GWJ Conference Call Episode 510

Inside, Raw Data, Videoball, Necropolis, Adr1ft, Socioeconomic Status and Gaming, Your Emails and More!

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This week Shaw, Julian, Karla, Allen and Amanda talk socioeconomic status and how it intersects with gaming.

To contact us, email [email protected]! Send us your thoughts on the show, pressing issues you want to talk about or whatever else is on your mind.

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Show credits

Music credits: 

Covered in Oil - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 39:46

Golden Hour - Broke for Free - http://brokeforfree.com/ - 1:12:40

Comments

Still going to keep championing for Necropolis, so I made a Quick Look for it here.
First time making a ...video thing, be gentle.

00:03:20 Inside
00:09:30 Videoball
00:15:53 Necropolis
00:29:30 Raw Data
00:36:46 Adr1ft
00:39:46 Socioeconomic Status and Gaming
01:12:40 Your Emails

Lack of money is at the root of many of the trends in gaming culture. Piracy may well have played a large part in the PS2's success. Making it the platform where cash strapped gamers could develop expansive games libraries. Games with Gold and PS+ are really just managed versions of that earlier piracy, allowing gamers access to some games, even if they can't afford them, and aiding the success of the platform concerned in the process.

Not having enough money to fuel your hobby is awful but sometimes having more than enough money to buy everything you want, when you want it, can dull your appreciation of what you have.

Here is the UK there used to be two ways to buy Marvel and DC comics. The first was at the local newsagents where you were at the mercy of what the newsagent got in and what was left on the shelf after they had been picked over. It was typical to have issues 23, 25,29 and 30 of the X-Men and have no realistic hope of getting your hands on those missing issues (possibly the origin of my enjoyment of out of order or disjointed stories.) The other way to get issues was to go to a 'comic shop*.' Such a rare beast didn't exist in the North of England. The only known examples were based in London: 'Forbidden Planet' and 'Dark They Were and Golden Eyed.'

We would get down to those shops on art department field trips to visit the art galleries. It was amazing to have access to all the issues you might have missed as well as imported issues ahead of what you had read (for a premium price.) I would scrape together as much money as I could to take on those trips and it would maybe buy me ten or a dozen issues. I'd spend ages in the shop mulling over which holes to fill in my collection and which new issues I could afford.

After leaving college I landed a job in London and had enough money to buy any comic I wanted. All I had to do was gather everything up and hand over the money required so I could take it all away with me. From that point on a lot of the pleasure and excitement went out of comics for me. It's possible that my interest was waning anyway but there was something about being restricted in what you could access and always having issues out there that you couldn't afford that kept the hobby fresh.

*I remember asking a newsagent in Brisbane Australia if he knew of any comic shops in the area as I purchased a few DC issues to read on my travels. With amazement in his voice he asked, "They have shops that just sell comics!?" It was at that point in the conversation that I concluded, he wasn't going to know of any comic shops in the local area.

I really like the topic this week! Still finishing the episode up.

Amoebic has sold me on Necropolis with that video! I'm leaving the country for a month in Scotland soon, but I'm going to check it out when I get back, especially if we've still got community members playing it when I get back.

Speaking of VR, in a social mmo space, check out a game in the works for VR, MetaWorld:
http://uploadvr.com/metaworld-social...

Every once in a while we have a CC episode that reminds me that Rabbit and I are roughly the same age. So many of the experiences he mentioned sounded familiar to me.

Related to that, I always get a laugh when people talk about owning an "Atari 2600". If you owned one at the time, you simply owned an "Atari". The addition of "2600" was a retcon that they did when the Atari 5200 was released.

I guess I would consider my family lower-middle-class when I grew up. My parents were divorced and neither went to college. My mom spent way too much money on us (I realize now), so we had our cheap Sears-branded knockoff of the Atari and a fair number of games. We didn't have a lot of friends, so going to other houses was not usually an option.

My current financial situation is a bit better than when I was growing up. My kids don't realize how fortunate they are. My wife and I have both tried to explain to them that the only reason we can afford to buy whatever games they want to enjoy is that we worked hard in school, and in college, and got decent jobs. I don't think they'll understand that lesson unless/until they are in the position where they have to make some of the spending choices that were mentioned in the show.

Like Certis, for a while I mentally calculated game prices in terms of arcade quarters and couldn't believe that the game manufacturers were actually willing to let us save so much money by paying a flat price and playing the games at home.

Edit: When I posted before I had not yet heard the last 20 minutes or so of the CC. Julian mentioned having the Radio Shack Electronic TV Scoreboard, which was of course the first "gaming system" I had ever owned (beyond hand-held games).
IMAGE(http://i52.photobucket.com/albums/g20/Kelly-Hrdina/Misc/tvscoreboard.jpg)

It took me a long time to work out what I liked in terms hobbies. All my friends in school were into music and Football. I made valiant attempts to get into both but I never found those activities enjoyable enough to keep pursuing them with any real enthusiasm. At the same time I failed to pick up on clues that suggested I might really enjoy video games.

I was always the one, out of my roving band of mates, who would suggest we go and play on the asteroids machine or would seek out the space invader machine on holiday and return to it when opportunities presented themselves. I had great memories of an evening playing a ninja game built into a glass topped table in some distant pub and of other occasions where my life intersected with arcade cabinets featuring spaceships flying down narrow corridors or gorillas throwing barrels.

It wasn't until after college that I became fully aware of games consoles. They looked amazing as did the games people played on them but, perhaps because no one I knew was into them, I never ventured any further. The game that finally propelled me into the world of video games was Lemmings or, more accurately, a Lemmings demo. One level of the demo was fairly easy. The other, probably from late in the game, was really tough. You had to guide the suicidal stream of lemmings through hanging chains and short metal platforms. I'd get them past one problem area only to have the lemmings cascade to their deaths moments later from another spot. I'd be thinking about that level while I was at work and would try out solutions in my head. Finally, several evenings later, after being stuck on many points of that tortuous journey I got all my lemmings safely through the level. The pleasure of the puzzle solving process and the deep satisfaction finding the solution cemented my love of games.

A few weekends later I ventured into the strange Aladdin's cave that was a video game shop and looked at the shelves crowded with exotically titled boxes. I had no idea where to start in terms of buying anything. I'd come in search of a Lemmings game and found one. It was a lot cheaper than other games in the shop so I decided to buy a second game to go with it. I looked at several other options and, eventually, picked up a blue edged box with a red haired pirate wearing a white shirt running towards the camera. That game was also fairly cheap. I liked the box art and the name, 'The secret of Monkey Island,' my computer could just about cope with the system specs and there were several very appreciative box quotes on the back. Happy with my finds I took both of the strangely light boxes to the cash register.

I always thought I had a second-rate gaming childhood because we never owned any console. We got a Commodore 64 pretty early on (it still used cassette tapes at first). My dad bought it mostly for himself at first, but I used it far more often. He worked at a big manufacturing plant with a lot of engineers, so once we upgraded to the 5.25" floppy drive, almost all of our games were copies - but we had quite a few. Then he got a PC in the 386 days, and the Commodore (128 by then) became mine - but I still played whatever PC games he (also copied) got from work. The only games I recall playing in college were things like Madden '95 and NHL '97 on my roommate's Sega Genesis, and a couple of arcade games like Terminator 2 at the college's pool room. It wasn't until after college that I got a good job where I could afford to buy a new PC and started playing games in earnest again - until I got divorced and couldn't afford to maintain the upgrades, so I switched to being a console gamer in 2007 with the PS3. Now, even though I can afford the gaming PC upgrade cycle, I just can't be bothered, so all of my gaming is on the PS4.

My parents, god bless em, were HUGE fans of video games. Before I was born, they had the Magnavox Odyssey, which unfortunately broke before I ever had a chance to get my baby hands on it.

Depending on how you want to define "video game", my first could be either a Speak & Spell or the Mattel Classic Football. I remember having both but can't remember which came first, so they're tied for first. But they didn't have "Video" just blinking lights or an LCD screen.

The first "real" video game I played was my parents Coleco Telstar Colortron which was basically a crappy Pong clone with a few variants baked in. I remember being scolded for pulling out the TV/Computer switch box with the two prongs that screwed in behind the TV.
IMAGE(https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/5/55/Coleco-Telstar-Colortron.jpg)

Spoiler:

I also learned this nice little tip - for classic consoles (Atari, NES, SNES, Sega Master System, Genesis) that used expensive RF Adapters that would eventually wear out or stop working, you could use the "TV/Computer" adapter and a yellow RCA cable as a cheap replacement. Simply plug one end of the RCA cable into the console and the other end into the RF Adaptor. On newer TVs with Coax instead of antennas, just add a 300/75 F Adaptor.
IMAGE(http://www.bestronusa.com/images_products/TV-311.jpg)
IMAGE(http://s3.showmecables.com/images/catalog/product/High-Performace-Triple-RCA-Patch-Cable-25-135-1.jpg)
IMAGE(https://www.summitsource.com/Assets/ProductImages/CO320P.jpg)

Then, worst case scenario, when the cable started to fail you could either switch which color on the RCA cable you were using, or replace it at the 99 cent store.

I also remember the night my dad brought home our Atari VCS (later called the Atari 2600). Apparently my mom had fallen in love with the Space Invaders arcade game, so my dad went out and bought it for her. Playing Atari was always a family thing, reserved for the hour or so "After Dinner/Before Bedtime." We'd pass the controllers back and forth, trying to beat each other's high scores in games like Bowling or Breakout.

Has anyone tried going to their public library (if they have one nearby) to see what games they have available? I can only speak for my state, but here in NJ most public libraries have at least a small collection of games that card holders can check out, just like a book.

We didn't have much money when I was growing up. It wasn't until I was in high school that we started having Christmases that didn't involve re-wrapping gifts from previous years just to have something to open.

My parents spent my college fund on an Atari 2600 because I had a lazy eye and the doctor prescribed it. It worked, and that got me started in gaming. I played that Atari until 1991, at which point my parents had a bit of a windfall and got me an NES.

At that point I was buying my own games. I didn't tend to rent, mainly because I was afraid that I would really like something and be unable to buy it. Fortunately, the SNES came out that year so all the NES tapes were cheap.

The first system I bought myself was a Sega Game Gear. I saved my allowance for a year to get the base system and Mortal Kombat. It was a disappointment in retrospect, but at the time I had a lot of fun with it.

Now that I'm older and employed, I still don't have a lot of disposable income after expenses. I allow myself ten bucks per week for fun stuff like games, and I stay pretty disciplined about not spending it. Steam Sales and Humble Bundles and trading discs in at GameStop are my means of gaming. It's rare that I play the new hotness, but I don't feel like I miss much. It's easy to not be part of the conversation when nobody likes talking about the kinds of games you like anyway.

I guess I never really changed my habits. I'm still gaming on older games for the most part, with occasional forays into the latest and greatest if budget allows.

The grocery store near my house as a kid used to rent games. My friends and I played through the original NES Final Fantasy in a week, as soon as it came out. We all chipped in for the dollar a day rental fee, which beat each of us paying $50 retail.

Nowadays, Redbox kiosks also rent games. The nearest one to me, oddly enough, is at the grocery store.

ps. GameFly is still a thing, too.

Hey Rabbit, don't feel bad, the PONG cocktail cabinet is also my first memory of playing a video game. It was 1975, I was 14 and it was at a nearby Shakey's Pizza parlor in Lake Grove, Oregon (near Portland).

Did I hear talk of an INSIDE spoiler section? I would love to hear this.

doubtingthomas396 wrote:

At that point I was buying my own games. I didn't tend to rent, mainly because I was afraid that I would really like something and be unable to buy it. Fortunately, the SNES came out that year so all the NES tapes were cheap.

My mom used to always refer to our Atari cartridges as "tapes". I think the closest analogy should could imagine when she saw one was that it looked like a small 8-track tape.

Papageno wrote:

Hey Rabbit, don't feel bad, the PONG cocktail cabinet is also my first memory of playing a video game. It was 1975, I was 14 and it was at a nearby Shakey's Pizza parlor in Lake Grove, Oregon (near Portland).

After my parents separated (late 70's), my dad moved down to Delaware and we would sometimes go to Shakey's. I don't remember playing any games there, but they did have a big projection TV that I thought was pretty cool at the time. Pizza wasn't bad either.

I think the only things in Delaware that I remember fondly are Shakey's and my step-sister's friend who lived up the street.

tV scoreboard! Thank you! And pong lovers. I still feel ancient but marginally less alone!

rabbit wrote:

tV scoreboard! Thank you! And pong lovers. I still feel ancient but marginally less alone!

It's the least I could do for someone who sings the Rocket League Song on the CC.

I can't say that I appreciate games more now that I'm poor. Maybe I'm just a bad person. If something is unfun, I'll go back to something older or something free that I love. Part of it probably is that I still have a huge Steam backlog from back when I had money and burnt it on games, plus humble bundles, plus the awesome generosity of gifts from friends and goodjers

I'm having a hard time with out a computer (just broke, waiting for a lucky break or enough time for me to save for a new one). Still nothing compared to the homeless woman living on cafe power and WiFi. I could still break out a DS or the PS2 if I really wanted to, but I'm not sure I have anything that old I want to play that bad.

Also, it's one thing to watch 'let's plays' of rollercoaster narrative games, but I think it would leave me feeling even more without for many of the games I like where half the fun is your crafting and play style. Things like choosing and building your own character in an RPG or your own team strategy in something multiplayer.

Also, video is something that chews through data quota like a mofo, when multiplayer data plus voice chat doesn't use nearly as much. Last time I checked, most twitch streams don't even give you the option to switch to a lower resolution.

I thought Mr. Murdock's point about Twitch and Let's Plays was really interesting -- I love hearing about his kids' experiences with gaming, and I thought it was a really fascinating angle to the discussion.

Two points related to SES and gaming:

1. To echo padriec's point, supra: public libraries! That's how people "rent" games nowadays. A lot of the libraries near me even have AAA titles for check out.

But going even beyond the rental thing, people just aren't aware of public libraries, generally. The comic mentioned by Ms. Andrich really stood out to me because the homeless gamer "had an old laptop and used wifi in cafes." That's a very particular hypothesis as to how a homeless person would connect to the Internet: i.e., just like upper-middle-class people, but with an older computer and without a home. Homeless people use library internet.

You can game at the library, too -- they probably have some public use computers that maybe can't play Witcher with hair mods, but will sure as heck be filled with people (often kids) playing free-to-play browser games. Children's and young adult sections will often have some games on the computers, like Minecraft.

2. I've done some research on technology and Internet use by SES, and low-SES populations connect to the Internet solely through their smartphones at much higher rates than higher-SES pops. If you want to reach low-SES populations with any kind of Internet-based intervention, it's going to have to be an app. I imagine that there's a huge amount of gaming going on in low-SES populations strictly on mobile devices.

Liberace

Liberace wrote:

I've done some research on technology and Internet use by SES, and low-SES populations connect to the Internet solely through their smartphones at much higher rates than higher-SES pops. If you want to reach low-SES populations with any kind of Internet-based intervention, it's going to have to be an app. I imagine that there's a huge amount of gaming going on in low-SES populations strictly on mobile devices.

Bingo. It's why I've been bemoaning how frustrating it is that my steam library is full of games that would easily play on a mobile device yet....don't. I have a phone that far outclasses the rest of me because for a long time, that was my primary game resource (and is still to this day my primary means of accessing the internet). I work in the "big city" and live two cities over in a much smaller one because that's where I can afford to live and are blessed with a fabulous transit system, so my transit commutes are where all this happens.

Amoebic wrote:

It's why I've been bemoaning how frustrating it is that my steam library is full of games that would easily play on a mobile device yet....don't.

Isn't that because of the interface, though? Buttons are critical for most games that involve any kind of timing - you just can't be as accurate with touch as you can with buttons. Mobile gaming using the mouse/keyboard setup isn't practical for on-the-go, so that leaves the controller. Since there isn't an industry-standard controller spec, you have a bunch that are all slightly different - and none have really cracked that balance between comfortable, durable and pocketable.

Amoebic wrote:

Bingo. It's why I've been bemoaning how frustrating it is that my steam library is full of games that would easily play on a mobile device yet....don't. I have a phone that far outclasses the rest of me because for a long time, that was my primary game resource (and is still to this day my primary means of accessing the internet). I work in the "big city" and live two cities over in a much smaller one because that's where I can afford to live and are blessed with a fabulous transit system, so my transit commutes are where all this happens.

In a nostalgic way, I miss the sub-notebook fad that came out of Japan a few years ago, when the rest of the world just jumped over to Smartphones and tablets.

Toshiba's Libretto W100, the last great subnotebook:
IMAGE(https://im9.cz/iR/importprodukt-orig/375/37522d839e04339212e114f1abd32968.jpg)
1.2 GHz, 2 GB DDR3 RAM (2 GB max.), 62 GB SSD, two 7-inch multi-touch TFT displays with Windows 7 Home Premium

It's a laptop computer in the form factor of a phablet, with a real OS, keyboard and all. The downsides were price, limited availability, short battery life and below-average performance, but if you were looking for something that could run a few indie classics I can't imagine it'd have a problem.

Oh man so many favorite memories from this podcast. I was probably low-middle class when growing up. I too am roughly Rabbits age, born in 72. I remember the Christmas that we got the 2600 and how awesome that was. I remember going over to a friends house who's dad worked for the phone company and he had Intelevision, and Colleco vision, and Comodore 64 with a tape drive. I also have great memories of discovering the arcade at the campground my family was staying at in '77.

I remember the always wanting games, but my parents being very good a parceling out game only at birthdays and Christmas. I also remember my cousin who was an only child who's parents use to spoil him had everything before I did, and had any Atari, and then NES game you could want. I use to love to visit him and get a taste for the games I didn't have.

Also, Reticent in RI, hit me up man, I'm right around the corner and can totally relate with your email. Unlike a lot of my friends I have maintained my hobby in video games, but there are very few people that I can relate to these days IRL. Always looking for some way to engage with folks locally.

I'm from before the Console age, so while my first experience was playing Pong on my friends Atari, I didn't do any gaming until I saved up several years of summer job money and bought my Apple II when I went to University in 1980. (Well, outside of playing Adventure on a Vax 750.)

I was pretty much the first person in residence to own a computer, and I got kind of used to being able to sleep with 4 other people in my room playing "Dave's Midnight Magic" (a pinball simulator) and Wizardry.

I found the section on Socio-economic status interesting. While I'm comfortably middle-class, my budget for video-games is essentially $0 as I'm completely time-constrained. However, I enjoy listening to the pod-casts as essentially a means to "aspirationally game". Thus I really enjoy listening to people get excited by VR, enjoying the experience vicariously through others.

Always a happy surprise to have Karla on the show. Perhaps she'll be willing to join Amanda as a regular.

west wrote:

I was pretty much the first person in residence to own a computer, and I got kind of used to being able to sleep with 4 other people in my room playing "Dave's Midnight Magic" (a pinball simulator) and Wizardry.

YES!! I played the crap out of that game on the C64. It wasn't until I got re-bitten by the pinball bug a couple of years ago that I did some research and found out that it was a rip off of a classic pinball table called The Black Knight. That one is available through Pinball Arcade, but it seems a lot more brutal than I remember DMM being...

Bummer about the time constraints. Not sure about your situation, of course, but I've started making "hard" choices about not watching as many TV shows or movies so that I can continue gaming...

I'm on a very tight budget, and while I don't play AAA games anymore at release date, I usually pick some of those 1-2 years down the road when they are in the 10$ range.

I'm always looking for discounts, and play a lot of indie games, those 20$ games are very often at the 5-10$ price, and that is a good price for the hundred of hours I can play at those. Also another problem is that sometimes I have to buy two copies of the game, so I can play with my 11 y/o son. We like to play multiplayer games, I bought some Humble with Company of Heroes, and we played some of that, last time Running with Rifles was heavily discounted I bought two copies and we played it non-stop for a couple of weeks

There are only two things I miss, one is the multiplayer only games, I've played the beta of R6 Siege and for the time that game is on my price range the community is gonna be dead, there are a few exceptions, like BF4, I've bought that at 5$ not very far ago, and there is still a lot of people playing.

The other thing I'm missing are the Blizzard games, those are never discounted, I wanted to buy a couple of Diablo 3 copies, but Blizzard never discount the games at the point I can afford, so those are a miss for me.

Edit: better than r/patientgamers on reddit, I've rather browse r/gamedeals in case someone else wants to keep an eye on discounts and offers

dewalist wrote:

but it seems a lot more brutal than I remember DMM being...

Maybe not having the multiple balls being able to move through each other (if I remember correctly) makes a difference :-).

Bummer about the time constraints. Not sure about your situation, of course, but I've started making "hard" choices about not watching as many TV shows or movies so that I can continue gaming...

Eh, it's just math: 8-10 hrs for work + 2 hr commute + 1 hr for house word + 1 hr each for kids + wife = full day. Also, I like complex games like EU IV, and they're not that amenable to learning or playing over 10-30 minute periods that I do have free (at least for my after-work brain).

Also, I do get a 4-6 hour Friday night board gaming session with a basement full of friends.

We all make our choices - I'm happy with mine. Besides, GWJ is such a delightful podcast, I feel I get a decent ratio of the joy I'd get from gaming anyway, all during my commute!

kabutor wrote:

I knew Avalon Hill. It was a friend of Mine. You sir are no Avalon Hill.

That was my chuckle of the week. Many thanks for that.

west wrote:
kabutor wrote:

I knew Avalon Hill. It was a friend of Mine. You sir are no Avalon Hill.

That was my chuckle of the week. Many thanks for that.

It's not mine, I think Rabbit said it, like 10 years ago, in one of the GWJCC episodes

I'm in upper middle class by income, but I have a huge debt load so I still don't have a tremendous amount of money for gaming. I try to keep it to around $100 per month, but it sometimes creeps up to $200. That said, I actually prefer playing old games. The average time that a game that I've finished this year was on my backlog was about 572 days. That's skewed by a few outliers that were in the 1500 day range, and there's a fair number of games around 2 months range. Shortest time from purchase to finish this year was Firewatch, at 6 days. I still pay full price for many games though, mostly by developers that I really want to support.

My earliest gaming memory? I can't remember which was first, but I remember wanting to play with an arcade machine when I was just a few years old, but being told no. I also played with a standalone pong machine quite a bit, when it wasn't even plugged into the TV for a lot of that.

Alz wrote:

Toshiba's Libretto W100, the last great subnotebook:
IMAGE(https://im9.cz/iR/importprodukt-orig/375/37522d839e04339212e114f1abd32968.jpg)
1.2 GHz, 2 GB DDR3 RAM (2 GB max.), 62 GB SSD, two 7-inch multi-touch TFT displays with Windows 7 Home Premium

It's a laptop computer in the form factor of a phablet, with a real OS, keyboard and all. The downsides were price, limited availability, short battery life and below-average performance, but if you were looking for something that could run a few indie classics I can't imagine it'd have a problem.

Subnotebooks were pretty cool. I really wanted one for the longest time but never quite pulled the trigger. I imagine when the Vita finally sputters out (Still going strong for now!) I'll end up building my own 5 inch subnotebook gaming rig running SteamOS, hopefully around the size of a 3DSXL (probably thicker.) The parts are getting cheap and small enough that it could be workable. Something like the LattePanda board, but with AMD Embedded chips would be nice. I don't necessarily need something really fast though, like you said, mostly indie games will be played on it.

I remember the old IBM Thinkpad Subnotebooks of the 90's. They had 486BL Processors, not even genuine Intel chips, nor do they support all of the new 486 instructions. They're like a very fast 386. I really coveted this system when I was a teenager. http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Catego...