GWJ Conference Call Episode 676

Untitled Goose Game, Children of Morta, Hitman 2, Betrayal: Legacy, Kind Words International Gamers With Jobs Day 2019, introducing The Joyconjurer Front Page Feature, your emails, shout-outs and more!

http://traffic.libsyn.com/gwjcc/GWJ_...

This week Amanda, Sean McKenna, and special guest Rich "TheHarpoMarxist" Lovejoy talk about our new front-page feature, The Joyconjurer!

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.

  • Subscribe with iTunes
  • Subscribe with RSS
  • Subscribe with Yahoo!
Download the official apps
  • Download the GWJ Conference Call app for Android
  • Download the GWJ Conference Call app for Android

Comments

00:01:16 Children of Morta
00:09:40 Untitled Goose Game
00:18:30 Hitman 2
00:28:12 Kind Words
00:35:43 Betrayal: Legacy (tabletop)
00:40:20 The Joyconjurer Advice Column
00:51:27 Your Emails

Thanks for reading out my shout out!

Just in case anyone is wondering about the movie lyrics thing, I have a bad habit of missing when the spellchecker has changed the word I intended to a different word. It should have ‘been movie related limericks.’ In recent times, on the Slashfilmcast, Jeff, for reasons too complex to go into here, has been reading out a limerick related to the movie they are reviewing.

Upon relistening, I realise I made the pronoun feature sound new, but actually was something Shawn implemented a little bit ago and I don't think we brought it up yet!

Profile pronouns locked & loaded. Thanks for highlighting it meebs!

I love the pronoun feature, thanks for pointing it out.
Looking forward to the Joyconjurer, I truly believe we are living through the darkest timeline, and we all need to help each other survive.

Rich, thanks for mentioning Scorpia! I always looked forward to her reviews and columns in CGW. I remember she'd respond to hint requests submitted by us stumped gamers. On many occasions I'd send questions to her NYC PO Box and receive personal letters (snail mail!) back providing just enough clues to get going again. A pioneer of gaming journalism and super-generous person, indeed!

Here's a Kotaku article about her if anyone is curious...
Searching for Scorpia — Whatever Happened to Gaming's First Celebrity Critic?

Ooh - thanks for sharing that article! I can’t wait to check it out. I have no idea what happened to her but (for obvious reasons) I’ve been thinking about her work of late.

Talk about Kind Words makes me think of this sort of odd chat app/"crowdsourced therapy" thing I stumbled onto maybe 6-12 months ago. I can't remember the name--I want to say a nonsense word like Kubi? Kubo? but I don't seem to be getting close enough to right to get it via Google, and even the concept is hard to google without getting a zillion other apps/sites.

Basically, it was a site where you could either post a problem/complaint/thing you are sad about, or you could answer those from others. I think the thing that I read that appealed to me was something about the "healing power of helping others," how being empathetic to and supportive of even strangers can elevate your own mood and feelings about the world, something along those lines.

I didn't post any of my own problems, but remember enjoying a few days playing advice columnist, in essence, reading people's problems and sharing my thoughts. The first one I read was someone upset about their upcoming wedding, something about one of their parents imposing some thing on the wedding that they really didn't want, but feeling that, because their parent was paying for or contributing to the wedding, they felt they couldn't push back. I wrote a long supportive message with my thoughts and advice and I think I may have even received a nice response back later. It definitely made me buy in to the idea that there was some emotional benefit to being there for a random stranger. But I fell off of it fairly quickly, I think in part because many of the other posted problems were much less coherent or mature (I remember a message like "why's brittny bein such a #$@#!, jay doesn't even like her"), and in part because I did think through just how badly the whole concept might go to the extent people with genuine mental health issues are turning to this as their solution, and/or how harmful it might be if the advice being passed out is from trolls or even for well-meaning but unwise people. I think the site was shut down? I dunno.

Anyway, that is to say, I am intrigued by Kind Words representing another version of that thing I was interested in. I'm glad to hear that it sounds like it is largely remaining a positive, troll-free space (though I do recall hearing on Giant Bomb a week or two back that they played it on a stream and one of the first messages they got was some antisemitic rant, which is a bummer, hopefully that was not representative of a common experience on KW).

Thanks all for the lovely feedback!

After recording this ep, I encountered my first troll, so I feel bad about contributing to the minimization of this element of our society. Quickly reported them, along with many others as well, I suspect.

Though I adore and appreciate the game, the majority of the customer base is quite young and extremely bad about doling out poorly-constructed unsolicited advice, at times. I have pushed out a few messages gently suggesting that "sometimes people just want to hear 'I'm sorry that sucks,' and aren't asking for your relatively uninformed opinion on the matter.

I suspect that might cause me to get a few flags, but that's the risk of social experiments.

On the conversation about music with games, I've got a really good example. I've been listening to the Poly Bridge soundtrack by Adrian Talens and making that my soundtrack to other games! It's this very mellow, acoustic-guitar based noodling that's repeats on similar themes throughout--making it the perfect thing to have on loop for hours. For puzzley headspace kinda games like Picross or Wilmot's Warehouse, it adds to my zen. It also provides an amusing contrast to games like Dark Souls. They should not be so calm

Can I just take a minute to congratulate all the Coffee Grinders for taking a leap adding meaningful and awesome contribution here?

Go you folks! Taking the step to move from observing to contributing adds so much value to our community. Thank you all, from coffee grinders to the “tagged” for your willingness to make our corner of the internet a brighter, better place.