that are mechanically enforced? I mean, plenty of people go to RP servers and they role play, but none of that role playing has anything to do with the game. They could do that exact same role playing in a chat room. The only difference is that it happens to be a chat room where their avatar is above it. Well, now I'm actually really doing World of Warcraft a disservice. World of Warcraft is more like that. Because you are playing a role, but if I play a Taran and Scout plays a Taran and we go through all the stuff, we're both kind of playing the same story in parallel and then we might bump into each other into a raid, but I'm not enriching the world. I'm not changing anything in the world of Warcraft. I'm changing everything in my world of Warcraft.  You're not even there when I'm actually fighting the Lich King, unless you're in my guild. So role playing, I mean, shouldn't a role playing game be judged by what it actually mechanically brings to the table?  Say you become infamous and it does things to you that increase over time. You have stats, you have traits, you have maybe, I don't know, verbal combat as opposed to sword combat, some way to make a role playing intrinsic to the system. If it's not intrinsic to the system, I can't say that it's a role playing game because I can play Monopoly and role play the Everliving crap out of it. It doesn't make it a role playing game.  You have taken Mediterranean. I will have it from you. So it seems like what's going on here is that we're really confusing mechanics and genres in games in general. And the MMOs are just one example. I mean, look at first person shooters. For a long time when someone said FPS, they meant quake or doom. No one thought of making a game, say, that just had melee combat or a game like Minecraft, which is a first person game. And there's shooting. There is shooting, but yet would you call it a first person shooter? Tie fighter, it's first person and the shooting. I can add shooting to like Gran Turismo and use the first person driving the camera. It would be first person with shooting. More importantly, this really messes up the game design world in the game industry.   But they're really restricting ourselves with genres that are just mechanics and we're constricting the kind of games that we make. Why don't we have truly massive games? Why do we have to tie all this baggage of stateful character progression, of leveling up, of the grind, of the guilds? What if we had a massive game that was just Star Wars and you play the Battle of Yalvin? That is the only game. And once a week it happens. 10,000 people, every single tie fighter, every single X-Wing, every single class of the state. Every single person on the Death Star, somebody's shooting it. And this is where I think the Star Wars Galaxies MMO had so many problems. They tried to make World of Warcraft set in a Star Wars universe and they didn't really do a lot to differentiate it that worked. Because what do we care about in Star Wars? We want to be Luke Skywalker and save the day. Why can't we just have a game where everybody saves the day every time? It doesn't have to be stateful. We don't have to be leveling up. Let's just have these massive spaces and interact in them. Why don't we try World of Richmond?  Wait, do people understand like why this is, right? So if you played Oregon Trail way back in the day, right? On an old Apple II, when you died, you got to type in your message for your tombstone and then anyone who took that floppy disk and played Oregon Trail on that same floppy from there on out, when they got to that point where you died, they would see your tombstone that you left and usually little kids would leave all kinds of bad words on the tombstone, you know, pee-pee.  She boops, something like that, right? But think about what has happened here. We have enriched the world. My progress through the game, I've played, I've died. I've left a permanent mark on the game. The world is now different. What if in World of Warcraft, when you failed a raid, you could never do that raid again and the world itself was different? You didn't save the city. That city's gone for everybody. Now, we're not quite there yet with technology because World of Warcraft, the only reason it has such a rich story is that they write the entire story. It's not like I can make the story substantially different or really different at all in most cases. I'm just going through the same pace as everyone else is going through. There is a game called Dwarf Fortress. The most important thing about Dwarf Fortress, I think, is not the procedural content generation because we're not quite there yet. It is really good. It's the fact that this is a game where I play out my whole fortress and the point is to lose. The point is that my fortress will eventually fall.   You never know. But when that last dwarf dies, weeping bitterly and alone, having barricaded himself into the last bastion of safety surrounded by his dead cats.  You can take that game and give it to someone else and they will live in the world that you created. Imagine MMOs like that. Old MMOs were like that. Muds, if you were playing a mod, you would write the story for the rooms you were going through. Your body was there forever until something ate it and your stuff was still there. You write something on the wall. It is there for anyone to see and very few MMOs do anything like that and I think it's really a shame.  It is so generic. It is so pointless. It doesn't mean anything. At best it's gonna mean wow to most people or you'll be a pedant and you'll actually mean I have a massively multiplayer online role-playing game. I know what all those words mean and I am totally serious. My game is that no one else is going to in any way understand what you just said to them. Genrification is probably not just restricting creativity. It is one of the biggest problems in the game industry today. Indie games are the few areas where we're seeing people break away from that and why don't I just make an FPS where instead of shooting people, I'd build giant penises into the sky. If you look at gaming history, the old arcade games, like you'll see in the classic arcade upstairs, what genre, there were some genres like space invaders, the shoot-em-ups, but most of the games defied genre. It was like, what genre is Zookeeper? Zookeeper? It's like it's like, you know, what genre is Group Air Taffer? Ah, Group Air Taffer, you know? They didn't have genres. Everyone just made a video game. Then there were no rules, no restrictions. The early PC games were like that up until the 90s. You know, what genre was Mule? Mule? Now I couldn't make up a genre. I could list all the mechanics in the game like we started to with World of Warcraft until we got all the mechanics wrong and we skipped all the ones that actually mattered. And finally, there could be awesome MMORPGs. The term I just said we shouldn't use. We could have these massive interactive spaces. We could have entire worlds online and we don't. MMOs need to grow up and be what they were truly born to be. Thank you.


that I now introduce to you the President of the United States. Thank you very much. Thank you very much. And since the Constitution has something to say about what you've just been chanting, I'll assume that you're suggesting that I live for more years. Well, I thank all of you. Thank you, Senator Andrews, for that kind introduction and special thanks to the University of North Dakota marching band and the other bands that are here. You make beautiful music. Before I, incidentally, of course, all the signs and some of them are welcome to me and I was told when I was a Pledge at Eureka College that Tall Cap Epsilon was a fraternity for life. I'm glad my frotters are here. But before I start my prepared remarks, I want to make one brief announcement. The danger of toxic waste is perhaps the most pressing environmental problem confronting our country. And on my way here today, on Air Force One, I signed the Superfund legislation to accelerate the cleanup of the nation's hazardous waste sites. The bill's financing has real concerns, but the health and safety of Americans is among the highest priorities of government so we will not allow an interruption in the cleanup process. It's great to be here with our congressional candidate, Siva Vinje, Public Service Commissioner Leo Reinbold, Labor Commissioner Ike Hagen. This is what I call North Dakota's Republican A-Team. I want to say hi to the students of Thompson High School. Sorry I couldn't accept your invitation, but I hope that this makes up for it. And also to the young astronauts who are here today. I just said goodbye yesterday to ten of their number who are now on their way to the Soviet Union in exchange with their young astronauts who will be coming here visiting our country. I can't help but see all the young people who are here in the audience and I have a special message to you from my roommate. It's the same message that Carl Eller told you earlier. When it comes to drugs, please, for yourselves, your families, for your future in your country, just say no. I want to tell you, Nancy and Carl have impressed me so much with that that the other day, even though it didn't have to do with drugs, why I said no. But it's wonderful to be here in North Dakota. You know, as I said to my staff when we were taking off in Air Force One, it's great to be out of Washington and back to where the real people are. I wish I could stay longer, but as you know Congress is in session and with Mark Andrews here with me, well, I don't think we should be leaving the rest of them alone too long. Now, I'm not reflecting on the Congress as an institution, but most of us must be aware that there are some elements there that need watching. I think I can describe them best by a story about three fellows that came out of a building, found they'd locked themselves out of their car. And one of them said, get me a wire coat hanger. I can straighten it out and I can get the, and the second one said, you can't do that. We'll see us out here doing that and think we're stealing the car. And the third one said, well, we better do something pretty quick because it's starting to rain and the top's down. It is great to be back on the campaign trail. It almost feels like 1980 all over again. You know, President Clifford of University of North Dakota has a favorite joke about North Dakota. In this state he says everything is backward. The rivers run north and the Irish vote Republican. Well, this is one Irishman who's voting Republican in 1986. And I have to feel that the people of this state are going to do the same. They're going to send Mark Andrews back to Washington as United States Senator from the great state of North Dakota. Believe me, we need Mark Andrews in the U.S. Senate to keep America on the track of growth, prosperity, and freedom. It's no secret that there are still some folks in Washington who want to put America full speed and reverse. Back to the days when big government, taxes, and inflation were destroying our economy and military weakness made America a punching bag for nickel and dime dictators around the world. America used to wear a kick me sign around its neck. But we threw that sign away. And now it reads, don't tread on me. It's important to remember those days five and a half years ago because the tax and spend crew is still lurking in the shadows just waiting for a second chance. The liberal leadership of the Democratic Party hasn't changed. They're just itching to raise your taxes and rev up that inflationary money machine. The Speaker of the House, Tip O'Neill, spoke for them all last year when he said, and I quote, Should the American people pay through the nose by taxation? The answer is yes. Well, come November, the American people will be going to the polls and saying loud and clear, sorry, Tip, the answer is no. You know, the truth is, the liberal Democrat leaders never met a tax they didn't like. And when it comes to spending your hard-earned money, those liberals act like they've got your credit card in their pocket. And believe me, they never leave home without it. Well, you're the people who pay the taxes and you know that we don't have a deficit because we're taxed too little. We have a deficit because Congress spends too much. It's about time that Congress took care of the federal budget and left the family budget alone. There's another issue that Mark Andrews and I feel strongly about, and I bet you do too. That's keeping America strong and proud and peaceful and free. As you know, I just recently returned from my meeting with Mr. Gorbachev in Iceland. That meeting was a breakthrough in our discussions with the Soviets. We're no longer talking about arms control. We're talking about arms reductions, possibly even the complete elimination of ballistic missiles from the face of the earth. That's an historic turnaround for the Soviets and it wouldn't have been possible without the firm support of the American people, whose hard work and support have enabled us to rebuild our military might. The American people know that the only way to negotiate for peace is from a position of strength. We're closer to real arms reductions than ever before, and it's because America is once again strong and united. But one major obstacle remained in Iceland.  I had to remind him of my pledge to the American people on SDI, that in America, when you give your word, you give your word. And that stands up no matter what the time or place. SDI is our insurance policy to protect us from accidents or some mad men that might come along or some other country that develops ballistic missiles or in case the Soviets don't keep their side of the bargain. You know, before World War II, the British were developing a new defense system. It was called radar. And without radar, it's possible that the Royal Air Force wouldn't have been able to beat back the Nazi air assault on England. If you recall, you won't recall, you weren't here at the time, but those of us who do, but you've perhaps read that when Winston Churchill acknowledged what that little band of fighter pilots had done from England to save England, and with the help of that radar, when he said never in the course of human events have so many owed so much to so few. Well, I couldn't help but think that giving up SDI would have been like Chamberlain giving up radar as well as Czechoslovakia at Munich, a tragic blunder that might have spelled the end to freedom in Europe.  If the Soviets honestly want progress toward a world free of nuclear weapons, they have nothing to fear from SDI. The Soviets are hard bargainers. America must be even more patient and determined and united. And America must speak with one voice, saying loud and clear, we'll walk the extra mile for peace, but we will never gamble with America's safety. And I hope you all realize that when he was saying no to this SDI, this was after I had told him we would sign a binding treaty right now that if and when we had developed that system that it was practical, we would share it with them so that we neither one of us ever had to be afraid of the other country. And still, they said no. So I want to ask you a question. Can I count on your support to keep America strong and united and on the road to peace? I kind of thought you'd say that. You know, if I could interject something here, there's nothing that I'm prouder of than the two million young men and women who make up the armed forces of the United States. They are there some of the most splendid young people this nation has ever produced. And let me say this. If we must ever ask them to put their lives on the line for the United States of America, then they deserve at the same time the finest weapons and equipment money can buy, and I'm going to see that they get them. And it's because of the quality of the men and women in our armed forces and the quality of the weapons that they carry in defense of this country that every nickel and dime dictator the world over knows that if he tangles with the United States of America, he will pay a price. Yes, America is, once again, united in hope and strong in purpose. We've squashed inflation, cut the prime interest rate by more than two thirds, and we're keeping the doors of the Opportunity Society wide open by cutting tax rates further and spurring on the economic expansion that has already created 11.5 million new jobs in the last 46 months. This year, more Americans are working than ever before and we've reached the highest employment rate in the history of the United States. Now, I know you keep reading unemployment rates that are given, but I'll tell you a little something about how Washington the bureaucracy works. The potential employment pool of the United States is considered to be everyone male and female in the United States from age 16 all the way up. And today 61.3% of that pool is employed here in the United States. America is moving forward, but that doesn't mean that we don't recognize that some sectors of our country are not sharing fully in this expansion. I understand the problems facing the American energy industry in states like North Dakota, and I recognize that in the midst of bountiful harvest, American agriculture is going through a difficult transition. In Illinois and South Dakota and today here in Grand Forks I've been meeting with farm leaders to talk about the problems facing American agriculture. As I've said to them and as I say to you now government will stand by you during these hard times. And that's why this administration is providing more financial help to our America's farmers than the last five administrations all put together. And falling interest rates and inflation have been cutting costs for farmers. The last thing farmers need is to return to the party that gave them grain embargoes, outrageous inflation and 21.5% interest rates. Now I know there are things in the farm bill that Mark doesn't like and there's some things in it I don't like but we both agree that government programs ought to be better targeted to the family farmers who need it most. Right now some subsidies operate to make rich farmers richer and we're opposed to that. Mark and I have fought together against that aspect of the system and in future years we'll renew that fight. Coming from rural America I understand, I'm not talking about Hollywood now, I was born I was raised in Dixon, Illinois I understand farmers don't want to live on subsidies they want free access to foreign markets and the chance to make a fair profit and we're making sure that they get that chance imperfect as it is this farm bill moves us in that direction and we say to our friends in the energy industry we know your problems but no problems, however great are going to be solved by turning the United States Senate over to the kind of people who thought the way to solve the energy crisis was to ration gasoline, control the price of oil, and win votes by demagoguing about obscene profits. The liberals who impose that vindictive windfall profits tax in the high day of democratic power are not the friends of energy states like North Dakota. Now it's time to get the facts straight about Mark Andrews opponent. North Dakota doesn't need a senator who criticizes but doesn't offer any solutions.  The big spenders know that Mark's opponent will be their ally and believe me the last thing we need is another tax collector in the United States Senate. In Mark Andrews North Dakota has a senator who knows what it's like to meet a payroll. He is not a lifetime bureaucrat who doesn't know the difference between a cow and a combine. America North Dakota needs a senator with experience and clout a man of independence strength and proven leadership who fights and wins for North Dakota. We need Mark Andrews in the United States Senate. Now Mark's election could very well decide whether we keep control of the Senate or lose it to the liberal leadership of the Democratic Party and that's the difference between two more years of progress or two years of paralysis. I didn't seek re-election to be a six-year president. There are too many exciting challenges still before us and too much business that still must be completed. I cannot and I will not have my hands tied by a congress that is totally hostile to all that we're trying to do. You know my name my name will never be on the ballot again but don't think you can't vote for me if you want to vote for me vote for Mark Andrews so that we can have a Republican Senate that will work with me instead of against me and be around after I'm gone. Now maybe you've noticed that I've been careful to refer to the liberal leadership of the Democratic Party and that's because I believe in going all across the country there couldn't be a meeting like this without there being throughout this crowd a number of Democrats throughout the United States I know there are millions of patriotic Democrats who are totally out of step with the liberal leadership of their party today and believe me those of you who are here and are or who once were unchanged as I did believe me you're welcome come on over I know how tough it is to break with tradition I was acting like a Republican before I got around to re-registering I don't know it was you had a reluctance to do that so I can remember and I remember too what Winston Churchill as a member of the British Parliament once said when he changed parties there he said some men changed principle for party and others changed party for principle all I'm asking the people of North Dakota to remember that the senator you elect will help determine your future America's future so before I go let me just conduct an informal poll I won't mind if you speak up loudly so that all America can hear do you want to go back to the days of big spending, high taxes and runaway inflation do you want to weaken vacillating America that's good to hear would you rather have low taxes, low inflation and low interest rates would you rather have an America that is strong and proud and free do you want Mark Andrews as your senator from the great state of North Dakota you just made my day do you know something you know something you didn't hurt Mark's feelings either well I'm so pleased to see and be able to talk to so many of you young people who are here today let me just finish by saying you're what it's all about people my age have in mind that our responsibility is to see that when it comes your turn to take over from us we turn over to you the same freedom and the same great opportunity preceding generations turned over to us and that's what we've sworn to do and are going to do for you I have to tell you something else I don't think I'm just trying to make friends with you I've done that already I I you know back before in the beginning of World War II General George Marshall was asked, commander of all our forces was asked what he thought was our secret weapon and he said just the best blankety-blank kids in the world well I've been seeing your generation all over this country on campuses like this and sometimes just in rallies and wherever and as I told you before in the military and I think once again General Marshall were here he'd say the best blankety-blank kids in the world God bless you all this is Reagan country we love him because he's a fighter and Mr. President this is the campus of the fighting Sioux and I'd like to give you a little memento to take back to Washington we got the best


Merry Christmas freedom family. I have Something here and we'll open it later First I want to say it's been an amazing year of Okay, of us growing together. That was the box falling over and I really want to tell you the things that we failed to do and the things that we Succeeded to do so. Let's start with the bad news. What did we fail? We failed to launch beat freedom for musicians, but we will launch it in 2015. I promise We failed to deliver the new dashboard out of beta the dashboard has seen a lot of improvements since you've last seen it Go to Dashboard tm to see the latest beta it does work But it is not 1.0 and it is not ready for prime time yet I apologize for that, but it will be in early 2015 We also failed in getting you position music the single sign-on solution has proven to be very difficult But we will get you the full position music catalog for all freedom partners for free in 2015 early 2015 What are some of our successes? Well, we got you the $100,000 sponsorship to help small channels grow to become bigger channels Do you remember how we launched it many months ago? Who of you won one of the prizes of the $100,000 sponsorship? Tell me in the comments below and We also launched MGM the multi gaming network MGM is for me Is it for you if you're a gamer? Find out at youtube.com Slash MGM. Do you like MGM? Do you not like MGM? Do you like what we're doing with it? Tell me in the comments below so we can improve Those are a few of our successes. Oh, and we're also giving away a $20,000 car when we reach a 100 billion views. I think that's a pretty successful giveaway. Don't you think? What is coming in 2015 Well, let me tell you How about new revenue streams? We are working with a product placement partner which will allow you to create videos about cool stuff like healthy snack food or Beauty and cosmetic Lines if you're a girl who makes that was those kinds of videos and you'll get paid for the YouTube revenue as you normally do plus You'll get paid from the sponsors from the products that you've placed in your videos. That is coming in 2015. Oh And we also failed to Launch our daily motion MCN That'll be another new revenue stream where you can get all of your content monetized on daily motion and then add it to your YouTube revenue daily motion revenue and you'll be making more money and We have a new MCN launching on another platform, which we will announce in January That will let us partner you and it's not daily motion. It's not YouTube. It's not twitch and Well, I won't say anymore, but it is a major platform that will help you get a lot more revenue and views When we launch hopefully in January And we have a lot of new things coming guys heartbeat 5,500 users 5500 of you have installed our heartbeat Chrome extension if you haven't yet click here and get dating for youtubers That is the thing that will allow you to collaborate with more people to find and match make with others based on common interest and you get a lot of cool Information about YouTube like who monetizes the video how much money it makes and a lot of other stuff like tags You'll be getting chat soon You'll be getting a task tracker soon and we're gonna build a game into heartbeat So we'll all be able to play together We also announced our four goals last year or this year it'll be last year in about a week And those four goals are right here click these new YouTube cards to take you to the four goals of Freedom goal number one is to become the number one MCN on YouTube in all categories in 1.5 years that means by April 2016 because it's 1.5 years from the time I first announced it not today and that means by end of April 2016 freedom will be the largest network in all of YouTube in all categories Is that gonna happen? Is my prediction gonna be true? We'll soon find out in less than a year and a half goal number two is to go IPO an Initial public offering on the Nasdaq stock market, which means we will get a huge cash Injection without giving up control or ownership Well, we give up ownership but not control of the company in it The other way is when you get bought out by a company which a lot of MCNs have done Disney bought maker RTL bought broadband TV and Other acquisitions full screen was sold to the churnen group Which includes AT&T when that happens you do lose control because you become You have to follow the rules of your new parent company when you go public You basically have shareholders like you who can choose to buy stock in our company and you basically become Part of like thousands if not millions of people who own a small percentage of freedom So you do have some control over the company because there are shareholder meetings where you can vote sort of like a Democracy where you vote for your leader there are things that you as a shareholder can vote for but in general If we have a successful IPO we retain ownership or We retain creative control of where we want to go because you will only invest in us if you like what we're doing and If you don't like what we're doing you're not gonna buy any shares So that's the main difference between getting acquired and going IPO and I don't want to lose my creative control I want to retain that that's why our goal is to go IPO and not acquisition like so many other MCNs chose instead So that's gonna happen in three years from The few months ago when I announced it and then we're gonna build an MMO you are gonna design it We are gonna implement it all the money that we raise from our IPO or at least a big chunk of it We'll go towards creating a big game Development team that will be used to build your MMO the MMO you will tell us that you want It may have elements of MOBA. It may have elements of strategy. It'll have certainly elements of massively multiplayer online games like World of Warcraft But the whole point of this MMO is that we will teach you about the real world You will have a lot of fun, but it will translate into real-world skills So you don't become an expert in a fantasy world. You actually gain skills that you can use in the real world It's not an interesting way to Play a game. We will know if we're successful if teachers recommend their classes to play the MMO You're gonna help us design because then we know we've done it right And our fourth and final goal is to become an incubation center Where we create all the tools that we've built for you so you can build your own company We want to invest in other young entrepreneurs who want to grow and become the next big freedom and go IPO Just like we plan to do we want to take everything and give it back to you in terms of funding in terms of incorporation and Bookkeeping and staff and office space and all the things that you need to be a successful company We will provide for you and you can just focus on your vision on your product on building the next Million-dollar idea. How did we start this video? It's Christmas. So Merry Christmas to all of you. It's been an amazing year We can't wait to see how we're gonna grow in the next year, but for now big Christmas hugs to all of you freedom family For sticking with us and all of you new members for joining us This is gonna be a fun ride over the next few years And this is freedom Who am I? I am George the founder of freedom I'm also the founder of MGM, but you've already heard that So I'm just gonna say I am George and you've been watching Let's discover freedom click the first video to learn what is freedom and how it helps you grow Click the second video to learn about sponsorships for all freedom partners Even if you have just 10 subscribers and click the other videos like how do I leave freedom to learn more? Click get more views to learn how to build your audience faster on YouTube Click get more CPM to learn how to make more money from your channel and click get more music to learn where to get More music to spice up your videos Click the first playlist to watch the George show on freedom. That's my show or watch the Anthony show or the Alex show also on freedom and We will grow together as a family because this is the freedom family You are part of it. We are all part of it and we're all growing together so grow with us and Partner with freedom that play now button right there on the video bar is all you need to click to get started