Diecast #328: Happy New Year!

By Shamus Posted Monday Jan 4, 2021

Filed under: Diecast 132 comments

Thank goodness 2020 is over. COVID-19 has vanished, everyone’s jobs went back to normal, and Republicans and Democrats are finally friends again. I’m glad we put all of that unpleasantness behind us. Please enjoy this video game podcast where we spend an unusual amount of time talking about pornography and movies for some reason?

Sorry for all the noisy children on Paul’s end. That’s actually my fault. We normally record in the evenings after his kids are in bed, but my sleep schedule forced us to reschedule this time. I don’t know if you’ve ever lived in a house with more than 4 children, but quiet is just not obtainable in the middle of the afternoon.



Hosts: Paul, Shamus. Episode edited by Issac.
Diecast328


Link (YouTube)

Show notes:
00:00 Happy New Year!

So the new year rolls around and I discover I’ve potentially been exposed to the T-Virus. It’s been 8 days since the potential exposure and still no symptoms, so the odds are in my favor now.

04:36 Mailbag: Where did Bob Case go?

This message came to my personal email instead of the Diecast, so I’ve withheld the name:

Shamus,

Where did Bob Case go? His articles series appear to have stopped abruptly.

Also, a couple of his videos are now gone, presumably due to copyright takedowns (Dragon Age 2 and the Shandification of Fallout). These should be in the Criterion Collection, but now I’m worried the copyright issues may never be resolved or the videos never re-uploaded, becoming lost forever to the sands of time.

08:27 Mailbag: Great Action Movies of the last 10 years?

Hi!

First of all, Happy New Year!

Second of all, I don’t really have any good questions (too busy playing CP’77 and analyzing it). But I’m actually curious and its probably as appropriate as any. I remembered you (Shamus) talking about John Wick and action movies in general long time ago. So what action movies of the last decade that you: a) like the most b) hate and c) consider underrated? Same set of questions goes to Paul.

Best regards, DeadlyDark

I omitted Marvel Movies from these lists because they dominated the conversation for the last 10 years. That conversation is played out and it’s more interesting to talk about all the other movies everyone skipped while we were busy watching the Avengers Punch Stuff Real Hard.

Favorites: Moneyball, Argo, Molly’s Game, The Founder, Logan Lucky, John Wick.

Hated: Self / Less (Wasted a magnificent premise and the time of Sir Ben Kingsley on a very stupid action movie.) Hobbit (Turned a brilliant piece of children’s literature into a big dumb loud incoherent cartoonish boring obnoxious disrespectful tedious chore.) John Carter (So bored.) Snowpiercer (Clumsy blunt allegory.) Good Day to Die Hard (Unworthy of the Die Hard legacy, dumb in every way the original was clever.)

Underrated / Should have been more popular: The Raid, Dredd, Blade Runner 2049.

35:10 Mailbag: Traffic Numbers

Dear Diecast

I suspect I am only the latest in a long line of people to tell you that I too am one of the nobodies who listened to the last episode. I am curious though, as to how much traffic actually changed for last week compared to episodes released at other times? And is there any other interesting seasonal variation in traffic you have noticed?

Keep up the great work, Henry Chadban

Short answer: ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

48:59 Mailbag: How to Search Steam?

Hello Diecast!

I remember Shamus complaining earlier about the difficulty of finding
good games on Steam by just browsing and searching, since the search
capabilities have not been great.

On December 10th, Steam introduced the early version of new Steam
browsing capabilities:
https://store.steampowered.com/news/app/593110/view/2904223191309544355

It allows for example searching by

– Themes (e.g. Choices Matter, Female Protagonist, Sci-Fi & Cyberpunk)

– Social & Players (e.g. Local & Party, Online Competitive, Singleplayer)

– Genre and subgenre (e.g. Strategy: Grand & 4X or Real-Time, Sports and
Racing: Combat Racing, Ball Sports)

– Special Sections (e.g. Free to Play, Controller Friendly)

When I’m writing this, Steam has 43,680 games with a release date, and
that is rising by maybe 10 or 20 per day. Do you think this new feature
is the correct approach by Steam to find gems in that mass of games?

If you were the King of Steam, how would you design the browsing and
searching experience?

Personally I decided to use the brute force approach and look at every
individual game separately, and either ignore it or add to my wishlist.
That works for me but is not something I would really recommend for most
people.

Trouble finding good games with search? Why not brute-force look at every game on Steam? from Steam

– Alpakka

 


From The Archives:
 

132 thoughts on “Diecast #328: Happy New Year!

  1. eaglewingz says:

    Happy New Year! Hope all stays well.

    “One meter away for 90 seconds.”
    Shamus, you left out the most important part. Masks or no masks?

    1. Shamus says:

      Like I said, this was a brief surprise meeting inside my home. I don’t normally wear a mask around the house.

      So no mask.

      1. tmtvl says:

        I thought the thing about masks was that instead of protecting the wearer from someone who may transmit the disease they are meant to protect others from the wearer who may transmit it. Something to do with moisture in your breath.

        1. Daimbert says:

          The theory was that the virus survived in the water droplets people expel when they breath and that was how the virus spread, and so the mask would stop that from happening. So, yes, the mask protected others but not necessarily you.
          They changed that idea to one where it was more the aerosols which the masks aren’t as good at stopping, and there is a theory of it being airborne which is without droplets or moisture at all which masks aren’t that effective at unless you have a really good one (medical type).

          Best bet is to don’t stand too close to people and don’t spend a lot of time in poorly ventilated places with others.

          1. Wolf says:

            I really liked the breakdown in this elpais article, where they model 3 scenarios with varying levels of safety measures. https://english.elpais.com/society/2020-10-28/a-room-a-bar-and-a-class-how-the-coronavirus-is-spread-through-the-air.html

            My takeaway was that aerosol buildup is the greatest factor (according to current models) and thus that anything you do in a badly ventilated space is dangerous, especially for the people visiting the room (say guests in your house) since the other person has stunk up the place over time.

        2. eaglewingz says:

          Exactly. If you enter a house where you don’t reside you should have the courtesy to wear a a mask.

          The outcome of this practice for a genuine Apocalypse-type situation gives me doubts about our long-term survival.

          1. Steve C says:

            Or not come over at all if someone in your household is sick.

            This was my go-to before the pandemic. If someone I was in contact was sick, I’d be really careful about incidental interactions. Just in case I was carrying something and did not know. Like giving fair warnings to people before entering their presence or calling ahead and let them decide for social gatherings. Not doing that now seems really really stupid. I worry about how many people the nephew did infect. Seems like a terrible decision on his part not to be extremely up front about that before entering.

            I have some friends who got sick last Christmas with Covid through their son. (Yes. In 2019. Before it was a thing.) They weren’t sick, but thankfully they cancelled attending the New Years Eve party we were all going to. They later got sick and stayed sick for 8 weeks. I’m very thankful for them and their consideration. It was just the right thing to do with a regular illness completely outside a pandemic. (Which it wasn’t yet.) If they had attended then it would have been THE first major infection outside of China. Statistically some of my friend group would be dead right now if they had made different choices.

            If you *might* be sick with anything at all ever, please please try not to spread it around and give the people around you warnings. It is just the nice and humane thing to do for your fellow humans.

  2. Canthros says:

    Gosh, Dredd was pretty fantastic. I managed to catch it in the theaters, but it was there and gone at the local multiplex, and I don’t recall there being any advertising to speak of, back when I was actually watching TV. (A lot of TV, actually, because I spent half that summer recovering from open heart surgery.)

    1. MerryWeathers says:

      It’s going to be nine years since it first came out in theaters and that makes me feel slightly old.

      1. Canthros says:

        I, too, enjoy these little reminders of the unceasing march of time and the approach of the great beyond.

    2. Echo Tango says:

      Such a great action movie! I rewatched that thing like…10 times already? So good! All of the guns! And punching! Especially noteworthy, is that it’s a fairly high-budget film, that gives the drug scenes a fair chunk of the budget. With all of the visual effects and slow-motion, it makes it really easy to imagine the mental state of the people in those scenes! I mean, there have been other films with drugs, but they usually focus on the psychotic / paranoid aspects of drugs (Trainspotting, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas) – this feels more like a…ballet? Really, what it reminds me most of, is the Shadowrun pen and paper handbooks, where they spend a few paragraphs on describing the things, and some appendices and tables just filled with all of these body-ruining thing! :D

      1. Chris says:

        I really like how the drugs scenes work out. The oversaturated colors, the sparkling of light in the water. It makes you understand why people stuck in a hellish grey apartment complex use it.

        1. Echo Tango says:

          Yes, so much so! It’s a very nice contrast between the colorful world they’re perceiving (because of the drugs), and the terrible conditions they’re trying to escape from! :)

      2. Canthros says:

        Officially, it had a budget of $45 million, which seems like a lot, but that seems to be more in line with a ‘mid-budget’ film from that year. I mean, on the high side, but not tremendously different from the budget for some romantic comedies from 2012. It *did* seem like the visual effects ate a lot of their budget, though. Like, they might have benefitted from putting a little more money into their sets, which looked a little fake, in places. (I haven’t seen it since it was in the theaters, so I mostly remember that some of the hallway stuff looked very flimsy. May or may not have been intentional, I suppose, but it looked kinda stagey, to me.)

        1. Echo Tango says:

          Yeah, the drug scenes and Karl Urban’s salary probably ate most of the money. Hopefully we can get some more spinoffs in this universe, even if they need a smaller budget. :)

  3. Joe says:

    I had a brief covid scare over the weekend. My mum passed through somewhere right before an outbreak was detected. But she came back clean. Please, guys, stay safe. Sure the fatality rate is low, but not non-existent. And even if it doesn’t kill you, it can mess you up for life.

    Okay, action movies. My favourite movie of all time is Mad Max Fury Road. It isn’t perfect. But it’s a hell of a ride. My favourite of the new Star Wars is Rogue One, though more the second half than the first. I generally agree with Shamus’ list, though I find the sequels to John Wick and the Raid just get carried away. Sometimes I want the scope to stay small, the fights to stay somewhat plausible. “Oh, the star has just been beaten half to death and lost two liters of blood. But don’t worry, he’s got another fight coming up in 30 seconds.”

    And yeah. Every sin Jackson made in LOTR, he did it bigger and flashier with less competence in the Hobbit movies. However, I don’t actually mind Tauriel. Here’s the thing. There’s this new character. We don’t know them. They could live, could die, could turn evil, whatever. She’s a blank slate who’s new and interesting. And while half of what she does is ridiculous, at least Evangeline Lilly tries her best.

    Now, adult content/filters. There’s a brothel on my street. Never seen anyone go in. And a couple of adult places not far away either, right around the corner from a primary school. I wish they brought the tone down, or at least the rent. Sadly they don’t. My feeling is that Oz is pretty warm to start with, then imported a whole lot of Europeans with their more tolerant attitude towards nudity.

    Here’s something odd about YouTube. I recently made a new account. My god, all the front page content is terrible. Reaction videos, church ceremonies, Minecraft, Among Us, Fortnite, ASMR, pop music… I’m teaching it what I like, but it’s a slow learner. Doesn’t seem to track what I watch like before. I switched from Win 7 to 10, and Adblock to Ublock. I wonder which one of those is responsible.

    1. Geebs says:

      I used to live above a brothel. Which, thinking about it now, was probably a lot more pleasant than living below a brothel.

      One of the employees was 50 if she was a day, and her act was to dress up as a schoolgirl. It made her look like Angus Young.

      1. Joe says:

        A brothel would probably be a pretty good neighbour. They don’t want trouble. Trouble gets them reported to the council and risks getting shut down. As long as the clients used the correct entrance.

        If I ever made an adult film, I would go with the theme of schoolgirls milfs, for sheer ridiculousness. I kind of want to find out if there is such a thing already, but I don’t actually want to search for it. Because I’m lazy.

        1. eaglewingz says:

          I kind of want to find out if there is such a thing already…

          Rule 34

        2. Chris says:

          I could see it work. The setup would be a group of dumb blondes so stupid they are still stuck in highschool. One day one of them overhears someone talking about trading sex for services, so she tells her friends about it and they decide to sleep with every teacher in the school so they can pass and finally graduate.

    2. Echo Tango says:

      Fury Road’s pretty damn good for action, but I liked the world-building of Thunderdome better…now I just want another Mad Max film. Too few of these things! :)

    3. Leipävelho says:

      https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/channel-blocker/nfkmalbckemmklibjddenhnofgnfcdfp

      Fortunatetly, there are extensions for blocking Youtube channels. I’ve spent probably a worrying amount of time thinking about how much I hate and dislike the recommendation algorithm.

  4. SidheKnight says:

    But, but.. I liked the Hobbit movies :'(

    Admittedly, they’re nowhere near as good as the LOTR movies, but that’s a pretty high bar.

    1. Mistwraithe says:

      You are not alone. The Hobbit would have been better as 2 movies, but I still found it entertaining.

  5. ElementalAlchemist says:

    Where did Bob Case go? His articles series appear to have stopped abruptly.

    So where did he go? I’m one of those non-listeners that reads the show notes weirdos. Might be useful if you could put a one line TL:DR of the answer after those listener emails for said weirdos Shamus. It might occasionally encourage us to listen.

    1. Soysauce says:

      TLDR (TLDL?): Hiatus, shamus doesn’t know more about it.

      1. ElementalAlchemist says:

        Cheers.

      2. MerryWeathers says:

        I suspect EA finally hired him as a consultant for the next Mass Effect game: “M4ss Effect V: You Can (Not) Redo” and that’s why he hasn’t posted since then.

    2. PowerGrout says:

      Me too – (having not made any backups myself) – I shudder to think his videos will simply be struck down and lost to time
      and I just don’t have the time action points for a podcast now or for the forseeable…

      1. PowerGrout says:

        edit: I made time. I kinda wish I hadn’t. Stay safe out there Bob – It sure was nice to get Guts and Geop back from their boat trips but you and that other fantastic dormant YouTube channel “Other Places” … just, the world isn’t the same without you.

  6. Henson says:

    Good to see I wasn’t the only one who wasn’t wowed by Snowpiercer. The movie certainly has style, but the story just falls to pieces if you think about how things could possibly work on this train. (I lost it when soldiers started shooting through the windows to kill people further up on the track. THERE’S A REASON YOUR TRAIN IS INSULATED FROM THE OUTSIDE, IDIOTS!).

    I’m of the opinion that allegory is really, really hard to make work, but is not at all impossible. Like, Animal Farm is my gold standard of how to do allegory right.

    1. John says:

      Just about everything that Shamus says about Snowpiercer is true. It absolutely is a movie about class warfare. It absolutely does not have a solid science-fiction underpinning. It’s exactly the kind of movie that I would normally hate. And yet, while I certainly don’t want to watch Snowpiercer ever again, I don’t hate it. In fact, I even admire it a little. The one thing that Shamus left out of his description of the film is that Snowpiercer is wonderfully, gloriously bonkers. The closer the film gets to the front of the train, the weirder and more surreal it gets. Snowpiercer doesn’t stick the landing–given the type of film it is, sticking the landing is almost certainly impossible anyway–but I find that I don’t care. Snowpiercer isn’t one of my favorite films. I can’t even honestly recommend it. But I’ll be darned if it didn’t win me over somewhat despite itself.

      1. Henson says:

        Oh god, that schoolteacher.

        Your comment is pretty much how I feel about The Council. That game is a bunch of interesting ideas, not executed particularly well, and then it goes into crazy town with its story. It’s not a very good game, it’s certainly not one of my favorites, and I absolutely recommend it. (if it’s on sale)

        1. John says:

          I think that the schoolteacher is the point at which I said to myself “Wait, what kind of movie is this anyway?” She’s not the first surreal thing in the movie–that’d be the point at which the rebels and the security goons stop brutally beating one another just long enough to wish each other a happy new year–but it’s the point at which it becomes very, very obvious that Snowpiercer is not the grim-n-gritty dystopian sci-fi story that it sort of looked like at the beginning.

      2. Echo Tango says:

        Snowpiercer would have worked better, if it had been more of a fantasy setting, rather than the pseudo-science that the movie ended up with. It’s sort of in the Uncanney Valley, but could have avoided it. Contrast it with Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow, where they just had a bit more of a filter on the visuals, and threw in some big mustaches and old-timey looking clothing on a few characters – that film is obviously fake, the way steampunk or swords-and-elves movies are, but it’s no longer distracting, because it’s easier to believe as a made-up world, rather than one that’s a crude imitation of reality. :)

      3. Chad Miller says:

        My thoughts on Snowpiercer, the movie, mirror yours pretty closely.

        Which is why I had an overall positive experience watching it but damned if I know why the TV show was greenlit.

    2. Syal says:

      “You’re the first to cross the entire train,” he says.

      Meanwhile the woman who takes children from the back of the train to the front of the train is just sitting there. So is the kid she took earlier.

      And in trying to look up that scene I discovered there’s a Snowpiercer TV series.

    3. Geebs says:

      If you were a one-percenter confined to a moving train which might crash into something at any moment, wouldn’t you go live in the carriage at the back?

  7. Daimbert says:

    When I’m writing this, Steam has 43,680 games with a release date, and that is rising by maybe 10 or 20 per day. Do you think this new feature is the correct approach by Steam to find gems in that mass of games?

    If you were the King of Steam, how would you design the browsing and searching experience?

    I’ve griped about it before about Amazon that browsing there is really, really annoying compared to browsing in a store. The reason is that in a store all I do is go up and down the aisles looking for things that stand out, but with so much it’s really, really hard to actually do that. It’s kind like having to dive through bargain bins all the time, every time, and ones that are massively, massively full with everything all haphazardly tossed in together. That’s not what I want when I’m looking to get something new but don’t know what I want yet.

    GOG’s model had, at least, worked for me in the past, where they had big sales of related games, because then you can scan that list and see what might be interesting. But then there are still going to be lots of games that I never come across because GOG doesn’t highlight it.

    1. Echo Tango says:

      People…browse on Amazon? I thought everyone just typed in the search-box to find exactly a few items, then immediately ran away to do other things. XD

      1. Daimbert says:

        I made the attempt once, and ranted about it on my blog because of how bad it is.

        Last year my Amazon browsing was to write down a few search terms (“Fantastic Four” in Books, for example) first and then search through those for things I liked, which is an inferior but kinda workable replacement for wandering into a store and browsing the shelves for things I wanted to get …

      2. Olivier FAURE says:

        Yeah, that’s the same reason I’m kind of surprised people are mad at Youtube for having a bad “recommendations” feature.

        Most of the time my experience is to type the name of a video I’m looking for, usually one I learned about through some other internet community (eg Snowpiercer just now), and I spend very little time looking for content on Youtube otherwise.

  8. John says:

    That’s an interesting view of movies you’ve got there, Paul. And here I thought I was picky about film. I watch very, very few movies, but that’s much more because I’m just not interested in most movies than because I think that most movies are objectionable in some way. Heck, I will sometimes even watch objectionable films. I mean, I watched Hero, and that movie’s not-at-all-subtextual message is that despotic, authoritarian government is a good thing. It’s got a lot of pretty, swirling colors and a couple of good fight scenes though. I’m not especially worried that watching it is going to, I don’t know, undermine my faith in democracy.

  9. tmtvl says:

    Steam Labs also has an experiment to let a machine learning algorithm recommend games to you, the Interactive Recommender. It’s worked pretty well for me and I’ve heard many people say they’ve had good experiences with it as well.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      My experiences with Steam algorithm’s suggestions are… not so great. It insists on serving me free-to-play games because I tend to maintain one or two at all times, but the thing is I’m investing my spare time into those and I don’t need more even if I put in a lot of hours! On the other hand some of my most favourite games are walking sims, but they tend to be short so my hours total under that tag are fairly short. It keeps giving me rogulikes but fails to realise that the ones I actually enjoy are “roguelites” that have some sort of persistent progression (stuff like Rogue Legacy or Hades). It keeps giving me all those hentai games because yes, I like me my adult interactive entertainment, but apparently the concept of gayness is entirely beyond it…

  10. MerryWeathers says:

    Blade Runner 2049 was a glorious experience to watch in theaters, not a lot of people were in the cinema and the ones that were there were asleep so there wasn’t much interruption essentially leaving me to enjoy the movie on the big screen all to myself.

    I’m also one of those people that found it better and more compelling than the first movie, which was very atmospheric and beautiful but failed to make me genuinely engaged in the plot.

    1. Geebs says:

      I underwent total story collapse in the first ten minutes of Blade Runner 2049, when the plot hook was introduced. After that it was a bit of a slog.

      1. Echo Tango says:

        The original movie was a lot better, IMO. Like, the new one had better visuals, but the characters were all paper-thin. :S

        1. DeadlyDark says:

          I’d argue, the original had better visuals. Sets were gorgeous

          1. Thomas says:

            The original has ‘suffered’ in that everyone and their dog has copied it. When I first saw Bladerunner, I’d already seen it and I didn’t get the fuss until I understood that Bladerunner is the _reason_ I’ve already seen it.

  11. Lino says:

    Happy New Year! Hope this one treats you well!

    Regarding The Raid, I was very surprised how much people were impressed by it. There are actually quite a lot of Chinese and Hong Kong martial arts movies like that. When I watched the Raid for the first time, it really reminded me of Ong Bak (even though Ong Bak is Thai). Don’t get me wrong, I loved seeing some Silat in a movie, but I don’t get why it made as big of a splash as it did…

    Oh, and I’m really sad about how the new Bladerunner bombed :( I hope the same doesn’t happened with Dune, because it’s by the same director, and it looks AMAZING.

    1. MerryWeathers says:

      Unfortunately the pandemic is forcing Dune to get simultaneously released on HBO Max which apparently lessens the chances of the movie getting a sequel that will cover the second half of the novel according to Dennis Villeneuve.

      1. Syal says:

        a sequel that will cover the second half of the novel

        Booooo. Do the whole story at once you milking slackers.

        1. BlueHorus says:

          What, like that gloriously bad David Lynch version?

          Seriously, I don’t think one movie could do the book justice.
          Not that they’re NOT milking it as well.

          1. Syal says:

            I don’t remember that much happening in the first book. It’s Avatar, plus a Chosen One plot. Should be fairly doable.

            Then they can move on to Messiah, which I found more interesting. (Of course Children runs into “how do we cast these characters?”)

    2. DeadlyDark says:

      Blade Runner movies are weird to me. It took me five viewings to appreciate the first movie. Initially, I was aghast on how they butchered the book I loved, and since it was a bad quality copy, I couldn’t appreciate the visuals. Subsequent viewings revealed both gorgeous visuals (the movie is stunning) and subtle nuances in the story. It’s not my favorite movie, but now I respect it and wouldn’t mind to watch it again.

      2049 is kinda the opposite. I saw in the theater and yeah, I enjoyed it, felt like a good follow-up. Second viewing made me think less of it. I think, the main problem (at least, to me) is that practically all dialogs are very pretentious and allegorical. That’s not how people talk. While in the original, most of the dialogues aren’t very complex, and quite relatable. Yes, the famous final Batty monologue isn’t like that, but that’s the point – it’s the character who just realized something profound and shared it with the viewer. It felt earned. While 2049 took this monologue and tried to apply to almost every exchange in the movie and it became quite tiring, tbh. Another problem, and this problem that applies to a lot of modern media in general, that it was visually cleaner than the original. Less trash, more glossiness, so to speak. It looks great on screen – the movie had a good cinematographer, but very different still.

      But. I only saw it twice, and I want to rewatch it again some time, and see how my opinion will shape.

      And yes, I’m very curious about Dune movies. I hope they’ll deliver.

  12. MerryWeathers says:

    The first two John Wick movies were pretty solid in my opinion and the world reminded me of Vampire: The Masquerade. It felt refreshing because the camera actually stayed put in the action and the choreography was nice.

    However, I get to the third movie and I felt a decline. The ending in particular was like Lionsgate saying straight to my face “This is going to be the next Fast and Furious! By the eight movie, John Wick will be in space and annihilating aliens!” which I don’t like at all and would have preferred the series stayed a concise trilogy with a beginning, middle, and end.

    1. methermeneus says:

      Plus one for seeing the similarities between John Wick and VtM! I thought the exact same thing. (Only seen the first one, though.)

  13. Lino says:

    Oh, if you like Everything Wrong With, definitely check out Pitch Meeting. It’s basically a kind-hearted version of Cinema Sins. His videos are usually 6-7 minutes long, and are really upbeat.

    1. eaglewingz says:

      Posts that recommend Pitch Meeting are tight !

      1. tmtvl says:

        Recommending Pitch Meeting is super easy, barely an inconvenience.

        1. Lino says:

          I’ve never been happier about getting my post ninja’d!

      2. Lino says:

        And making them is easy, barely an inconvenience!

        1. Shamus says:

          I worry about Ryan George, the guy who makes them. He must have horrible back problems, carrying the entire channel like that.

          1. BlueHorus says:

            Yeah yeah yeah!

          2. Ivellius says:

            Yeah, I’m going to need you to get all the way off his back about that one.

    2. Levi says:

      So, you have a YouTube recommendation for me?

  14. Parkhorse says:

    Snowpiercer is a side scrolling beat-em-up, as a movie. That makes it interesting, in the same way that Hardcore Henry or that one section of the Doom movie are interesting for being first person shooters, as movies. Doesn’t make any of them good, but trying something new? That’s something I support.

    I do like the claustrophobic setting of the first Raid, compared to The Raid 2, but I find myself rewatching scenes from The Raid 2 far more often. Hammer Girl, Bat Boy, and the karambit fight in the kitchen are all amazing.

    Going back and searching release dates, it turns out the Jeeja Yanin films, Chocolate and Raging Phoenix, both came out more than ten years ago. Regardless, both have some amazing fights and are very worth watching, if you haven’t seen them before (Chocolate being my pick over Raging Phoenix). I haven’t been as impressed with her more recent films.

  15. George says:

    Snowpiercer is a very heavy-handed marxist class-conflict allegory. It’s a fairy tale about a train that runs on a year-long loop through a deadly wasteland. the train is society

    Question for Paul:
    You mentioned you had religious objections to “hentai games”, which made me wonder: what do you think about the role of religion(s) in video games, as compared, for example, their role in literature and video? Strip away the propaganda and elements included for “realism”, what religious content/critique is uniquely suited for the interactive medium? You’ve covered Receiver I & II on the show before, and the developer has made it explicit that they were trying to ape the techniques and language used by religious cults and sects, and I was curious if you’d encountered anything else that engaged with belief & religion in any comparably intense or in-depth way; particularly when it comes to game mechanics.

    1. BlueHorus says:

      I’d like to know this too. Sadly, I bet it’s exactly the kind of thing that would cause flame wars and arguments, often without intending to.

      I know the rule is technically ‘No Politics’, but that usually goes hand-in-hand ‘No Religion’ as well…

      …THOUGH, we did have a mostly-civil discussion of The Last Jedi, so it’s possible?

      1. Syal says:

        Well I’ll take the risk.

        I can’t see videogames being good for religion (same with fiction books or movies). Once you remove religion from reality and start adding storybook outcomes you lose the value, and a biographical videogame seems like a terrible idea. (I still want to see a game about shooting demons off people in a spiritual warfare way. But I’m pretty sure that’s not orthodox. In any religion.)

        And of course JRPGs have been criticizing religion forever. There was the discussion recently about trying to name a JRPG where you don’t kill God or the Devil.

        1. Fizban says:

          I think the JRPG: kill god problem is more a symptom of scaling. In an rpg, you constantly get more powerful. One of the defining features of JRPGs is generally they’re long, that you keep going until you deal with the most powerful enemy that is the root of the problem, and that the stakes usually start at somewhere around a country and end with the entire world or all of existence.

          Any enemy which can threaten an entire world is pretty much by definition a god. Which, since a whole pantheon of opposition would invalidate the premise, is either unopposed (making them the only God), or opposed only by one weakened god who has to work through the heroes (making the foe the Devil).

          So yeah, every JRPG is about killing a god or devil in the end. Because JRPGs are about long journeys to defeat singular foes with enough power to threaten the world itself directly- gods or devils by definition. How much the power or friendship or individuality or visible trappings of religion or deliberate attempts to avoid the subject or whatever, don’t change the underlying point. You could make a game with JRPG mechanics with lower stakes, but I’ll bet no one would actually call it a JRPG then.

          1. Chad Miller says:

            You could make a game with JRPG mechanics with lower stakes, but I’ll bet no one would actually call it a JRPG then.

            Do people call Pokemon a JRPG?

            1. Fizban says:

              Probably, but it’s more a flagship entry of the monster trainer genre, or subgenre if you prefer. And yeah, I though of a partial counter example immediately too- Trails in the Sky/Cold Steel/etc doesn’t end with a fight against god either (at least not in the first two games).

              But it does have a fight against the super powerful technological remnants of the ancients, and I wouldn’t be surprised if whoever’s in control of the shadowy organizations was so hopped up on magic that they claimed godhood if/when you eventually get to fight them in one of the sequels.

              And Pokemon has had you capturing “gods,” in the unique divine spirit sense since the first games (the legendary birds), and the objectively most powerful monster of all (Mewtwo), and chasing rumors about how to find the originator of all monsters (Mew). And then more direct divine birds (Ho-oh and Lugia, the former having a whole temple built for it), and then more direct world creators (Kyogre and Groudon), and then you do in fact fight god as in the creators of time and space (Dialga and Palkia). The last of which is brought as the direct example of how even Pokemon does it, but really it was there since day one.

              As for the stakes- 1st gen has effectively country level stakes, as Team Rocket has cut off travel to the heart of the region and taken control of the company that makes pokeballs. 2nd gen is actually lower in stakes, since the rockets are just being annoying. But from 3rd gen on it’s apocalypse, world ending cult, other world ending cult, invasion of eldritch horrors, and I think the last one is aiming for environmental apocalypse? (I haven’t finished Sword/Shield).

              1. Retsam says:

                Yeah, I think it’s less that “Pokemon is low-stakes” as much as “people forget that Pokemon games actually have a plot because it’s generally not very good”.

              2. Syal says:

                Trails in the Sky/Cold Steel/etc doesn’t end with a fight against god either

                Sky 1, agreed, but I count Sky 2 as fighting a god; a human merging with the Incarnation of Space is as powerful as Grandia 2’s final boss, and Grandia 2 is all about killing God straight from the word ‘go’.

                1. Fizban says:

                  *Googles*

                  Man, I did not remember squat about that final boss. I know I finished the game, I can feel some memory stir about the fight and having to figure it out, I remember certain emotional highlights and game/story structure stuff I really liked, but indeed after a few years completely cold I’ve lost basically all plot details. Which means I can enjoy rediscovering things on a replay, I suppose, but which also means it’s a hell of a long road before I can even think of catching up (long enough they might get around to doing the two middle games? One can hope).

              3. Philadelphus says:

                and then you do in fact fight god as in the creators of time and space (Dialga and Palkia).

                What about Arceus and Giratina? Dialga and Palkia are definitely little-g gods, but not the most powerful in that generation.

                1. Fizban says:

                  Because I’m not entirely clear on Giratina’s domain (as cool as it is), and I can never remember much about Arceus other than its name. Was it the climactic legend from Black and White, or the post-endgame legend from Diamond and Pearl, or one of the probably dozens by now of event-only legends that keep one-upping each other?

                  (Well you said that generation so either post-endgame or event-only, neither of which I interact with, as event-only stuff is bs and nothing since Gold/Silver and Pokemon Stadium has had a decent postgame in my opinion).

          2. ivan says:

            Yakuza: Like a Dragon is that.

            1. Thomas says:

              Yakuza: Like a Dragon is proof that RPGs can be way less constrained with their subject choice.

      2. BlueHorus says:

        Well, since we’re having the discussion anyway…
        …Pillars of Eternity?

        It ties the examination of religion into the more general one of finding a meaning in life, but they’re closely linked…and it does it in a good way, by making up a religion that is distanced from real-world ones.

        Though none of that’s in the game mechanics, per se, and could all have been said via a book or film.

        Tyranny was a bit closer, wherein your reputation with people literally gave you abilities. Not that you were a god, but it looked to be building up to some revelation about the setting’s supreme Overlord-

        -until the game ended abruptly because development was cut. It’s kind of like someone wrote half a play, made some great sets, but then said ‘fuck it’ and just sent the actors on stage early, with half-finished scripts and no pants.

    2. Retsam says:

      Speaking as someone who’s also religious (and I think in the same general vein as Shamus and Paul)… I’ve almost never been impressed by the depiction of religion in a video game.

      Most games either lean into cultish or otherwise excessively negative depictions, or else the D&D style “I pray to this God that obviously and clearly exists since it gives me 3 on my rolls against animated skeletons”. Which are fine, but neither really feels like a realistic depiction of faith as experienced by most religious people (speaking from my, Western, Christian/Abrahamic-focused viewpoint).

      It’s not really surprising, religious views are relatively uncommon in the tech space, and just in general the bigger budget something is, the more “design by committee” and the less likely it is to carry any sort of consistent message, much less one about religion. Another part of this, is that religion tends to be a personal, thoughtful thing and I’m not sure it is particularly suited to an “actions-heavy” medium like games.

      As a whole, video games are good at portraying the trappings and structures of religion, but not the essence. Very little genuine faith, or characters wrestling with doubt, or characters taking difficult positions due to their moral views.

      JRPGs – and Japanese media in general[1] – tend to butcher its depictions of Western religion. But of course we butcher our Western depictions of Eastern religions, too, so I guess fair is fair. I do wish JRPGs would stop having religion/church/God be the villains for a bit for the sheer novelty if nothing else. FFX is still one of the better video game explorations of religion in my book, despite falling pretty squarely into this camp, though.

      [1] A few rare anime/manga have done a good job with it, in my book – Trigun and Vinland Saga come to mind – and again, I feel that may be “single author” vs. “designed by committee”.

      1. Syal says:

        “I pray to this God that obviously and clearly exists since it gives me 3 on my rolls against animated skeletons”

        That was something that stood out to me in Morrowind; you have the Almsivi, who are flesh and blood tangible people, and you have the Daedra, who are immortal forces that obviously exist, but the Imperials worship the Nine Divines, who don’t show up, and I thought that was a cool take. (…until the Nine Divines started showing up. That took away from it a bit.)

        As a whole, video games are good at portraying the trappings and structures of religion, but not the essence.

        I think videogames are directly opposed to a full expression of religion. The religions I’m familiar with feel like a major component is being comfortable when situations are outside of your control. But the mastery of systems and control over the setting is the core appeal of games; even heavily random games become games of probability min/maxing.

        To try to express that… …controllessness, I think a game would have to have a lot of variable quest endings that don’t have clear best choices, even for min/maxers. Not only does that sound hard to write, it sounds boring, or depressing, which is opposing the next religious pillar, hope.

        Best you can do for a religious game is make something that doesn’t contradict the religion.

      2. Thomas says:

        There’s one indie game I played once that stood out to me as actually conveying some of the feeling of being religious (having been religious myself), but that is literally all I remember about it. I don’t remember the name, I don’t remember the mechanics I just remember it did something I’ve never seen before or since.

        I don’t think people who have never been religious, or were perhaps forced to attend religious ceremonies without believing, tend have a good idea of the experience, even if they have a good grasp of the theology or the meta aspects. Even in movies and books it feels hollow a lot more often than it feels right – including when the writers are trying to be generous.

        1. Sleeping Dragon says:

          Right, I can’t give any titles because it’s not really my thing and I’ve never searched but I think if there’s room in video games for sincere explorations of religion and/or being religious it would be in indie games. Now that I think about it I would love to play something like What Remains of Edith Finch exploring a family or community of people with various approaches to spirituality.

    3. Paul Spooner says:

      I’d love to, but as Blue Horus mentioned, it’s “no religion, no politics” and that’s a little close to the line.
      As briefly as possible though, I think all games are religious in the same sense that all movies are advertisements.

  16. DeadlyDark says:

    :blushes at the end of the movie section: You both do good too, dudes

    Oh yeah, I hate Die Hard 5 with all my guts.

    My favorite Die Hard scene is in the second one. When terrorist made the O’Brien plane go down, McClain runs to the air strip trying to use torches to avert the tragedy, but he couldn’t. And after the plane crush, he was so defeated, he couldn’t save these people, he felt the loss of human life. It was so genuine.

    Now, Good day to die hard. John now is an asshole. He steals cars faster than Tommy Vercetti, brakes property etc. Its the antithesis of all things that I love about McClain as a character. Even in Die Hard 4.0 he wasn’t an asshole. Jaded? Yes. But he still cared and wanted to help the hacker and other people. God, Die Hard 5 makes me mad. What a travesty

    1. BlueHorus says:

      Yeah, I checked out of the Die Hard franchise after the fourth one. I thought ‘Ah, man, I know where THIS is going…’
      In the first film, John McClain was a plucky, vulnerable hero who got hurt, made mistakes, and prevailed through luck as much as skill. But as the sequels dragged on he got more powerful, less vulnerable, and more (UGH) badass. I mean, in 4 he destroys a helicopter by driving a car into it – and then coolly says “Well, I ran out of bullets” when another character is given the line of breathlessly pointing it out.

      I think it’s just something that happens to action movie stars over time; they get carried away by their own mystique and can’t stand to be anything other than perfect.
      Every movie I’ve seen Bruce Willis in now, he’s the same character: an untouchable, stone-faced badass who effortlessly wins fights and gets ‘awesome’ lines.

      (See also, Vin Diesel, Stephen Segal, etc)

      1. DeadlyDark says:

        I have little problem with him becoming more and more badass, I played videogames, I’m sure he got a lot of skillpoints to spend from Nakatomi plaza. But to be more serious, I get the desire to top past setpieces. I may not like this progression for every movie series, but I get. It’s a human fault, so I’m forgiving of this.

        What I hate the most, is that they (or Bruce himself) decided to make him heartless bastard lacking any kind of empathy, and thus killing the emotional core the character, so to speak.

        And it isn’t the case with Rambo 5 (the movie has script problems, but the character still the same) or even Death Wish 5.

        Speaking of long-lasting movie series with the same character. I find it quite interesting (and probably), that it took four movies for Tom Cruise to define Ethan Hunt in Mission Impossible movies. First three movies he was portrayed quite different, while in other three he finally felt consistent. Oh. Speaking of great action movies of this decade – any of the last three Mission Impossible movies deserve to be mentioned.

        1. Grimwear says:

          The Mission Impossible movies are great. The fact that Tom Cruise consistently gets beat beyond all comprehension is amazing. I’ve been listening to the James Bond rewatch podcast by LRR and what I discovered is that once they got to the Craig Bond films I’d forgotten everything. It was just so…bland and unremarkable. At the same time there are so many moments in MI that are great. Like Tom Cruise smashing his face while climbing a building, Tom Cruise driving a car off a car park and crashing, Tom Cruise drowning in an underwater turbine vault thing, Tom Cruise hanging on to a plane, Tom Cruise falling off a helicopter, and of course Henry Cavill reloading his shotgun arms. It seems so weird to me that MI is now a better spy series than James Bond.

          1. DeadlyDark says:

            Great stunts were something that James Bond was consistently good. James Bond hanging on the plane (in Octopussy), James Bond skydiving without the chute (Moonraker), James Bond jumping on alligators (Live and Let Die), James Bond skies between a bobsled and a bike (For Your Eyes Only, probably my favorite stunt in the series), water-skiing with bare feet (License to Kill), and many, many more. Up until Casino Royale (that parkour chase, anyone?). But last three movies, yeah. Not a lot of memorable scenes in action department, and quality of scripts is quite inconsistent (Skyfall is a better one, but QoS and Spectre…).

            So, I’m really glad that Tom Cruise made M:I movies the way he does them. He made a worthy substitutes for older Bond movies, and I’m happy we have those

            Tbqh, I have little hype for No Time to Release

            1. Grog says:

              How about the car flipping over the river? I think it was Man with the Golden Gun perhaps. Of course they ruined it with that damn slide whistle.

              For all that a lot of Bond films are easily-forgotten and (honestly?) pretty bad, man they have some memorable stunts.

  17. Dotec says:

    We live in a train.

    1. tmtvl says:

      I thought we all live in a yellow submarine.

      1. Lino says:

        Really? I could have sworn that we’re Livin’ on the Edge…

        1. Daimbert says:

          We’re going off the rails on a crazy train …

          1. tmtvl says:

            I might not know where we’re living but I do believe we’re Living After Midnight.

    2. Nimrandir says:

      We live in a train.

      Is it a runaway train? Is it ever going back?

      1. Sleeping Dragon says:

        Might be this one. (YouTube link safe for work, though you may get worried glances)

        1. Nimrandir says:

          I was actually thinking of this one, but your suggestion is no less valid.

  18. Steve C says:

    I had never heard of “Self / Less” before. OMG! It sounds like Bryan’s Brain! That is the stupid movie pitch by Karl Pilkington. That’s hilarious. Someone tell me it’s Bryan’s Brain… wait… no no no… RYAN’s Brain.
    BTW Ryan Reynolds is 44. He just wears the skins of 30 year olds.

  19. methermeneus says:

    Shamus, if you like brutal martial arts movies where the characters get beat up in less clean ways than Hong Kong kung fu movies, you might like some Thai martial arts action movies. I particularly recommend anything directed or choreographed by (or starring) Tony Jaa, like Tom Yum Goong or Ong Bak. I’d also recommend the one-off Chocolate (aka Zen, Warrior Within). It has a bad reputation because of the autistic main character fighting another autistic character late in the film, but if you actually pay attention to the plot it’s not gratuitous, but more a mirror showing how Zen’s life isn’t ruled by her disability like the other character. Also, it’d be worth it even so to see Yanin Vismistananda doing fight choreography modeled on Bruce Lee, Jackie Chan, and Tony Jaa.

  20. Gargamel Le Noir says:

    So Paul, I’m kind of mystified by your point about movies. I guess movies tend to convey opinions and messages, but why movies more than tv shows or video games or books? What makes that format worse than others?

    About the old man in a young body thing I strongly recommend you guys check out the excellent show Travelers. Many people’s favorite character is exactly that, and is played like you were hoping for. And the actor’s fantastic, it’s really an old man in a (teenage in the show, late twenties IRL) body.

    1. Echo Tango says:

      Games can at least be relatively pure “mechanics” without the need for story, characters, etc. Since having some kind of “message” is usually easier to do with those things, than with the mechanics themselves, it seems likely that there’s more movies that have a message[1], than games that have a message. :)

      [1] Or music with a message, or TV shows, etc.

      1. Gargamel Le Noir says:

        Obviously I didn’t mean purely abstract games like tetris, but even meathead broshooters like Call of Duty carry strong political implications, way more than a LOT of movies.

    2. Paul Spooner says:

      TV shows are in the same category as movies. Books demand a lot more imagination. Video games are (nominally) interactive, so they demand initiative. But yes, they are all meme-vectors. I didn’t say the advertisement aspect was bad though. I said that the memes they are advertising for are almost all ones that I’ve already consciously rejected.

  21. Dragmire says:

    One of the sex toy stores in my city isn’t next to a Dairy Queen, it’s next to a McDonald’s.

    1. Shamus says:

      I’m Lovin’ it!

    2. Steve C says:

      Regarding seedy porn stores etc, there is an alternate narrative to what was discussed on the Diecast. It could be that people just did not care as much as you guys? Like I remember seedy back street video stores etc in the 80s and 90s. The type with paper over the windows and generally looking run down and ashamed of themselves. I haven’t seen those type of stores in forever. Anywhere.

      The big difference on respectability was money.

      Instead it is up-market sex shops, lingerie and drug/drug paraphernalia stores. They went pricey and proud rather than shady and hidden. I can think of one bong shop that looks bright and airy next to a toy store in a city near me on the main street. Or a Victoria Secret in the mall. Just normal stores like any other. Nobody really cares about these sorts of things anymore. Well not for 20 years or so. At least around me. Every area is different of course. But are you sure you are representative of popular sentiment near you? Does the general awkwardness that you perceive *really* exist? I’m genuinely curious. I could see that easily going either way.

      1. Dragmire says:

        Not sure if you think I feel negatively about the adult toy store. I know about it because I’ve shopped there. Very clean and the staff were nice. Still, it’s directly next to a McDonald’s which I found funny just because they mentioned a neighboring Dairy Queen as an example.

        1. Steve C says:

          My comment was actually to Shamus and Paul. I should have been clearer.

  22. Steve C says:

    In regards to your site metrics, do you buy one month a year in order to do analysis? (Assuming that data exists for past months you did not subscribe.)

    Also regarding kids and noise, have you tried NVIDIA RTX Voice? I’m pretty sure it is free software. Here is a sample of what it can do: https://youtu.be/uWUHkCgslNE?t=110

  23. Grimwear says:

    In regards to sex shops I remember reading a story on one of the notalwaysright sites…notalwaysworking? Anyway it was about a guy who worked for some Japanese company, maybe Sony or Nintendo? And he got flown in to Japan for some work purpose and there was also a lady who flew in from France. Anyway, I guess the lady from France was enthralled by all the open sex stuff in Japan and bought a bunch of stuff for souvenirs since she thought it was hilarious. She ended up showing everyone at their meeting and according to the person who wrote the story, the Japanese businessmen were extremely uncomfortable. It ended on a down note with the writer stating he never saw the French woman again (I hope that she just got removed from trips to Japan and didn’t get outright fired).

    Personally growing up my father took me to a hobby store where we picked up a model airplane and it was right next to an adult store. All blocked windows and everything. Never went in though it’s still there whereas the hobby store shut down. I went into an adult store once with my first girlfriend and it was just an awkward experience. Thank god that if I ever do need anything I can just buy it online with no muss or fuss and absolutely 0 interaction with anyone.

    1. Lino says:

      I think in this story, context was the most important thing – the fact that she shared that information in the workplace. Wt the risk of sounding reductionist, Japanese people take work very seriously, and really frown upon people who don’t.

      1. Grimwear says:

        I agree 100%. I’ll be honest it’s been years since I read the story so I’m not sure if she showed it during the meeting or while they were on break. I just found it interesting how in one way Japan is super open about everything but on the other incredibly conservative and judgemental.

        I’m a big fan of Chris Broad’s “Abroad in Japan” youtube channel and he’s made mention of where Japanese people are adamant in not saying their true feelings in order to maintain a pleasant climate.

        1. Sleeping Dragon says:

          Not an expert but I think this is likely due to a strong division into “private”, “public” and “professional” spheres. The idea being that the sexy stuff should be available but should be kept private.

  24. Zeta Kai says:

    SFW porn edits are already a thing: https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/work-safe-porn

    You’re welcome.

  25. Philadelphus says:

    Dunno if it’s been commented on already, but I like the new header image. Great composition with the soft focus.

    1. Lino says:

      It’s probably from one of the stock photo sites Shamus uses. There are actually a lot of royalty-free stock photos that look very professional. But I, too, am always surprised how Shamus seems to find such amazing images of dice.

      On the other hand, maybe he was the one who took that photo? The table definitely looks like the one he’s shown in photos. But then again, he’s never talked about how he likes photography, nor that he has a high quality camera (because at the very least, you need to have a photographer’s eye to compose a photo like that)…

      Whatever the case, I also really like the new header image :)

      1. Shamus says:

        For the record: Issac took that picture. He’s gotten into photography this year, particularly macro stuff.

        1. Lino says:

          That’s so cool! He’s definitely got a talent for it.

    2. Dennis says:

      Yeah, took me a minute to notice. Did it change for 2020 also? I just assumed it was a pair of 20s b/c Diecast.

      EDIT: Just went through the archive. Guess I didn’t notice it changing from 2019-2020 because it was still mostly the same color, and I wasn’t playing it on Youtube back then.

  26. Lars says:

    Hey Paul, the Ignore button in Steam has a drop down list, where you can select if you ignore the game because you are not interested, or ignore it because you own it on a different platform.
    Doing the later would probably help the Steam alfgorythm not to hide things from you that would definitly interest you.

    1. Sleeping Dragon says:

      Thanks! Don’t know about Paul but I had no idea. Last time I used ignore was years ago and that definitely wasn’t a thing then and I was always worried about teaching it the wrong lessons but with so many platforms nowadays it has been suggesting a lot of games I own elsewhere.

  27. Alpakka says:

    Thanks for including my question =) You could pronounce my nickname like alpaca (the animal), that’s what it means in Finnish. The conversation certainly took an interesting turn, I had fun listening to it.

    One thing to note about ignoring games on Steam: Next to the Ignore button there is a small arrow, where you can select “Ignore This (Default)”, or “Played on Another Platform: Hide from store. Can be used to generate recommendations.”

    If you select the latter one for games you e.g. have bought on GoG, then Steam shouldn’t get confused and think you don’t like that style of game. Although if you have already ignored a lot of them, it would be annoying to try to find all of them and select the other type of ignore for each of them separately.

    For suddenly seeing a lot of the adult content after taking filters off: As you discussed, it could be partly because earlier all that was hidden. Often Steam mentions “this game is in your recommendations queue because it was popular”. So suddenly you have all these popular games available for the queue, and Steam thinks “wow, how did I not show these to you before, let’s fix this”.

    I suspect you would get a similar effect if you had for example First Person Shooters hidden from Steam for a few years, did a lot of browsing and ignoring, and then suddenly marked that FPS games should be visible. You would suddenly see a lot of them since they are popular and none of them have been shown to you before.

    Although I would expect a big part of it is that those games really are quite popular on Steam =)

  28. Rick says:

    Similar to you wanting your “finger on the pulse”, I resisted adblockers on my “work” computers for the longest time because I felt I needed to see the internet “as-is” in that context.

    Eventually got sick of it though and installed an adblocker on there.

  29. Gordon says:

    So here in the UK I turned off the filters on steam and went to top sellers and I don’t see any Hentai or other wise adult stuff.
    I wonder if there is still a level of personalization or if this is somehow another one of those “only in America” things like spam calls.

    1. Shamus says:

      The top sellers as shown to me right now:

      1) Yaga
      2) 6 Seasons and a Game
      3) Blacksmith of the Sand Kingdom
      4) NERTS! Online
      5) OMORI
      6) VROid Studio
      7) Ratropolis
      8) Futa Fix Dick Dine N Dash
      9) Calico
      10) Spellbreak

      #8 is currently the only one flagged NSFW.

      I wonder how much this list varies by country?

      1. Wolf says:

        Reporting from Germany:

        1) Rust
        2) Raft
        3) Cyberpunk 2077
        4) Need for Speed Heat
        5) Phasmophobia
        6) Counter-Strike: Global Offensive – Operation Br
        7) Mafia Trilogy
        8) Among Us
        9) Satisfactory <3
        10) The Forest

        I am surprised by the amount of actual full price games in that list. Recently looker over my girlfriends shoulder when she browsed top sellers and there was just loads of sub 5$ stuff, wich made total sense to me.

  30. MerkinTeal says:

    In case anyone still checks the comments for this old episode (just finished it recently), regarding the Bob Case / MrBtongue videos being taken down (specifically the Shandification and Dragon Age 2 ones), they aren’t actually completely taken down, but rather blocked by the NBA (!) in certain countries. So, those of you with VPNs, you can still watch and / or download them (I’d suggest the latter before the PGA claims them next :P ). Japan worked for me, and I believe I now have all of his videos archived, 36 in total.

    Shamus – haven’t posted on your site before, guess I’m part of the silent majority (formerly). Anywho, thanks for all the great content over the years, consistently very refreshing takes on things, really appreciate it! And if you don’t have a VPN (or the trick above doesn’t work) and you want the inaccessible videos, let me know and I can upload them somewhere, my name/contact is the same as on your patreon.

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