Welcome! It's PAX. Yeah! Yeah! Yeah! Who knows who we are? Yeah! Wow! So as always, about half of you are here because you've heard of us, and the other half of you are about to be really disappointed. Anyway, I'm Scott. I'm Rym. And we are the hosts of Geek Mides. It's a podcast.  What I'll say, if you find this enjoyable, we have cards, you can find our website. There's videos of tons of other lectures from PAXes. And if you think this is terrible and you walk out, grab a card anyway, so you can avoid us next year, and not wait in line for nothing. Yeah, we've been at PAX every year since 08. 08. And every PAX, so... Including Australia. So if you want to avoid us, you're going to need to know who we are, because we're going to be at least one of the panels at some point, unless they kick us out. Anyway, so, today we are talking about why no one will game with you, which did not fit at the top of my slide. You specifically. We're now green. I know why they will be green. We're now green. Alright? So, why will no one game with you? Well, that's sort of a tricky title we came up with. We like to make tricky titles, because people look at the schedule. All they see is titles, and that's what they decide to have a panel to go to. So you want titles like Beyond Dungeons and Dragons, the end of PC gaming. Why MOBAs aren't games. So, the title I guess would be more accurately described as why you can't find anyone to game with, which is similar, but not exactly the same. So, in the world that we live in, there are billions of people, and most of them are gamers. Right? On Steam at any given moment, there are between 3 and 7 million people playing games. I mean, pretty much, even now, with everyone at Pax. Everyone here probably uses, they call themselves a gamer at some point. I am a gamer. They self-identify even. I mean, even if I think about everyone in my family, right? Try to think about everyone in your family. Moms, uncles, aunts, cousins, whoever, right? Siblings. Even if they're not nerds and they don't self-describe as gamers, you can probably think of a memory you have of that person involving games in some way, right? Everyone plays some kind of game. Even sports count too, right?  Sports are games too, right? Except the race walking. Right, so... I mean, just Dota 2 has half a million people at any given time, and that's one game in a world where there are thousands, perhaps approaching millions of games available, right? Not just video games, every kind of game. Well, like, Grandpa with his Atari, your weird aunt and uncle from the Midwest playing card games. Right, there is no shortage of gaming people on Earth, because it's every single person, almost. And there's now so many Internet. Shouldn't it be easier to find someone to game with with Internet? You guys, there was a time when there was no such thing as online matchmaking. If I wanted to play it quick online with someone, I had to know their phone number. I would dial up for some C&C red alert with some people from high school, right? You know, it's like, now that we have Internet, not just the video games being able to go multiplayer, right? But the tabletop games, you can go on a forum, you can go somewhere and find a person and connect with them, a complete stranger. You know, I guess if you did that before the Internet, would you put a classified ad in the newspaper? Yeah, that always ends well. Yeah, D&D game, meet at the library at three o'clock, see who shows up. Right? The people who read the newspaper are gonna show up. Right? So, you know, there's so many gamers, there's so many Internet, and there's so many packs, including new mystery packs up there. I'm really wondering about mystery packs. I know, my money's on Chicago slash Austin. I don't have any special knowledge, that's really just where my money is. Yeah, we have conventions all over the place.  It's heavily advertised, it sells out, right? There are conventions pretty much everywhere. There's a Comic-Con in New Jersey today, this weekend. There's a million little anime-cons, little gaming-cons, table-toc-cons. We used to go to this tiny little con that got like 300 or 400 people called Gaming for Hope, way up in like the kips. Oh yeah, that was like just the college gaming weekend with like a child's play charity thing going on, right? That was in like 06, I think, we did that. If you were shiftless and had nothing better to do, you could probably spend every single weekend of every year at a moderately-sized gaming convention. So with all these people, all this Internet, and all these conventions, why is everyone LFG? Why is it so hard? Why are there so many people in the tabletop area alone with a game just looking for someone to play with them? Why are there so many, why does every forum on every community, everywhere on the Internet, have the trying to form a game thread or help me, my gaming group fell apart and I need a new one thread? Why is that, why are we always talking about this?   Why is it so hard even though there has never been in the history of the world more people alive at once, right, more games and more ways to connect with people, you still can't find a game? Well, imagine this pie, this tasty pie from some nice man, Dan Parsons took this photo. Great, thanks. I wonder if he made the pie. Creative Commons license is awesome, totally awesome. Yeah, imagine that pie is all of the gamers on earth that you could potentially play a game with, right? We're going to go and eat away at this pie because it's so tasty and see how many people are left after we go through all the reasons why they're not going to play with you. Reason number one, geography. Yeah, so a lot of people in Germany play German board games. Not so easy for me to play German board games with the people in Germany. They're kind of far away and they're not awake when I'm awake. So already, that huge pool, that's like the center of the kind of board games that I like, the people who are most into those games don't live anywhere near me. How many people wanted to come to PAX and just lived too far away and they couldn't get here? Or it sold out, right? But you know, we're lucky enough to live in New York City when I lived in the sticks, right? And I was a high school kid. He considers places like Boston to be the sticks. It is the sticks. So, right?  Who happen to be, you know, in your high school that you know. It's like even nerds like a grade under me, I didn't know who they were. We couldn't game with each other. I think every Dungeons and Dragons role-playing group ever, the first group that everyone forms is a middle or high school where by chance, you find out that there's three other people in your class who have those same weird books that they've been reading for 10 years but can never find someone to play with.  So when you consider like the reasonable transportation distances, whether you're in a place where people have cars, right, where you'll maybe get to, you can drive pretty far, right, reasonably to play, you know, a serious day of gaming, right? Or, you know, if you're stuck with like trains, your radius shrinks, but you're probably in a city that has more population density, right? But, so now already, like 99% of the people on earth are out of your gaming radius. If you're doing, if you're doing the tabletop physical in-person game, right? All these, like I can't play with the people in Germany because physically the pieces are not there. I'm not going to mail the board back and forth. But geography has other issues even for games that are not physically in the same space, like latency. So let me tell you a story. When I first got a cable modem, it was a test rollout as a kid in Michigan.  This was amazing to me at the time. And I hit the button to fire a missile and then like a second or two later, the missile flew out. And I got really mad and I didn't know what was happening.  And someone responded, LOL, noob, that's lag. And then I learned all about ping. Yeah, so I mean your phone, like my phone right here has incredible amounts of bandwidth considering that it's like this wireless device connected to a cell tower outside, right? But what it has tremendous amounts of as well is latency, right? That, you know, I'm going to get a ton of packets coming in per second, right? So I can watch a YouTube video, but that YouTube video is not going to start playing for like a second, right? So a second is not a big deal for pressing play on a YouTube video, but for shooting a bullet and counter strike. That is a tremendous problem if it's charged an entire second later, right? Even more than like 100 milliseconds is intolerably bad. Now software has gotten better. The way to deal with this, the algorithms are much better than they used to be. But once you get competitive, once you get to the higher levels, it still matters so much that it's almost an intractable problem. You'll see in competitive gaming that teams that are very far apart from each other have difficulty arranging games. And the games that they play in the opposite regions are very unfair on one side at much of the time.   We don't know, they've never played. Yeah, people in Australia who learn that I'm actually really good at counter strike. But yeah, so this really only applies to real-time games, right? If you have a turn-based game online, latency also doesn't matter because like I take my turn. It doesn't matter if that turn takes an hour to get to you. Well, maybe it does, but most of the time it doesn't. You just check your email. Oh, someone took their turn. I'll take my turn. So this is something that's removed a class of games from play. Now there's a class of games that I can't play with people who are far away because of latency, but it doesn't affect all games. Time zones. Time zones are a big problem, right? Maybe I got really fast internet, right? But I live in the western part of the eastern time zone and my friend who lives across the street is an hour behind, right? That's a problem, right? But an hour is really not a problem. What is a problem is even just the three hours to California, right? As I'm playing a game on Google Hangout, the tabletop RPG, we use the webcams. It works out great. Everyone's having a good time. One player is in California. Only a three-hour difference, right? How big a deal is a three-hour difference? When was the last time you played that game? Yeah, right. Exactly, right? So he gets home from work at five. For me, it's already eight. You're playing a tabletop RPG. It's going to take three, four hours. We're going to bed at midnight. For him, it's like nine, right? It's no problem, right? So these are almost like latency as we talk about isn't a game. I try to click on the head. The head moved before I clicked, you know, that sort of thing. This is like Uber latency. This is the latency that prevents turn-based games from working. I take my turn and now there's a lag time of a full day before someone else can take their turn. Yeah, the other guy, he has to go next and he's sleeping. So we had to wait for him, right? Whereas I'm good for three or four more hours. If he would just stay up late, everything would be solved. Or I could wake up at four in the morning and start gaming too. That would work. Languages. Partly before today? Oh. He was just in Paris like yesterday. Yeah, I flew in direct. I'm a little tired. Sorry, French people. This is, I'm just curious, are you guys too young to know what that is? I'm not going to explain the rest. I'm sure someone knows what it is. Okay. Okay. But this doesn't affect all games. Like German board games even, you'd think there'd be a very big language barrier but often there isn't because the kinds of people who play those games understand the mechanics and they translate the rules and they don't talk other than about the game. So it's fine. But you want to play Dungeons and Dragons where someone doesn't speak English? That's going to be a problem, right? It's like you can play Counter-Strike with pretty much anyone on the opposing team but if they're on your team, you might need to talk to them, right?  Oh yeah, so there's all these Quebecois dudes, just when I play Counter-Strike there's always all these Quebecois people on the servers. They don't speak any English or if they do they pretend they don't. They talk to each other in French. They coordinate with themselves in French. So we play a competitive match.  But you can use, the game at least has a little radio command so you can be like, circle around back. And that's all you can say, because on their computer they hear, circle around Baku. Who knows what their hair is? Tribes 2 actually had the voice system. Tribes 2 actually had a very interesting system to get around this. You could construct entire sentences with this pretty clever menu system. Like you press V to open up the voice menu and there was tons of menus and menus. You'd customize, I type like VRTD and then it would tell everyone in whatever language, you know, circle around to the back to pick up the weapons depot that I just dropped. Doesn't work for every game, not available in every game. And for games that are content and story heavy, this is pretty much a deal breaker. And it's not just language. We don't just mean being able to communicate with the other people, right? Language can also keep you from physically playing a game. For example, let's say I was fluent in Korean. I'm not, right? And there's a Korean game I wanted to play. Well, I can read Korean. That shouldn't be a problem, right? You need to sign in to most Korean online games, a Korean social security number, in order to sign in. There was a black market for those when we were in college to play certain terrible MMOs. We would buy them from people and they would let us use them to log in. So, you know, so it's like, you know, it's like language, but also nationality is a whole.   Right? And that's about it. You know, if you lived and grew up in a small place, let's say Turkey, and you spoke Turkish, right? As not a lot of people, relatively speaking, right? To play games with. Oh, look at that pie. We've eaten a lot of the pie already. I'm kind of worried. I think we've ate more of the pie. I think, you know, I don't know. I think it's a different pie, actually, but yeah. Yeah, that's Sage Ross's pie. Can't find gamers? It's an okay pie. They're so tasty. Look at those apples. Let's eat some more pie. We should eat some more pie. All right. So let's say you've surmounted everything we've already talked about. You've found people who speak a language you speak. They live near enough to you for latency as an issue. Maybe they even live in your town. You've got a place you can meet regularly. You've solved every problem we've talked about. But I play fighting games. I play Counter-Strike. This isn't going to work, I don't think. I feel like we're giving dating advice at this point. Right? It's like, you know, there's plenty of people at PAX. Look around this PAX, right? And I see sometimes it packs something that upsets me. And that's people who are focused on one kind of game, right? You'll see people, it's like they're a fighting game person. Smash Bros. Melee only. Fox only. It's like they're in that console, they're in that console free play, and they're playing fighting games. And you know what? Fighting games are awesome. I'm down with that, right? But to only play fighting games, to the exclusion of all other kinds of games, is a little bit, you know, narrow-minded, right? Is I like to play all kinds of games. There are some games I play more than others, of course, the games that I prefer, whatever. But I play a fighting game once in a while. I play an FPS once in a while.  Right? I'll play a tabletop. I'll play all kinds of games. But like, I don't play a lot of MOBAs. They're just not my bag. So as a result, a lot of people who I could otherwise play a game with, here at PAX even, if all you're playing right now is MOBAs, we're never going to play a game together. Or you're going to be really mad at me, and then we're not going to play a game together. Right? So, yeah, this is a huge problem, is that, you know, you've found people. The hardest thing to do is to find the people.  And you're not theirs, right? You're separated by what you want to do. Now, this is not a new problem. And if you read old Dragon magazines about Dungeons and Dragons from, like, the 90s, they would talk about how magic the gathering is ruining Dungeons and Dragons. Because people would show up at D&D night, and half the group wouldn't want to play D&D. They'd want to play magic instead. And then the group would fracture. So, we still haven't solved this. That was a real concern, and it still is. Differences of game! Alright. We both play fighting games. We both play nothing but fighting games. I only play Bushido Blade. I only play Street Fighter. It's not going to work out. No. Right? So, you're even harder, right? Maybe you're playing League of Legends and your friends are playing Dota. It's almost the same freaking game. 90% the same. But you can't play with them because they just play this different game than you. Just because that's what they decided, right? You didn't start playing the same game together, right? And this any kind of game that is popular, there's going to be a competing game. D&D Pathfinder. It's the same damn game. But you know what? If the other guy doesn't want to play D&D and you don't want to play Pathfinder, it's not going to happen. Why? Why? Well, because people get invested. You play a certain game. I keep using Counter-Strike as my example because I play a lot of Counter-Strike. You like that game specifically. There might be other games that are very similar, but that one's yours. That's the one you've played. That's the one you're used to. And there's value in branching out in other directions. But at the same time, if you really like D&D, you probably really want to play D&D even if you're trying all the Burning Wheel and all the other cool RPGs that do different things.  Not only learning the game, practicing the game, reading rules, increasing your skills. You've put a lot of time into that game. If I put a lot of time into Counter-Strike, I need to get my investment out of that. As I practice at this, I need to play it. If all my friends suddenly decide to play Call of Duty, it's like, I invested everything in Counter-Strike. I'm so good at it. And now you're going to ask me to play this other thing. And I lost. That time was wasted. If I'm going to play this other thing now. Right? So it's like you separate yourself before you knew what the right game to play was. You already made the mistake. And now what do you do? Now this also covers the Balkanization. Tabletop games have this especially. There's a ton of tabletop games. So the common problem people have is that the reason they're always looking for games is that every time you want to play a tabletop game at a convention, in person, anywhere, at least one dude does not know the rules. So every game becomes a teaching game, which is good. That's a great part of our gaming culture. At least someone was willing to learn a new game. Exactly. And not being stubborn and only wanting to play the game they wanted to play. But if we all always play different games, then every game you ever play will be a teaching game and you'll never get to play the mastery level of any game as a result. I mean, that's, you know, we all like to play all kinds of different games and I even said before, playing a variety is good. Don't be single-minded. But you still want to have some games that you play more often than others, that you can experience that higher level of figuring a game out, getting really good at it, right? If every game you play is you're playing it for the first time, it's basically a life of tutorials, right? You're never going to really play that awesome game where everyone knows what they're doing and it's, you know, a huge fight to the finish and see who's really better at it. I've actually seen that drive people out of tabletop areas of conventions over the years. Dead games. So, Nidhogg. This happens to a lot of games. Nidhogg is a great example. This is a great two-player versus, like, a towery-style game, like combat or outlaw.  When it came out, I bought it immediately. I bought it immediately. We said, hey, let's get together and play. So we played. It was super fun. Fast forward, like, two weeks, I go to the leaderboards or the matchmaking system to play. There are seven people. So I play against all of them, one by one they rage quit, and then eventually they all start quitting and then I'm the only one there. And anyone who logs in immediately fights me and then leaves. Fast forward another two weeks, I haven't seen someone in the matchmaking since. This game is dead. I bought it. No one will ever play it with me again. It's super new. It's only, like, a couple months old, and it's already dead. It had two weeks where everybody was playing it, and now I defy you to find a consistently running game of this. At Geek Nights, we tried to set up a worldwide tournament. Seven people have signed up for this tournament. I mean, you could probably set this up physically at Pax and get people to play it, right? But, you know, try to get it at your house. Maybe it'll suffice for a game night at your house, but you're not going to get people to regularly go for this. The game is dead. There's no community built up around it. There's no excitement online anymore. It came out, there was excitement, and then you haven't heard of it since. Now, some games live on in this sort of undead twilight. Like, Tribes 2 died, but yet there's a very tiny, very dedicated core of people who keep Tribes 2 going. Five people. Crazy dedicated, hard to access servers, but these are, like, hidden insular communities, almost.  And if they don't happen to be, you know, online at the same exact time that you're online in the same time zone with good latency, right, it's just not going to happen. But yet, dead games, it's like, why do games die? I guess people just move on, do a different game. But some games never die. Counter-Strike has not died yet.   Right. But, you know, this goes along with what we were saying, you know, differences of game, differences of genre, right? You invested so heavily into some game, right, RIM invested heavily into Nidhog, and then it died. So it's not even that no one else wanted to play with him, it's that the game didn't want to play with him. Dance Dance Revolution, not super popular anymore. I tried to buy, I wore out one of my dance pads, I tried to buy another one. They don't make those things anymore. The official ones are gone. You gotta buy these awful Chinese bootlegs and I wonder how many of those are still being manufactured. I wonder how many chemicals get released when you step on those. Yeah. Wow, we ate a lot of pie and we've only been talking for like 20 minutes. So our game is still alive.  Everyone's playing it, there are servers. We're playing it with people who speak our language in our time zone. We're gonna eat the rest of this pie real quick. This pie is not long for this world. What's more about that guy? Yeah, we're not talking about that guy yet. Not yet. Right? But we are talking about is personalities of people, right?  For whatever reason. They take the game super hardcore serious. They don't want to have, they want to talk at all while they're playing the game. If you start talking about like, oh, I saw this movie last night, they're like focused on the game. Nice. I'm that guy. Right. Maybe, you know, there's all kinds of things that can drive people apart, you know, political differences or just, I don't know, any number of things, right? Where two people just plain don't get along, right? For whatever reason that is. Now there's an interesting phenomenon I've noticed and it was pointed out to me by someone from overseas who was living in Berlin who came to the U.S. and went to a convention with us. We were playing tabletop games and afterward, he said, what was anyone's name in that game? And I was like, and then he asked everyone, like, what's your name? No one knew the names of anyone they played tabletop games with at conventions. People didn't even introduce themselves or if they did, they forgot the names immediately, played the game and then got the hell out of dodge. And I think that's because if we're already desperate, if the pie that's left is so small, we'll put off with a lot in the people we play games with. If I find someone who'll play Nidhog and they otherwise are probably an abhorrent person, I might let a lot of things slide just so I can keep playing Nidhog with them. Just have to make sure they don't figure out my real name or my email address. Well, I mean, another thing, right, is that you might be worried that this is going to drive you apart, right?   If you reveal too much, you might drive this game apart and lose that piece of pie that you fought so hard for, that was so rare and so difficult to obtain, right? So you keep that part, you know, at least in an anonymous convention game, you keep all of that stuff hidden, right, and protected so that there's no way this game will cease to happen. You don't sit down at every table and be like, so what do you think about atheism and Obama? Right? That's not gonna happen. Right? So yeah. So not only do you have to find people living near you, playing the same game as you, right? It had to be a person that you can get along with, right? Wow, this is getting hard, guys. Even temporarily. Right. Even for five minutes. Now temporarily is fine, but what if you're trying to form a D&D group? That guy's coming over every week. Every other week. In all the sunshifts. Okay. All right, now this is actually, this is sort of serious and sad, right? This is serious, like, it sucks, but not everyone has the same amount of money.  We're all of packs. A lot of people, even if badges didn't sell out, they just can't afford to get here.  It's the reality. We're not going to sit here and talk about how socialism would be great and they should just give everyone the same amount of money or whatever, right? But not everyone has the same amount of money, right?  You can afford all their magic cards and they can't. You're really not going to be able to play magic with them. Or the board games. A lot of the board gaming communities in towns focus around one person or the other guy or the one girl. We say guy or dude a lot. It doesn't, that guy could be a girl. Often is. But there's one person who owns all the board games just the only person who has a lot of money and is into gaming.  He becomes like this tiny godfather of gaming. He's orbiting out games like, okay, we can play that expensive new German game. I just got four copies of it. Let's play it tonight if everyone comes to my house. You know, that kid in elementary school, he didn't have an NES when everyone else did and he could only play when he went to other people's houses. I was more mad at that kid who had the Neo Geo. That's the kid with too much money. That's the separate problem. Right? But this seriously drives people apart and not just in gaming but in other social situations. There are a lot of people I'm really good friends with and it's like, we'll want to eat at a restaurant that they can't really afford to eat at right now. Or we'll want to go to a convention and they can't afford the transportation to get there. It's like, on occasion I can help them if I can but you know, I'm not mega rich.  So think about how the experience of being a gamer is so different. It was different levels of money. We're not going to lie. We have a lot of money. We fly to every PAX. We go everywhere. We go to all these gaming comms. So if this PAX, like I don't find a good game or it doesn't go that well, whatever, I'm going to be at PAX Prime in a few months and then I'll be at PAX Australia. Then I'll be back in a few minutes. So as a result, to me, I think, oh, it's really easy to find gamers because I see so many conventions, so many games and I'm not really tied to local places. I'm not, I don't have my one convention that has to go perfect because that's the only time every year I get to play games. So my view on gaming is very skewed and very different. It's very easy to lose sight of the fact that for a lot of people, a PAX is literally the only time every year they get to play games in person with friends, with people who like the same things and they do not waste your time at PAX like sitting here it's a waste of time. Right? But like I see so many people at PAX spending hours like waiting in line into Expo Hall or something, right? It's like, don't do that. You can, any minute you have free, you should be playing a game, right? Eat the pie before one of these thousands of people eats it. Right? Because it's not me around for long. Right?   Air hockey problem. So, is there, do any of you play air hockey professionally? Or semi-professionally. No, I didn't think so. Okay, good. We don't play air hockey professionally, what's not professionally, but we play it seriously and we play it a lot. Like whenever there's a decent air hockey table we play a lot of air hockey relative to a normal person. Right? So as a result we're okay at air hockey better than most people. So if we play air hockey against someone who doesn't play it every chance they get they just lose. Right? But if we play against a pro, we just lose. So we enter this sort of twilight zone of gaming where there's literally no one in the world at our level to play. And the same thing happens with fighting games. You'll see this in a fighting game community. You and your friends all start playing Free Fighter 8 when it comes out.  And then one dude one night plays for an extra four or five hours practices some combos. Suddenly he's the master. Everyone else has to be... Untouchable, right? Not even the master. It's not only when you can't beat him you can't hit him. When we play Free Fighter Scott will just walk in with M. Bison and he's like, all right, I'm only using jabs this time for him. Come on.  When I play someone who's actually good at fighting games they beat me with jabs only. Right? And it's literally that dramatic with a lot of competitive types of games. Right? Even air hockey. It's like, what do I do in air hockey? It's nothing special. I hit the puck directly at the goal over and over and over again. Straight on. They just try to hit the puck to keep it away from the goal, right? They're moving their puck way away from their goal leaving it wide open. They make the mistake of using the kind of standard English grip instead of the tournament two finger. Right. So you found your friends you live in the same town all that stuff you're playing the same game and one person is way better or way worse than everyone else and now it's not fun to play with that person or across. It's not fun for either one of them. I mean, me boxing Mike Tyson is not fun for me. Or for Mike Tyson.  He would feel bad. Really, even though he's not the greatest person, I think he would still feel bad if he just punched your face in. Yeah. Or any respectable like any MMA person, right? Fighting you would be like, no, I'm not doing this. I'm not going to hit you. Right. Unless they were evil. But we call it the air hockey problem because it's not all gamers experiences. This is a specific problem that occurs when you double down on a game, when you try to win as soon as you actually and we've done other lectures on how to win games because most of you are not trying to actually win.  Or what usually happens more often is everyone still wants to game together right to keep whatever pie they have left. But you just won't play that game anymore. So you have a group of friends. You all play Starcraft or you're all pretty much otherwise if one person makes it unfun for the rest of the group it's like oh no one wants to play against rim at that game anymore. You just won't play that game anymore and everyone will move to a different game entirely just to keep gaming happening. Now you think oh well I'll just get good enough to play at the low levels of the competitive circuit and you can do that. But now you've got to go to a PAX and join the tournament for that game and spend your entire convention playing that game.  Yeah I mean I've been playing for about a year I've been playing Netrunner a lot and I've gotten good and I've won like a couple tournaments but you know what my friends don't play Netrunner I've had to go find other people to play Netrunner with and there's a Netrunner tournament at PAX. I feel like I'm getting sort of shamed here. There's a Netrunner tournament at PAX tomorrow that thing is scheduled I don't hope it doesn't last this long from 11 to 8. You know what I'm thinking? Well you know what it's time for the people who only play Fox final destination no items. Sure those guys whatever. And that's a fine thing but look how it reduces your pool.  And now that I've been playing Netrunner for a year it's like even if I get rimmed to play a couple games he just loses you play basketball against Michael Jordan are you going to learn anything about basketball? No. You're not going to learn how to take a shot because you're not going to get a shot off. There is an escape from this. The teaching game for example I enjoy teaching people games it's fun to teach people a game take them through it but it's not the same as playing the game playing a game with a bunch of people who haven't played it before is a very different experience from playing a game with people who are all serious if Scott and I play air hockey we're going to hold it like this it's such a different experience that it's not even playing the game in a sense it can be enjoyable but I'm not getting the gaming experience that I would say If I open up a video game and I choose tutorial and that's all I do can you say I played the game? No you really can't that's why the next menu item is play they don't consider the tutorial to be playing it's something different. They do give you an achievement for it though. Oh yeah. Does anyone know who that is? Someone knows this is Herm Edwards right? He was the coach of the Jets at one point and it was basically in football right? Okay football You know there's not a lot of kicking but there's a little bit so he was the coach of the Jets and they were really really bad really bad that year when he was the coach so at a press conference which is required after every football game someone asked him like hey are you going to lose on purpose for the rest of the season to get better draft picks because basically what your team is you get better draft picks next year so that you'll get better players so that you'll be good next year maybe so go on YouTube it'll be unfair if the Super Bowl champions got to bring in the best college players to join their team right? that wouldn't work out if you win a game in a MOBA they just give you more levels for the next game right? it's like no then the guys who won the first game wins the second one it goes the opposite way so go on YouTube and just look for the rest of this question and he's like what? right? he's like no you play to win the game even though it would have been I guess in a multi-year in the meta game in the meta game the multi-year strategy for his team would have been to lose on purpose for the rest of the football year but he was too proud and he also you know liked playing games and his attitude was I play to win the game no matter what that was his attitude right? well what if he's playing against someone whose attitude is I'm losing on purpose where you know people are doing the thing but there's one person who's seriously trying to win with the points because you can win cards against your manager kind of can or apples to apples those games the games where you play these story games board games where one person is trying to win and everyone else is just hanging out and having fun those games don't go very well and either the person who's trying to win will get frustrated because everyone else is just like giving the game away or not actually playing to win thus preventing them from winning or the people who are just playing to have fun suddenly are sort of confronted with this angry person who's yelling at all and take their turn over and over again why are you looking at me I'm not the slow one slow one's over there wrong scott right? but it's not just there's other attitudes about gaming besides winning and losing perhaps play styles one person might have a particular play style they like to play the game sort of maybe they like to rush and another person gets really annoyed against rushes they like to play slow and it's like it's not going to work right? you know sometimes you play an RTS and people be like don't attack for three minutes or something like that and it's like no I don't play that way right? you know you'd see this in the old RTS is like command and conquer especially where you'd see a lot of people make a little server start playing the game and they say alright guys no attacking for 20 minutes because they want to play this other game they want to play a slow game they can't really enforce it inside of the game so of course I would join because the most is in the tabletop RPG right? you're going to have something like D&D and half the people at the table they love to tell fruity stories about elves to the court well specifically Everest and elves right yeah sure right and they're telling all their fruity elf stories but this guy he doesn't care if I know fruity elf stories he doesn't care about stories at all he just wants to kill monsters in the dungeon and get the loot that's what we want treasures how many treasures am I going to play? I'm going to go to the left and then I'm casting magic missile right it's the same game 100% the same game we got together to play it right but our attitude about the game is different we have a different style we want something different from the game if we play it together there's only going to be some kind of conflict and it's not going to work out too well so I play Pokemon I got Pokemon right there I got Pokemon right there who's got Pokemon yeah Pokemon yeah so let's all go to the local elementary I'll go over super well with everybody's parents right there are certain games that you can play where I guess the community for that game is a significantly different age from you now I'm not a fan of age discrimination but yeah you probably shouldn't be inviting like the 12 year old over to your house to play Pokemon that would be weird guys unless you're 12 in which case don't invite the 30 year olds over to your house to play Pokemon right now it's a little bit okay if you go to the local gaming store for like the Pokemon card game tournament and you're 30 and there happen to be 12 year olds there it's like on the borderline now it is interesting because there's different culture and different types of games so you know the genres and types of games you talked about earlier so in the dungeons and dragons like role-playing community I remember when I was a kid in the 80s my parents would just drop me off at gaming conventions in Michigan and I was like what's going on with these 40 and 50 year old dudes in their like scripted scenario D&D tournament type games and that I guess was totally okay yeah I mean you go to a net run tournament right there's usually one kid there who's playing but it's like that's a hard game usually you know people who aren't like in college age or higher can't like understand all the rules it's like it's really hard now what if your differences of age and you're in Australia well now you're just because of the laws there but age has other factors besides just sort of like the appropriate content of the game right it's like sports you can't be having 12 year olds play baseball with pretty much anyone who's not a 12 year old there was that South Park with the red wings yeah exactly right anyone who's seen the episode knows gonna right certain games are just age brackets even Pokemon if you go to like the legitimate Nintendo Pokemon tournaments they have age brackets right if you're old you're only going to play with old people you're not going to play with kids now there is a reality that people have hit different developmental milestones at different ages and there's certain stages your brain goes through so frankly kid brains just can't play certain kinds of games or they can't play them very well no matter how smart you think the 80 year old is he's not going to be able to fully comprehend Hanabi unless he's some sort of like genetic genius I mean there are those exist it's rare it's like a crumb in the pie right like we play the game of Hanabi actually we're at the anime Boston here in Boston and two young kids were there and we wanted to play a game so we called them over and we showed them Hanabi and we taught it to them in the tabletop area and they were really smart kids they were really cool they played the game really well but at the same time their kid brains didn't a hundred percent get the game there is no way we could teach them to play the game as well as someone who was even five or six years older there's just that that's the reality of the world I guess if we had played the game with them many many many times right then maybe they could have eventually played it enough they would age while we were playing they'd be playing until they're twenty and then they'd got it right or like to do a complete aside on a sport skiing kids are below a certain age just don't have the fine motor control to be able to do the things you need to do to ski so they can ski but it's pretty much just brownie in motion they're going down the hill one way or another there's also the fact that you know people of different ages right I think more so than any other factor have you know things excite or interest them right so maybe you're playing a grick-o-la with some kids and they get it they're like there's really smart kids who really love the game but they just get distracted by the cute sheep so they're like that happens to me sometimes I do that too but you know you gotta stack the sheep up in a complex stacking arrangement now this is also a problem of differences in maturity and it doesn't necessarily have to do with age it's the sort of so one I wouldn't play that with an eight year old but two like in my gaming curve you know it's packed we say fuck a lot we're from New York when we play games like to the point that relatives who aren't from New York notice that we say fuck a lot I don't even notice when I say it I only notice people reacting that I say it and I'm like oh right you're not in New York so even if someone's my age if they're bothered by a crude language or in a role-playing game if they're bothered by very serious possibly violent content in a role-playing game then we can't play the same kinds of games with them and you'll see groups sort of break apart for that issue you're playing a role-playing game starts to go in a dark direction makes some people uncomfortable games pretty much dead at that point that's our friend John Stavropoulos he has a thing called the X card and pretty much what he does is when he starts any tabletop RPG especially at a convention he takes a white card and he writes a big black X on it he puts it on the table and what he says is basically you just raise this X card right and with no you don't have to explain anything or whatever but whatever we were just doing is not cool and we're going to go and do something else no debate whatsoever like you find the puppies the puppies are totally safe X card the cats are totally safe like maybe someone has issued puppies now this obviously is not to everyone's style but this is an example of a tool if you need to play games with people that you otherwise couldn't there are mechanics there are tools there are structures you can use to make the games work for people for whom they wouldn't otherwise work but they change the game the X card pushes the game in a different direction it can be used to help people with social triggers it could also be used to keep that guy from talking about pole arms because he's really into pole arms pole arms he's really pushing this game into pole arms really more into just grease arms these days well technically I would get X carded a lot right yeah but I mean it's not just at the table top either I used to play a game called Puzzle Pirates which is like this cute MMO where you played puzzles and stuff right back in college days I played that oh yeah you were like big up in that clan yeah it was a crew yeah it was a clan Puzzle Pirates you were at the Orange Revolution or whatever it was you remember I don't remember it Scott doesn't remember anything I just make things up he's like oh yeah right but the person who took everything was awesome that's why I was in that clan but she was kind of a churchy conservative person so it was like you couldn't say bad words even though the Puzzle Pirates as a whole game didn't care right if you're in our crew you had to be like all nice and happy all the time otherwise she would just kick you out right alright so you found the group you can say fuck all the time and they don't care you're all the same age you live in the same town everyone of these lives all the way back so there's a problem there's a problem in games there's a problem in gaming and you've seen you've all been in this situation you've probably been in this situation already out of packs you've got to get a tabletop game like Puerto Rico takes five players you've got three players you're walking over to play you're looking for two more players to play you see three people walking up two of them seem okay at least judging books by their cover one of them you just know you know and you've all done that dance of how do I get the people I wanted to be in my game in my game without telling the person I didn't want to be in the game to not be in the game so what you do is you hide right you don't make yourself known you do not advertise your game because there could be trouble right there are tons and tons and tons of gaming groups out there that are hiding right they're hiding from you they don't post on the internet right there's LFG why is there so much LFG on the internet because there's people who have a game aren't going there to get that person into their game there's a lot of them yeah there are and what you'll often see is there's regulars people show up whenever a new person shows up everyone kinda like checks them out talks to them and then you'll see different people over the course of that first night kinda take them aside and be like yo dog we have a private gaming night every other Wednesday at my apartment oh really yeah here's my email address let's talk you should come to the next one they hide the fact that these exist from their parents if they could they do not want anyone else in this group because I've seen this exact thing happen where someone invites someone like that and someone overhears and comes over oh hey can I come too? mm come to what? your game night you just gave him an email address like a second ago oh yeah cause he's confident about some business or whatever but you're paying attention to my business but it was but it was a game night on Thursday what no on Thursday I have to go to work late it's like a big release you're playing Dota 2 I work you you've seen this happen we know it happens once you get your gaming group you go off the radar and disappear how many of you especially at PAX late at night you get your games together and then you slip out to a hotel a little early hide somewhere in a corner get a table never leave it never bring anyone to it maybe it's around the corner from the semi-official table top area there's a guy I met recently playing netrunner I'm gonna stop bringing up netrunner no you're not no I'm not right I met him playing netrunner just within walking distance of me it's like five blocks to get to his place he was playing board games not at any public meetup not with us he was a stranger to me he's a great guy he's really good at games he loves board games he has one person he played board games with on Sundays and they didn't advertise they didn't try to find new people they didn't do anything they were just hiding there playing their two person game one of the guys is moving away so now I'm going over there I went over there like twice that's about it I don't have time for that I already have enough game nights but still I'm completely hiding from everybody there could be people living closer to me than that guy there could be people in my own apartment building which only has 12 apartments besides me I've seen packages show up with suspicious nerdy return addresses to the apartment directly below me there could be nerds in there but I don't know anyone in my apartment building and I'm not gonna go randomly knock on their door they're hidden nerds for all I know they could have as many businesses as I have right but I don't know them they're hiding from me there's no way for me to connect with them right that's not weird and awkward and creepy now this happens online in video games too go to any online game especially games like Counter Strike and look at the list of servers and look at all the ones that have that little lock next to them the private gaming servers sometimes I'll join a Counter Strike server I'll start playing and no one's in the voice chat I'm in a competitive game no one's in the voice chat because four of the other people on my team are on their private vent they're talking to each other and want nothing to do with me sometimes the vent service in the MOTD you should read that yeah sometimes it's not sometimes it's not yeah I've got mine baby so we've solved all these problems by having my playing around that's our third wheel group we play on the roof of our apartment building in New York City there's literally a gaming night every single night in New York City any day if I wanna go to a game night it's there somewhere in the city somewhere in Manhattan you jelly? you wanna play Netrun or there's like five meetups all over the place you can play Netrun every night some of them are competing meetups so yeah but we've got ours right but like we said we've got ours so we're hiding we're not inviting anyone to play games on the roof right it's not an open thing this is a private thing right we don't go on the internet there might be someone in his apartment building looking for a game on that roof and we're not going to find that person and tell them hey it's every other Tuesday why did we just tell them it's every other Tuesday and the landmarks are gonna help them figure out the building too it's a good thing there's a new building going up so there is that view is gonna get blocked soon so it'll be fine I don't know if they'll get blocked up from the roof depends on how tall that building goes well just move Mr. Vice President so there is a reason at least this is one of the reasons why everyone's hiding we're not now this is a delicate subject right we're not going to talk about the usual things people talk about which is how to tell that guy how to not be that guy why that guy exists and how to handle that guy right what's interesting to us try not to make eye contact with anyone in particular right is because that guy exists whether the guy literally exists near you or is just this sort of you know imaginary figure the concept of that guy because the concept of that guy and some real instances of that guy exist in the world that changes the behavior of all the not that guys right because any random gamer could be that guy that you can't have gaming with you or even near you right at any time in your entire life you have to be cautious you can't open up right if I knew there were no that guys I'd be like hey everyone come come to my house Wednesday night games and if I knew in fact everyone who shows up is going to be awesome that would totally work out and again this is a gender neutral term to be perfectly clear it's also kind of relative like there's there's relativity of that guy for a lot of people like fun games I'm that guy I'm that mother fucker who shows up in Google glass I killed toeshoes who takes a game seriously that was written for three year olds so they see me coming they're like oh fuck it's that guy telling our games fault the game doesn't even have rules how can we tell them that hey you want to play shaky they're playing pedicake I'm like faster so everybody's that guy to somebody it's not one two three shoot it's one two it's one two if you get that wrong get the fuck out of my house so you see but that guy out there it's the guy who you're trying to play a game you advertise hey we're going to start a D&D night or an anime club anything nerdy it doesn't even have to be just gaming and if all the people that show up that guy will show up and that guy will antagonize the other people in your group and basically destroy the group one person ten awesome people twenty awesome people one bad egg can ruin the whole thing we used to play at a gaming club at RIT which was huge the root like maybe half as many people as are in this room would show up to this gaming club and just play games but that guys were on the prowl and they'd be going around like trying to join your game and they were some creepy dudes and the other thing is because any public event is where that guy is most likely to show up because that guy is the most desperate doesn't have they don't have theirs they don't have theirs they're going to the public events they're most likely to be there you'll probably go to a public event and sometimes it's a hundred percent that guy they're not that guy to each other but to that guy to you so you don't go back there again like we used to run an anime club that'll attract that guys about the same rate as a gaming club will and we would actually post people at the door to engage with that guy to keep him away from other new people who showed up so they wouldn't think the club was all that guys and then they'd get used to coming and then we'd turn them loose later but the problem this presents to do a game it's kind of like a game theory distribution thing is that if every group that forms a cohesive group and has theirs goes off the radar and rejects to avoid that guy then eventually over time you increase the concentration of that guys looking for games and the only thing that guy hates more than not playing a game with you is other that guys so but it's the worst for the people who aren't that guy who don't have theirs because they're walking around looking for game all the good people have got theirs and are hiding and it's just a sea of that guy and they're terrified so they just stop gaming they just stop gaming because you're not going to how are you going to find one of these tiny groups is almost impossible okay priorities so we'll talk a little bit about some ways to solve this as well at this point right so basically I talked about that torch bear game that I'm playing on Monday nights for some people the torch bear game is not the most important thing even if they've got it free on their schedule or whatever their kids are more important yeah that's probably more important right oh I've got you know I have to take this test and study for it because I've got to graduate with this doctorate degree yeah that's probably more important okay sure it's a little less important than the kids right but it's like people have different priorities in life not everyone's highest priority is gaming right it's very few people who like us who say gaming is more important than anything I will game instead of going to my own wedding I will game instead of not eating instead of eating whatever but look at packed I mean how many people lined up at the start of packs for the keynote versus lined up to get into the expo hall versus lined up to go straight into tabletop or straight into versus the albatross theater for the fancy panel yeah not so fancy people and people have a different priority the game is this important or not that important you can't get together with them because they put something else ahead of the game right I can't play right now I've got to do something else so what's the moral here just put gaming at the top if you seriously need game you have to put gaming at the top you have to put gaming above other things otherwise it will never happen right it's already so hard to find game right you have to make it if you want it to happen you have to sacrifice something else something right same thing schedules and lives so even though I the game is the most important thing in the world to me right and the game is the most important thing in the world to Ram I'm free Monday nights he's not free Monday nights that's it so how did we get ours a little example one if you can go to a nerdy college or live near a nerdy college because nerdy colleges the game like I said the gaming club had a lot of a number of people similar to the number of people in this room and there were multiple other competing gaming clubs we formed a posse of like 20 people we called ourselves the front row we even named ourselves at one point and once we got ours even at RIT we would break into buildings and game in like lecture halls we could use the big screens so we could use the big tables the big whiteboards we would have private secret events in the tunnels for ourselves and college is the place where we could do that because we never went to class priorities we didn't have anything in our schedules college everyone had the same amount of money college once summer everyone was in the same place we played a board game called Puerto Rico five to ten times a day every day for like three months skill level was the same nerdy hockey problem because everyone's playing it five times a day well we would buy a board game and play it hundreds of times every time we'd get Smash Brothers came out we just played it every day and we still sucked compared to the real players yeah I'd just give class come home to the apartment playin' a game scott's playin' the same game we'd play for like four hours he'd skip his next class suddenly it was midnight our other friends come over we'd keep playing infinite gaming goodbye pie oh god yeah you eventually have to leave college right so this is a solutions people right live in a city a real city we have a million people in New York we've got like 12 just in the city not even counting the metro area the real city real cities are as follows London Paris Tokyo Beijing New York LA that's about it melvin in australia it's got like 5 million people it's actually pretty serious not bad not bad melvin but seriously you guys there Toronto is okay because Toronto actually has snakes and lattes Toronto has a community Vancouver has a community Seattle has a community right isolation is not high if you live in a major metropolitan area there are so many gaming groups and so many gaming meetups that you'll never even see or know exist unless you live there because they kind of stay off the radar unless you live in the city nerd NYC is called nerd NYC and yet they run conventions in New York just for people who live there we just play games we show up we have a weekend convention tiny packs just us right I mean like I said we're playing netrunner every night in New York city internet and the netrunner communities I'm in Kansas can't find game it's like yeah you're not going to find game in Kansas it's just not going to happen guys okay more conventions who here right this is the only convention you go to who goes to a lot of conventions yeah not a lot of you right go to at least these four well VGGCon is kind of far away in Texas right but we go to every packs we go to MAG Fest every year we run panels department at Connecticut and that's only like the beginning of the conventions we go to if you need a lot of game and you make it a high priority and you're fortunate enough to have money just keep going to cons there's plenty of them and if you live in a major metropolitan area there are like 19 gaming conventions within an hour and a half drive of our apartments in New York City I want to go to like New York Comic Con I can just take the subway there yeah it's not a problem better internet internet needs to be faster well in the US internet sucks right so you can move to Europe if you're really if you're big on the internet gaming you can move to Europe and the internet gaming will be better but in the US the internet is garbage and you have to push like your representatives to get better internet to smack down on the cable companies if Comcast merges with Time Warner we're screwed we're just hosed I'm not even joking we're gonna have shitty internet for like decades if they don't merge what'll probably happen is Time Warner will become like T-Mobile and give everyone the finger and we'll get fast internet from Time Warner at least for a little while hopefully right so this is a serious like big issue right but if you have better internet the latency issues go away more people will be you know with less money we'll be able to get faster internet alright then it'll be all good so don't try to read that comic but obligation this is this I think some of the problems that you're causing gaming is that when that guy tries to join your game no one's ever honest our culture of gamers is very open and that's a very good thing but as a result we're very unwilling to express why we don't want to play games with someone or even that we don't want to play sometimes I want to play a game of Puerto Rico this board game with five people who already know the rules and are already super skilled at it so it shouldn't be offensive to someone who doesn't know the rules if we want to play one game of this by ourselves but at there's almost there's no safe way to tell someone that the way our gaming culture is sorry I don't want to play the game with you because you don't know how to play and I only want to play with people who are really good at it that's seen and are very fast in their turn that's pretty jerky thing to say imagine if I was sitting there with an empty spot at my table LFG you came and you wanted that seat and I told you no because you weren't good at this game yet and you didn't know the rules but as a result I'm a jerk if I say that right? I can't say that one we have a lot of people who are denied games but never really get an explanation as to why and two a lot of us end up playing games out of obligation you get into a game the game is bad everyone's slow you know now that this ten minute game is going to take four hours anyway and our gaming culture says don't walk away from the game what if I'm in the middle of a game with some people and it's going great and then it's suddenly not going great if I get up and leave I'm ruining the game for all those people even if I have a legitimate reason for getting up and leaving and suddenly I'm the jerk right it's like no if there's that guy in this game that I didn't know about I absolutely should get up and leave and they should know the reason why we need to be a little more honest as a gaming culture with each other about what our goals are what we want out of games and we need to be a little more honest with ourselves and be willing to walk away from a game that's not going well adapt yourself alright so we saw the slides earlier right I play Street Fighter he plays Tekken just change what you're playing right if it's that hard to find a game right because your friends are playing you play Pathfinder they play D&D I mean sure they're being stubborn they won't change and try a different game okay I agree with you they're stubborn and narrow minded people who won't change what game they're playing but what's easier to do is to change their mind when they're really stubborn or just go with the flow you won't convince someone to play an indie RPG like Burning Wheel by beating them over the head with it you gotta play D&D with them first and then sneak it on in along the side my friend other Scott over here was just telling me before he came in like he wants to play Burning Wheel but he what's he in he's in a Pathfinder game why? because it's better than no game right if you're playing League of Legends and everyone else is playing Dota just play Dota it's not going to hurt you right it's almost the same same vice versa if all your friends are playing League of Legends it's better than not playing anything is better than not playing and you're crying and you're home alone so we're not going to be able to take any questions obviously on purpose so if you enjoyed this at all if you want to have a follow up conversation you want to see videos of this maybe to show that guy or many other panels that we've done lectures over the years we got little tiny cards here instead of big flyers that actually link you directly to our YouTube channel we produce a lot of content in MP3 and YouTube form as well as many other forms and you can see it for free all over the internet if you have nothing better to do when you're not gaming and we sadly probably won't have time to play a game with any of you that's it enjoy your packs


Media focal points always have to find new ways to communicate more content in less time for maximum impact. Videos are great for doing just that. They help showcase IOM's work and build the organization's brand. Creating videos has never been so easy. All you need is a DSLR camera or a smartphone, a steady hand, a few basic accessories and an idea. When creating a video, ask yourself first, what is the purpose and who is the target? And what do you want your viewers to remember? Writing down a few bullet points about the main topics you want to put forth will help you choose shots which can illustrate this most effectively. Here are some guidelines for capturing great footage. Good lighting conditions are key. Avoid harsh shadows or dark images by making sure your subjects faces are well and evenly lit. This can be done by positioning your subjects to face a window or you can film in the shade when outdoors. In harsh lighting conditions, place your subject against light surfaces like a bright wall. You can also use a sheet of white paper or a reflector to even out any shadows. Sound matters as much as images in a video story. Make sure to test the audio quality of your recordings with a set of headphones. Audio that's recorded too low tends to drown in background noise resulting in static and hum. Using an external shotgun mic can improve audio quality in most environments. For interviews in noisy or windy environments, clipping a lavalier mic to your subject's clothes will work best. Increase the visual appeal of your video by capturing a number of well-framed shots. Try to film your subjects and events from several angles to give a complete view of the scene. General wide shots are great for conveying the size and context of the surroundings while medium and close-up shots can highlight the mood onsite. Get a steady 5-10 second shot of each. This will ensure that you have enough to work with during the editing process. Emotional cues help audiences connect with the story. The most emotive stories revolve around people, so try to get footage which illustrates their point of view, environment and challenges. Interview sound bites allow the people in our stories to express what they are thinking and feeling. Try to capture action scenes which illustrate the events being described in the story as opposed to a video of someone just talking about the issue or people standing around staring at the camera. While organizational visibility is important, the use of logos should be subtle, both in the field and during the editing process. Make sure that logos don't overpower your story by placing them away from the foreground or towards the end of your videos. Remember, even though good visuals can provide great support and visibility for projects, the main priority is to ensure the well-being, safety and dignity of our beneficiaries. Make sure to get consent through a signed consent form. Try to convey your message as efficiently and briefly as possible. An average length of 2-3 minutes is enough to tell a full story and keep audiences interested, especially on social media. The first few seconds of a video will determine viewer engagement, so remember to open the video with an appealing shot and compelling captions. By projecting keywords or short phrases over images, you can help viewers better understand and remember the narrative and provide additional information. If dialogue is the most important element of your video, add subtitles. Help us keep a consistent look by using our official font, GilSan, which looks great when used properly. You have our full support, so if you have any questions or if you need technical assistance, please contact IOM's Media & Communications Audiovisual Team. Let's continue to make your good work more visible.


I think I went to the fastball a little bit too much. I feel like that's where I had success early was I was able to kind of mix in sliders and change ups a lot. So then it got hitters off my fastball. So I got through to some decent locations. I went back and looked at it and there were a couple good spots that kind of just found holes for whole singles little chopper up the middle. But all in all, I mean, I got to figure something out because I don't know if it's from the stretch. I got to be a little different. I feel very comfortable from the wind up and then once it goes in the stretch, I feel like I lose a lot of command and control and then it just kind of spirals.


What's up guys and welcome to one take. I'm Gil and today we're talking about the Expanse Season 5 Episode 4. This will be a full recap and review so it will of course be full of spoilers through episode 4 but I haven't read any of the books so no spoilers for any future episodes. I'll say right at the top that this was my favorite episode of the season so far, mainly because of how substantial and climactic it felt almost like a season finale. But the great thing is we now get to live with the fallout from this episode and see how things play out over the remaining six episodes of the season. One of my favorite aspects of the episode was the way they chose to show us the collision of the asteroids. It reminded me of something Steven Spielberg talked about when he made War of the Worlds. Going into that production he said that there weren't going to be any of the usual sweeping helicopter shots you get in big action movies where you get a great view of the carnage. Instead, everything was going to be from the perspective of the people on the ground. You only see what the characters see. Similarly, any time an asteroid hit this episode we were with one of our characters. For example, in the opening scene Bobby and Alex learn about it from an emergency broadcast. Later we're in the plane with Gao when the third asteroid hits. Seeing the attacks through our character's eyes makes it more visceral and effective. So I thought that was a great choice. Anyway, love the episode. Let's jump into the recap. But first, just a quick reminder. If you're enjoying these videos, please go ahead and hit that like button, hit the subscribe button, and hit the bell icon so you get notified the next time we do a video. We start the episode with Alex and Bobby on the razorback. If you pay attention, you'll see it says razorback on the screen before that's replaced with screaming firehawk. This is a reference to season one where Alex wanted to name their ship the Screaming Firehawk, but of course got outvoted and they went with the Rossinante. Anyway, they're following Emily Babbage's ship on a supply run. They expect to see her meet with black market dealers as part of the illegal Martian weapons trade. Alex is skeptical that so many people could be involved in it and wonders how Bobby can be so nonchalant about the whole thing. So she tells him the story of her pet rat. She was so grief-stricken after it died but eventually ran out of grief. She buried the rat and moved on. Similarly, she's buried Mars. She realizes that it no longer represents something that she can fight for. She assures Alex he'll soon have a similar realization and be able to move forward. Then in a touching moment, Alex tells her that it's good having someone to talk to about this stuff. He's sorry he can't be that person for his son and he tells Bobby that he hopes his son can one day find someone like Bobby that he can talk to. Like I mentioned before, they're interrupted by an emergency broadcast about flight restrictions due to emergency relief efforts caused by the asteroid hitting earth. So I already mentioned how I loved seeing each of our characters reacting to the news of the asteroid. I also like getting a peek into Bobby's psyche here. In my last review, I talked about how great it is seeing the fallout of the ring all the way down at the street level. This is a great example of that. The entire culture of Mars has shifted and we see how that's crushed the spirit of many people, including Bobby. Now we get to see how she's rebuilding herself and finding something to fight for. Next, we rejoin Amos. A couple of episodes back, he asked Vasurala to arrange a meeting for him and we finally get to see it here. He's at a UN penitentiary where he's brought to the basement. Inmates with body modifications are kept down there because they require extra precautions. Finally, we see who he's there to meet and it's Julie Mouse sister, Clarissa. She's in a bad state, heavily medicated with blockers because of her mods, which can't be removed without apparently making things even worse for her. When she asks Amos why he's there, he explains that People like us, the things we do is not just on us. This world is messed up and it can mess you up. I was lucky. I had somebody that helped me. And I assume here he's talking about Lydia, his surrogate mother. Clarissa asks Amos if he's there to help her and he admits that he is, even though she thinks that's impossible. Nobody can help her. They're interrupted when things go into lockdown, the lights go out and asteroid number two has hit earth. I mentioned in my last review that I love the Amos character and I'm a fan of where he's going this season. He's always felt a bit like Clint Eastwood to me. Man, a few words, but a badass who always gets things done. Now he's sort of transformed into later stage Clint Eastwood of the movie Unforgiven. He's looking back on a violent life and reconciling with himself. Now, I haven't been as much into the Clarissa character, mainly because I never sympathized with her. Early on, we saw how coldly she killed innocent people and let others die. I was never really able to see past that, even though to some extent we can understand why she would do all that. Either way, I definitely enjoyed the relationship between her and Amos last season and I'm excited to see more of it here. I think watching him try to help someone go through a similar journey as the one he's been through will be interesting and it'll teach us something about Amos and probably change him in some ways. I also just think we're in for a pretty cool story. I assume that being in the basement of the penitentiary protected Amos and Clarissa from the asteroid, but now they're trapped underground with a bunch of criminals with body modifications. So they'll probably have to fight their way out and then once they get out they'll have to navigate the chaos above. So, seems like he's going to be our man on the street for the Earth asteroid story. Also, I should mention, stay tuned for a video I'm working on recapping Amos Burton's origin story from the novella, The Churn. It details much more of his backstory, which has really only been alluded to in the show. Next, we check in with Avasrala, who is pissed after the first asteroid hit. She's struggling to get the word out that it was not just a random collision but a planned attack. Then Felix informs her that a second asteroid is hit. With Felix's help, she finally figures out how to get a message to Secretary General Gao through a chef on board Gao's plane. Avasrala tells Gao she needs to reactivate the Watchtower satellites so they can detect the remaining asteroids, which are protected by Martian cloaking technology. Gao is finally convinced to heed Avasrala's warning, but then asteroid number three hits, taking out Gao and much of her cabinet. This was one of my favorite moments of the episode because they managed to work a crazy emotional roller coaster into a five-minute block of television. We start with the rage and urgency as Avasrala worked to figure out how to get her message through. Then we have triumph as she finally gets the message out but moments later that's undercut by another freaking asteroid hitting Earth. Again, we're shaken by it all the more because we're experiencing it through her eyes and it's a major status quo shift less than halfway through the season. It's a bold and awesome choice. Next, we check in with Holden and Fred. They're pulling the trigger on their Trojan horse plan. Basically the people who kidnapped Monica expect to find her in a shipping container, but instead they'll find Bull and a couple of his men. A ship called Zamiya approaches to pick up the container but turns out they're not there to pick up a shipping container at all, instead they attack. Suddenly Sakai shoots Fred and goes in search of the protomolecule. In his last breaths, Fred tells Holden that the protomolecule is in his quarters with security fully engaged holding off the attack Holden heads to Fred's quarters himself. He shoots one of Marco's goons but finds a droid digging out Fred's protomolecule. Holden tries and fails to stop the robot so the droid grabs the protomolecule sample and Sakai ejects it, sending the protomolecule to Marco Inaros. First, I gotta say that Fred and Bull's plan here was pretty terrible. Even if the bad guys did pick up the shipping container you have no idea what kind of firepower they'll have so you just don't know what you're stepping out of that shipping container into. But either way the moment the coup began was incredible. I was genuinely shocked to see Fred shot, also just like with the asteroids, Fred's death was shown to us in an interesting way. On most other shows we would have been in the hospital room as they're trying to save his life. We'd hear them yell clear, try to zap him a few times, then CPR, etc. Instead we experience it through Holden's eyes.  We see towels drenched in blood everywhere so we understand the fight that took place as they tried to save his life. In the last few episodes we saw Holden mulling over his place in all this. Should he pack it up, go home and have a good life, or stay in the fight? After seeing Fred taken out I think Holden will very much stay in the fight and will try to honor Fred's legacy. Also I have to say Sakai did a great job of making me absolutely hate her. When the protomolecule sample gets away she laughs and is kind of a very sore winner. It felt very naive to me as if it's all a game to her even though she is culpable or at least okay with the deaths of millions of people on earth. I think this plays into the show's narrative that Marco is a charming leader whose rhetoric can get people like Sakai to commit atrocities. These are the best kinds of villains where we can hate them and at the same time understand them. Next we go back to Avasarala. She leaves a message with her husband begging him to reply and just let her know that he is okay. From Felix she learns that there is still uncertainty over who is next in line to succeed Gao. But the watchtowers are being retasked. Felix also apologizes for not fighting harder to get people to listen to them. Then takes Avasarala to a common area where people are congregating and comforting each other. Finally the watchtower detects a fourth asteroid and stops it. Now when Felix takes Avasarala to this room there's one guy in the foreground who says for some reason that line hit me as super cheesy like they just needed a one liner so we understand the topic on everyone's mind in that room. But putting that aside I loved the moment of the fourth asteroid getting stopped. It was sort of the one triumphant moment in a series of tragedies this episode. Finally we wrap the episode with Naomi. Philip takes her to see Marco and we get the reunion that's been years in the making. He surprises her with the news of the three asteroids. She is of course devastated saying that Marco has stained their son's hands with blood just like he did to Naomi years ago. Philip insists that it was his choice. Then he locks Naomi up. She begs him to let her go. Then she sort of breaks down. I've got to say Dominique Tipper continues to crush it as Naomi here. She's doing a great job of communicating the pain that that character is in. But now that we've seen her in pain for a few episodes I'm hoping we see that turn soon. I would love to see a Rorschach-esque I'm not locked in here with you you're locked in here with me situation. I'm hoping that Naomi will be able to fight Marco's group from the inside. I'm also hoping she gets a chance to tell Philip more of her story so that he might understand a little bit better the choices that she made. I think that's going to be part of the fight against Marco. If she can win some of Philip's sympathy she might be able to get him to budge from blindly following everything Marco does. Anyway Marco celebrates three asteroids that successfully hit earth then sends a message to the world taking credit for the attack. He lays out that he is the commander of the Free Navy the military arm and voice of the outer planets. The attack was retribution for years of atrocities committed by inners on Belters. Maybe most importantly he points out that they now have possession of the last remaining sample of protomolecule. He wraps up by saying that outside of earth and Mars the vacuum the ring gates and the ring worlds all belong to the Belters. The title of this episode was Gagamila which I believe refers to the battle of Gagamila. That's where Alexander the Great had a major victory which was a large part of his conquests. This episode was Marco's battle of Gagamila.  Also showing us the reaction from various characters as the speech played out was great. We see how totally dumbfounded they are and we know that they feel completely at Marco's mercy in this moment. Again this felt like a season finale moment where we would normally have to wait a year to see the ramifications. But here we only have to wait a week and I can't wait to see what happens next. Anyway like I said I was a big fan of the episode. Can't wait to see where things go next and with that I'll just say if you enjoyed this video please go ahead and hit that like button, hit the subscribe button and hit the bell icon. We'll be reviewing this show weekly so you'll definitely want to keep up. Also let me know in the comments what you thought of the episode and we'll keep the conversation going. With that thanks for watching and see you on the next one take.


How I'm peeling the garlic it it's I don't even know if I'm doing it right, right? Aldogog would know. Cheryl, what are you doing? But what I do I here I'll show you on the next one. Okay, I'll show you on the next one. You need a knife that's Handy like little knife, okay? Because sometimes the skin just sticks on it, right? But here what I do I grab the garlic from this end, right? And I give it twist like this and then Peel off, right? And as soon as I peel one side off Right you get in there What I do depending on how the garlic is peeling I cut off the chunk, right? And then try to pull the rest of the skin off of it Now this is only when I'm trying to keep the cloves whole otherwise I take these put them on the cutting board and I squish them with a with a fat knife with a cutting knife and Then it peels off super easy, right? So it really depends on I'm doing a garter correctly Aldogog. Thank you. Thank you. It just feels the right way to do, right?  I've seen people try that and it's I don't know It didn't work too well from what I saw