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"Inside The Mind Of Attorney Danny Sheehan, UFOs, Cover Ups & Prominent Voice in UFOlogy, And Former Legal Counsel to Lue Elizondo, The Disclosure project, and The New Paradigm Institute. Danny Is On Record Saying therre are 5 Different ALIEN species visiting earth, for the most part. Some may be Interdimensional, Some may be extra terrestrial, and some could even be from right under our oceans. Danny Is head counsel for the romero Institute, and Graduated From Harvard law, And Divinity School. #DannySheehan #Aliens #UFOtwitter #UFOx #TDP #TotalDisclosureVisit Our Webiste, for all things Total Disclosure Podcast, and TDP Studios: www.TotalDisclosure.orgSubscribe to the channel on YouTube: www.youtube.com/@totaldisclosure Support TDP directly: https://www.paypal.me/TDPstudios767?locale.x=en_US Be A Member On The Audio Feed (Limited Perks: Early Access/Ad Free only) https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/total-disclosure-ufos-coverups-conspiracy--5975113/support  Support & JOIN THE COMMUNITY By Becoming a Paid member(CHOOSE WHAT YOU PAY) GAIN ACCESS TO EARLY CONTENT, BONUS MATERIAL, 1-1'S, A YEARLY GIFT, AND PRIORITY QUESTIONS FOR GUESTS AS WE BUILD OUT OUR COMMUNITY. JOIN AND SUPPORT US ON EITHER YOUTUBE OR PATREON, SAME BENEFITS, 1 COMMUNITYYOUTUBE MEMBER;https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCy2Cra7aLAAMVxkA9rSYCxg/joinPATREON MEMBER; https://www.patreon.com/Total_Disclosure?fan_landing=true&view_as=publicTRY BIO MIND BY EDENTIA HERBALS, 25% OFF EXCLUSIVELY FOR TDP LISTENERS- PERFORMANCE MUSHROOM SUPPLEMENT MADE WITH ONLY THE FINEST INGREDIENTS, PEER REVIEWED, AND BACKED UP BY SCIENCE, I USE IT EVERY SINGLE DAY, AND IT HAS CHANGED MY LIFE— WWW.EDENTIAHERBALS.COM & DON'T FORGET TO USE CODE TOTAL DISCLOSURE AT CHECKOUT FOR 25%OFFGET YOUR TOTAL DISCLOSURE: UFO/ALIEN INSPIRED MERCH, OR A GIFT FOR YOUR FAMILY MEMBER, FRIEND, OR TREAT YOURSELF! : https://pop-culture-corner-store.creator-spring.com/?FOLLOW TDP ON RUMBLE, A growing Platform that Rivals Youtube, and Allows for More Free Speech: Sign Up And tell them TDP sent you, by using our link; https://rumble.com/register/TotalDisclosure93/Follow Us On Twitter: Www.Twitter.com/DisclosurePodFollow Us On Instagram: www.Instagram.com/Total.DisclosureUSE OUR CODE AND SIGN UP FOR TUBE-BUDDY TO START UTILIZING THEIR AMAZING TOOLS, LET TUBE BUDDY DO THE WORK FOR YOU: https://www.tubebuddy.com/POPSign Up for VIDIQ and Get Tons of Creator Content Tools, SEO Boosts, Keyword Scores, Title Suggestions, & So much MORE! VIDIQ can be integrated seamlessly into your Browser and Youtube Channel, Start utilizing this tool now, Sign up with TDP's Link-www.VIDIQ.com/TotalDisclosureMovie Palette allows you to put your favorite scene on Canvas, a great gift for your movie-buff friend/relative, or just an amazing piece that will bring a room together, it also won't make your partner flinch when bringing guests to the house;)Get 15% OFF your order of a new "MOVIE PALETTE" By Using CODE: CultureCorner15 At www.MoviePalette.comLOOKING TO START YOUR OWN PODCAST? LOOKING TO GO LIVE? SIGN UP FOR STREAM YARD TODAY AND USE OUR REFERRAL CODE TO HELP SUPPORT THE SHOW! : https://streamyard.com/pal/6146221734887424For Collaboration, Use of Segments/clips, or any other media produced by Studios Contact Us Directly---TY.TotalDisclosure@gmail.comLISTEN DIRECTLY TO THE SHOW ON THE “SPREAKER” App, & help support the show DIRECTLY: https://www.spreaker.com/show/total-disclosure-ufos-cover-ups-and-consListen on Apple: https://www.podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-pop-culture-corner/id1544297063?uo=4Listen on SPOTIFY: https://open.spotify.com/show/0Yq6Iceyh7o24DG8tq4kvOLISTEN ON AMAZON(AUDIBLE) https://www.amazon.com/Total-Disclosure-UFOs-Conspiracies-Cover-Ups/dp/B08JJSX9GF/ref=sr_1_1?crid=PJDE10465KZE&keywords=total+disclosure+podcast&qid=1704722670&sprefix=total+disclosure+podcast%2Caps%2C77&sr=8-1Special Thank you to all of our Channel Members for your continued support, and dedication to our brand!                                            ***COPYRIGHT Disclaimer***This video in part, or in whole, is subject to standard YouTube and Legal Copyright rules.If you wish to use segments, please email me in advance at the email address above.Thank you.

On this episode, we dive into the conversation around Sekiro and accessibility as we chat with Clint Stewart about his experience playing Soulsbourne games with an arm and a foot. iTunes Page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/noclip/id1385062988 RSS Feed: http://noclippodcast.libsyn.com/rssGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/If7gz7uvqebg2qqlicxhay22qny Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5XYk92ubrXpvPVk1lin4VB?si=JRAcPnlvQ0-YJWU9XiW9pg Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/noclippodcast Watch our docs: https://youtube.com/noclippodcast Sub our new podcast channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSHBlPhuCd1sDOdNANCwjrA Learn About Noclip: https://www.noclip.videoBecome a Patron and get early access to new episodes: https://www.patreon.com/noclip Follow @noclipvideo on Twitter Hosted by @dannyodwyerFunded by 4,501 Patrons.  ------------------------------------------------------------- - [Danny] Hello and welcome to Noclip, the podcast about the people who play and make video games. I'm your host Danny O'Dwyer. We've had a lot of people on who have made video games, so it's about time we've had someone on who plays them. And this isn't just anyone, this is a friend of Noclip and somebody I've wanted to collaborate with for quite awhile. So I'll let him introduce himself. Clint, how are you doing this fine Friday afternoon? - [Clint] I'm doing great, thank you. Hey Danny. - [Danny] Tell us a little bit about yourself. I'll kind of get into what we're gonna talk about in a hot second, but tell us your name, where you are right now, and what we're here to talk about. - [Clint] Alright, my name is Clint Stewart. I go by DisabledCable on Twitter and JehovahNova on Steam, bunch of other names. I think TreeLegDog may be one of them. I've been a gamer most of my life and almost seven years ago, I was injured very badly and I lost my left arm and I broke my back as well, so trying to learn how to play games one-handed has been quite the challenge. - [Danny] And you're somebody who can kind of speak to the accessibility question from somebody who has experienced playing games with no disability and experiencing games with a pretty heavy one as well. We've a lot to get into today. Before we sort of talk about, I guess, your experience more generally, I just want to let everyone know how this came to happen for this episode of the podcast. I've been wanting to do something with Clint for a long time because his insight into this is super refreshing and he's a very eloquent speaker but we've sort of struggled to get that project up and running. We're hoping to do it the future. But what happened in the past month I guess is this sort of general conversation that's been going on around Sekiro easy mode and accessibility, which I did a video on on Noclip. You can watch an episode of Bonus Level that's kind of all about that. And that was kind of my opinion on it but I thought, the way Noclip works is that we often ask the experts about these things. People who aren't, we're not just giving my option on the state of development or design or anything but we go out and we find people who are experts in these issues. Clint is an expert in this. Not only because of the way in which he plays games but also because he's a fan of the particular series in question. So pretty early on I kind of tapped him up and was like, hey, when you've played the game a bit can you come on the podcast and sort of chew the shit with us about this? So first of all, thank you so much for coming on and making the time. - [Clint] Yeah, thank you. I've gotta say to start off with too, you did buy it for me. So I gotta be, first off, I've never been called an expert and you did buy the game for me, so that's all. All that's out of the way and start now. - [Danny] Yeah, we don't let interns, we don't do unpaid internships or don't pay people who are contributing to our work so yeah, yeah, no. Absolutely, it's the least we could do. So before we touch on Sekiro, can you tell us a little bit about how you generally play games? Like if you're going out to buy a game today Clint, what are the considerations that you have to sort of take into account? And how do you actually play them? - [Clint] Definitely, and this is a great first question because it really made me think about the Souls games and games like those and just everything that I have to take into consideration when I buy a game. The last game that I bought that was similar to Sekiro would be Neo. And I had to refund Neo when I first bought it because they released that PC port with no mouse keyboard controls whatsoever. I'm used to some games mouse and keyboard not working in the menus or maybe I can't rebind the keys in-game but I can do it in the Razer Synapse software, but with Neo, it was just like no. You better buy a controller or it's just not gonna work. And just one of the only times I've ever had to refund a game. - [Danny] Is that rare? Does that happen often? - [Clint] That is extremely rare these days, thankfully. And enough people, I got on Twitter which my tweet might have got two likes. I don't think I got noticed by anybody but more than just me who's coming out saying, hey, this needs mouse and keyboard support. You can't release a PC game with no mouse and keyboard support. And I was hoping that maybe the Dark Souls, before the remaster that just came out, the community got together and made mouse keyboard controls work in that game as well. Because the first Dark Souls port was horrible. It's one of the worst ports I think I've ever played. And the community got, what was it called? The DS Fix, I guess the one guy made. But then they added on to it and added mouse and keyboard support, but they still didn't get the prompts right. So you would get a prompt on the screen to do something but it would say, it would be the controller prompt. You still wouldn't get the mouse and keyboard, which is extremely frustrating when you're trying to remember. You've just changed everything up and you think you remember what you did but then you know, that's extremely frustrating. Generally when I buy a game I look, does it have rebindable keys? And if not, that's not always a deal breaker, but does it just have mouse and keyboard support in general? Because I have two different one-handed controllers and I don't want to knock the guys that worked on those, that created them. One of them was the first guy who I'd ever seen even do this. He has a channel on YouTube. And each controller has it's own issues, but I mean for what they are, there really is no other choice if you have to play console games. I mean because they still haven't gotten around to adding mouse and keyboard support fully on the Xbox. I think PlayStation has some in a couple games. But even like Xbox, they just added it and they have a partnership with Razer, but yet if you were to turn on the Xbox and try to just use the mouse and keyboard, or in my case the mouse and footboard, which is the Stinkyboard, you can't do anything. You have to use a controller to navigate the UI. And then to find the games that will work with mouse and keyboard. It's a lot to think about when you're looking at games. - [Danny] Yeah, it's a whole lot of questions that most of us don't really have to consider at all. So when you're interacting with these games, obviously the bindable keys, you said, is a really important part of it. But what are you using physically? Because presumably you're not using both a mouse and keyboard. You're remapping this to a third-party peripheral, or sort of a-- - [Clint] So yeah, just let me explain that a little better. I use a 19 button mouse that's called a Razer Naga. Razer is the company that makes it and the Naga is the brand. And basically it's made for MMO. It's called an MMO mouse. Which I have used it in an MMO, and we can talk about that later. I think that's, one of the games that I used to try to teach myself how to play again was World of Warcraft. And then I also use a Stinkyboard, which is a four button footboard. Now both of these hardware have software tied to them as well that will allow you to completely rebind. You can make any of the buttons whichever button you want. And then the Razer software is even more powerful because you can make macros as well. And there are certain games like Devil May Cry 5, that just came out recently. That's a beautiful game. It's brilliant, it's a lot of fun to play. But for me as a one-armed gamer that was infuriating because you had to press three different buttons to be able to do some moves. And that was including having to hold down a button for lock on. So I ended up having to go in the Razer Synapse software and make a simple on/off macro for lock on, just so I could do some of the moves in that game. Out of all the things that they forget to add, like of course I would love to see ultrawide support or unlock frame rate. The game does have unlock frame rate, but just simple lock on. Being able to just toggle that on or off. Just like maybe you want to have sprint always on, have a toggle on sprint or a toggle on crouch. For lock on should be something that just needs to be industry standard. Do you want it toggable or not? - Wow. - Just help people out. That's definitely something I've come across in a few different games. - [Danny] Yeah, I hadn't thought about that consideration at all. When you're playing then, so you have a prosthesis, right? Like you have some sort-- - [Clint] I actually do have government subsidies, or I should say subsidized, because I had to go through a legal battle just to get Medicare and Medicaid. I've talked to you about my story before, you know what happened. They denied me disability. I actually got denied twice and had to get a disability lawyer to get disability. And then when I finally got in court the judge was like, oh my lord, son, we're gonna take care of this. - Oh my goodness. - And I was in and out of there in two minutes. - [Danny] On what grounds were they? - [Clint] You know what, the first letter I got back they were like, oh he can still bend over and lift things. I'm like, with what good back and what two arms? Did you even read what your doctor said? Ah, bureaucrats, man. - [Danny] That's incredible. So the judge like took one glance at you and kind of-- - [Clint] Yeah, soon as I got in front of the judge he was just like, I am so sorry sir, and we're gonna get this taken care of. Within the next three months I had an arm. You know, I think the government paid $90,000 for it, I wanna say. And it's very nice but it's very limited. I mean, it's the first version, right? Like if I had, I've got a few complaints about it, but one of the most being is how heavy it is. Because it's carbon fiber and it's got a battery. And also due to the kind of amputation that I had. I don't have a lot of arm left so it's pretty much just resting on my shoulder which is supported by my back which again, my L3 and L5 were severely cracked and my L4 looks like a spiderweb. They didn't think I'd be able to walk again. So that's a miracle in itself that I'm still walking and talking. So I count my lucky stars and I don't complain about too many things. But definitely this whole conversation around accessibility versus difficulty's really got me thinking. Your video is great that it looked at the nuance of it. You didn't just do one hot take or try to ride the fence. I saw your other tweet where you compared it to how you play racing games, and that really hit home for me because I would love to play VR games but yet you don't see me demanding them make all VR games playable for me with one hand because they're still creating that space. Like if I were to buy VR now I might be able to play Dirt Rally or maybe Elite Dangerous. They'd probably be the only two games I could really play in VR. - [Danny] Yeah so let's jump into that then there, since you brought it up. How did you feel then about that sort of, I mean it was a very broad conversation that sort of was almost like numerous different conversations that were bumping into each other. But just speaking from the heart, what was your initial reaction to the conversation about that and what was your opinion on it? - [Clint] Honestly, I really feel like it's a branding problem. I feel like, let's say they added an easy mode tomorrow in Sekiro or the Dark Souls games, you're not gonna care, right? Is it gonna lesser the experience that you had? No. Matter of fact, I could enable easy mode in my game right now because I ended up getting that mod. They patched it and then my workaround for the ultrawide fix wasn't working anymore so I found a mod that unlocks the FPS, does the ultrawide, lets you choose some camera adjustments. Where the game works now is if you target someone the camera automatically snaps to you. Or if you move at all, the camera automatically will snap back on you and this mod will disable that as well as give you FOV adjustment. I know it's something TeeVee was always preaching about. That really makes a huge difference when you're sitting really close to the monitor. Having a bigger FOV, it's huge. But that same mod will also let you turn down the speed, which isn't that how the guy from PC Gamer, I forget his name, but he was like, I cheated and I feel fine. - [Danny] Right - [Clint] I feel like it's just a branding problem, right? If we called it cheats I think everybody would be happy, because the people that don't care would just be like, yeah, I cheated, who gives a shit? And then everybody else would be like, you cheated yourself and the game. - [Danny] That's a good point. - [Clint] 'Cause it's all the same thing. We're just talking, like you said, we're talking around each other. We're all talking about different things but they do kind of correlate. I really do feel like it's a branding problem. Let's just call it cheats and be done with it. 'Cause even though I could cheat in this game I'm not gonna do it. I love this game. Honestly, the boss I had the most trouble with so far was a miniboss. It's not in the main bosses I've encountered. And I should say, I haven't beaten the game yet. You got it for me a couple weeks ago. I've been taking my time. I've been enjoying it. I've been exploring everywhere. - [Danny] Good, me too. You're way ahead of me, buddy. - [Clint] Oh, really? That makes me feel good. - Oh yeah. - [Clint]I'm like, he's probably gonna beat the game and be like, you're where? But yeah, the biggest difference for me I feel like with accessibility versus difficulty, like I recently beat The Witcher 3 as well. And that's a game that I had to start over because I ended up having to wipe my hard drive so I lost like 80 hours. And then I ended up like, I'm just gonna do everything. And so I spent another 150 hours just trying to clear my map. And so I finally beat that recently and that was a game I actually turned down the difficulty on a few of those last fights, just because they were annoying. The controls are transcendent in Sekiro, even more so than Dark Souls. - [Danny] Well, it's funny like you're talking about how you're adding all these things and you're saying you're not cheatingsome people could argue that you're playing the game at a way higher level. 'Cause you're playing with your foot and one hand, whereas most of us have access to two analog sticks. - [Clint] This game makes me feel like a ninja, it really does. I'm playing a one arm ninja, so the symbolism is not lost on me. I completely adore this. And the fact that you said maybe I'm playing on a higher level, I have felt like that has hindered me in some games. Take Dark Souls for example. Even on the remaster the mouse and keyboard controls are not perfect, they're not. I have to make a macro in that game for the jump attack and then like a kick I think, where you have to press two buttons at once. One of them's like forward and attack and the other's like, I forget exactly what it is. But I had to make that simple macro just because those buttons wouldn't always register because I've got W on my footboard. So I guess I should just tell you a little about this. I've got W and S on my footboard. So where those are very close together where I can press them very quickly if I need to. And the first two buttons I have on the Naga, there's a row of 12 buttons on the side, and the very first two where my thumb constantly rests are left and right, so A and D. I did it that way so I could press them in combination together because the Stinkyboard, when I first got it, it's first driver revision it wouldn't allow you to press more than one key at a time. So I couldn't, for instance, press two buttons on there at the same time. Where if I tie it to the mouse I'm able to do a Shift move to the left and move forward at same, it's kind of like a diagonal, you know. You're pressing three buttons at once to do what two buttons should do. And it's little workarounds like that that I've had to get comfortable with. I used to make a profile for each game that I would play. I mean, I've got a gigantic Sting library now. I started to realize, I need presets, right? Like this is the preset for action RPGs. This is the preset for shooters. This is my strategy preset. So I've just kinda had to learn just by doing, like okay, this is what I should do. - [Danny] Right, are some genres that are totally off the cards? You're saying up, down, left, right. Like Mortal Combat just came out. Are you able to play that at all? - [Clint] I have not played a fighting game since my accident and I would say, now I grew up playing Street Fighter. I had a Street Fighter callous. People that played that game will no what I'm talking about. If you played enough of it you would develop a callous. Depending on what kind of characters you like playing too and I never played the guy, the M. Bison kind of characters. I always liked the Ryu and the Ken's and the 360 characters like Zang and stuff. So my thumbs got destroyed, especially depending on what controller you used. And now with the setup I have I could play Street Fighter if I programmed everything or if I played with simplified control. 'Cause I think they introduced that in one of the games. It was like, you could do advanced moves by just pressing a button and I tried it and was just like, this is so boring. Now I haven't tried it since I've been hurt. This was several years ago. And I just know that the game wouldn't be fun to me, to play it that way. Like I'm not looking for something so easy that it's just mind numbing. That's not, I do play games to be challenged and to have a good time. Just pressing one button over and over's not really, that's not a good time. - [Danny] I think that's why I was so impressed by the fact that you were playing these games because for me, as somebody who has both my hands, I was incredibly intimidated to play Bloodborne last year. I'd never really played a Soulsborne game until last year and then the reason I played it was we'd just had a kid and I was spending hours and hours lying on the sofa with her asleep on my chest and there was nothing I could do except play games. And I thought well, fuck it. This is probably a good a time as ever to actually try and-- - [Clint]Are you playing with the baby on your chest? Wow. - Yeah, yeah. - [Clint] Heard about being cold and in the moment. - [Danny] It forced me to actually, I don't know, be very intentional. And I couldn't get frustrated because she'd wake up if I started to shout or move or get angry or throw a controller. So going back and playing the first Dark Souls which I did months after when the remaster came out, and also playing Sekiro, I found them very, very intimidating. What other games do you play? And is there something special about those Sekiro, Soulsborne games? - [Clint] So yes, yes. First of all they are brilliant. They're a masterclass in game design, whether it's the art team. Now, the only thing you could really knock against it may be the story. The story in the Souls game's pretty obtuse. You kinda have to go looking for it. Maybe you need to watch some lore videos. I am glad that this new game there are cinematics. There's like more of a traditional story. I do appreciate the fact that it's not quite so, they respect the player. And that when they teach you something, they expect you to have learned that and to begin, not necessarily master it right away, but begin to start working on it. There are so many times where after I've beaten a boss I've been like, okay, so let me see, what's the cheese for this strategy? Is there a cheese? And I'll look it up after just to see did I do it the cheat way? I actually thought that I had beat, what's her name? Lady Butterfly, I had thought I had cheesed her because how I killed her was I kind of, I love they have fake attacking in this game. Like you can act like you're gonna attack and then block and it will fake it. And that's very similar to World of Warcraft, fake casting. As a caster in WoW, you don't want them to interrupt your heal, like when you gotta get off, or the spell you have to get off, so you kinda have to fake. Like you're, I'm gonna cast, I'm gonna cast, use your interrupt, ha ha I got ya. That's built into the gameplay. So I kinda tricked her and baited her to get into a corner and then one of her really killer moves in the air, I only had to dodge twice and I'd be able to attack her. At least get like two attacks on her when she's in a corner. So I look up the cheese on her, and the cheese is like do this one move over and over and over and over and over. And I was like, holy shit. That's so cheesy. I did not, I thought I'd cheesed it but no, I didn't cheese it at all. - [Danny] You talking about cheeses is like, also sort of goes into the previous point you made about this being a marketing issue. The delineation between accessibility and cheats and then cheeses and strategy, because one of the things that came to my mind when were talking about easy modes in these games was the music box in Bloodborne, which is like, it's a fucking easy mode. - [Clint] I'm not familiar with that. - [Danny] So if you, you know, Father Gascoigne is a, oh, have you played Bloodborne? Of course, it's a PlayStation-- - [Clint] So yeah, I should say, yeah, it's on PlayStation. I haven't played it because I only have the Xbox one-handed controllers. I'm hoping they just add, they bring everything to PC. I know they're not gonna bring everything to PC but at least let me use mouse and keyboard, or in my case mouse and footboard on console. 'Cause one-handed controllers, no matter which one I have, they don't compare. For me, they have a one-hand, a mouse and this footboard, there's just nothing that comes close to that. Such a shame. I saw the tweet from the God of War guy and I'm like, yeah, your game's really aren't accessible to me at all, buddy. And I know it's, I know he wasn't thinking like that but I hate exclusivity, man. I really do. I wish you could play everything on anything. That's what I hope the future of gaming is, honestly. - [Danny] Yeah, I'd never even considered the fact that basically the PlayStation games are completely off the cards. So Spiderman. - Played Bloodborne, I haven't played Spiderman. Yeah, Spider-Man's the one that's killing me. Even more so than Bloodborne or God of War, is Spiderman. I wanna play Spiderman so bad. - [Danny] Metal Gear Solid V, did that come out on PC? - [Clint] Yes, that was on PC, yes. And that was actually a great-- - [Danny] Let me quickly explain that, the music box thing 'cause then I've got another question, just now that we've brought up the Metal Gear Solid thing. So in Bloodborne, they're one of the first bosses you meet, Father Gascoigne. Earlier, I'd say at least half of players run into this like windowsill where somebody, who I think you later find out then is his daughter, gives you a music box. And if you use the music box during the fight he basically staggers and you can use it infinitely up until I think, no you can use it three times during the fight. But it's basically a free hit. - Oh wow. - [Danny] And it completely changes the difficulty in that. I would say cuts the difficulty at least in half for that fight for new players. - [Clint] You used or did you avoid it because you knew about it? - [Danny] Yeah, the first time I played through it. The first time I played through it Bloodborne had been out for so long that at that stage, you know, I think I was working at GameStop when it came out so somebody did a video about that. So when it came round, the first time I played it I definitely did it. But in subsequent playthroughs I haven't bothered because I've gotten better at it by that stage. Which, you know, that's kinda how those games work, right? - [Clint] You use the skills that you have, right? That makes sense. The difficulty, they want you to learn. I feel like these games are trying to teach people patience and just not to give up. - [Danny] Totally, but at the same time they're not completely walling it off to people who-- - [Clint] I don't think so. - [Danny] No, I don't think that's the intent. I don't think it's some crazy hardcore. - [Clint] The quote that everybody loves to put up when they talk about, oh, it'll never have a easy mode. This is from Miyazaki, I'm sure I'm saying that wrong, the quote that everyone always loves to through up is, we don't wanna include a difficulty selection because we want to bring everyone to the same level of discussion and the same level of enjoyment. The next part of that quote is, so we want everyone to first face that challenge and to overcome it in some way that suits them as a player. That's the part everyone always leaves out. And I feel like with this one, they've really nailed it because they include a lot of options in terms of changing the keybinds. In some of Dark Souls, you couldn't change some of the keys at first. Like it was just completely locked out. The camera options that they added in, the fact that even include a selection now to show keyboard and mouse prompts instead of just, even though you changed the settings and maybe even changed what the keybindings were it still will show up Xbox buttons. That's so infuriating. - [Danny] Absolutely, and whenever I play PC games and I've got my Xbox controller plugged in that happens. And it irritates me, but obviously the other way round it happens all the time, I imagine. - [Clint] There's the other side of that too, where games like Battlefield, and I don't know if this works in the newest one, but it did work in Battlefield 3 and Battlefield 4, as well. You could set up different keybindings, right? Like they've always allowed that. But then they also would allow you to set the plane to a flight stick. So if you had a cheap little joystick or something, or a controller even, you could set it to where when you've got it in the plane it would switch over to the controller. And then when you ejected, you could move back to mouse and keyboard. And I always thought that was brilliant and I wish more games would do stuff like that. Granted you're taking into account people have additional expensive hardware and that's the other thing people don't always think about is all this accessibility stuff is really expensive. I even saw the Xbox guys getting crap 'cause they're XAC was $100. When you look at what they did, they could have easily charged $300 for that. And they still probably would have been taking a loss. - [Danny] Another element of this that you brought up a second ago was the way in which the lore of Sekiro sort of marries with your personal experience as well. I've actually noticed, I'm not sure if this is just because accessibility's been part of the general gaming conversation more now than it certainly was in the past, but I've noticed this recent trend with player characters with prosthesis on their arms. Am I crazy or has this just suddenly appeared everywhere? - [Clint] No, it's definitely starting to be a thing. I got asked like what was my favorite disabled superhero maybe four, five years ago. And the only one I could even think of in gaming or in comics was the guy from Deus Ex, the remaster, the remake, or whatever. What's his name? - [Danny] JC, no JC Denton was, Jensen? What was it? - [Clint] Jensen was the guy from the last two, I think. Yeah, I'm pretty sure. - [Danny and Clint] Adam Jensen. - [Danny] We got there. - [Clint] Yeah, you got me thinking JC Denton and I was like. That's the original, but the remakes or whatever, the reimaginings. 'Cause he was the only one I could really think of and then since then you've had the chick on the Battlefield cover. There's people in Overwatch that only have one arm. - [Danny] Apex Legends, I think. - [Clint] Apex Legends as well. Well, they got a whole cyborg in that one too. - [Danny] Right, Solid Snake? - [Clint] Yeah, that actually, you know what, that hit me the hardest. That's something I could talk about real quick. - [Danny] Yeah, go for it, absolutely. - [Clint] That scene was so powerful. It totally blew my mind. Now, I didn't have exact similar experience where I woke up. I knew, I came into the hospital talking about chop me off. Chop it off, just chop it off. I know it's gone, chop it off. And those doctors and nurses looked at me like I was crazy. Like damn, how is he living? I don't know if I told you this story but they didn't even know about my back. I woke up after my amputation and was like, holy shit, my arm is gone. I need a smoke. And they were like, you can't go outside? I'm like, you can't tell me what to do. And then I fell on my face and that's when they were like, oh, we need to check something. That's when they found out my spine was all screwed up. But yeah, getting off topic. So Call of Duty, in the last two or three Call of Duty's, it seemed like they just kept having, Buddy would always get his arm chopped off. There would always be that scene where like, it's just gruesome and they're tearing the arm off or it's getting trapped in a door or something. And you see, you get dragged away and your arms left there. They did that, I know for at least two years in a row. That never bothered me or impacted me at all. I played that opening scene in Metal Gear and all, granted most of it is just kind of a walking Sim for the first hour, hour and a half. But that first 20, 30 minutes is very powerful because you wake up. And I do remember waking up in the hospital bed and being like, what do you mean I can't get up? Oh, you did what to my back? Oh my god, my arm is gone. That was very surreal, very powerful. And the have David Bowie playing over it too. And of course those guys come in and kill the one guy couple minutes later but it was a very powerful scene. I love Hideo Kojima, that guy is a genius. I hope I get to play his next one. - [Danny] What was it like, I guess as well, the subtitle for that game is Phantom Pain, which we've talked in the past, that's obviously a massive issue for yourself and for people in your situation. - [Clint] And trying to describe that for people is nearly impossible. I mean, it's a constant thing that I have to worry about and over the last, I wanna say the last year or so, it's gotten a lot better in terms of I'm not getting the spikes. Have you ever had a searing headache to where, or let's say stomach pain, where your stomach's hurting, right? But then you get those surges to where you just wanna double up and you can't do anything. Phantom pain is like that. It can be a constant aggravation. Just something's constantly in the back of your mind. Or it could constantly just be bringing you to your knees where you can't do anything else. There is no, I mean I've cussed out my mama before. I love my mama, I would never do that, right? I've been hurtin' bad enough to cuss my mom out. That's kinda how I have to explain it to people. It hurts bad enough that it'll make you cuss your mom out. And you the type of person that normally do that, that's saying a lot. It's a mindfuck, man. And I'm sorry for cussing, really no other way to describin' it. It is unreal. I wish there were words that I could use to give it justice. And for some people, I've heard stories of where it lasts 90 days, they lose a limb and 90 days later, they're fine. Maybe it aggravates them every now and then, but for the most part they're fine. But for some reason with me, this October will be seven years and I'm still dealing with it. So I wish I had an answer as to why, but I don't. - [Danny] Does that, presumably not just playing video games, but that must impact every moment of your life. - [Clint] Oh yeah, the first thing I did when I got my disability was not build some crazy super rig and buy this Razer Naga and all this stuff. I bought a chair. I bought a very expensive chair that was good, felt comfortable to sit in and supported my back. That was the first thing I did and it was, it cost me $400 but it was worth every penny. I still have the same chair. It doesn't need an upgrade. I'll be ready to upgrade this computer before I'm ready to upgrade this chair. That definitely helps a lot. But dealing with pain and dealing with pain management, I've had to learn a lot of things because when you're constantly, your head's constantly cloudy it's hard to think clearly about anything, much less be able to deal with, you know. Let's say I get a cold or something, sometimes that's enough to just ruin my day whereas having a cold before was no big deal, whatever. 'Cause it's just addition, right? You keep adding on the things. I'm grateful that you followed me this long on Twitter, man. I can't imagine you haven't wanted to just mute me before. Because I either would just go blackout for six months or just rage for several days in a row. And then be like, oh, I love this, I love that. - [Danny] I think that's everyone on Twitter actually. Myself included. - [Clint] I kinda noticed that a little. Basically there to just bitch. - [Danny] I mean, was there any then, you know, just in relation to the thematically, this has been used in games a number of times, what was your experience with what happens in Sekiro and his use of a prosthesis? - [Clint] It's genius, it blew my mind. Like I know it's game design, right? And this is not, like none of it's real. But it really got me thinking, well, what if some of this was kind of based on some history? Like how much of this, because when I first lost my arm that was, me and my friends were talking about it like, oh, wouldn't it be cool if it had a blade like the dude from Deus Ex? You think you could, what all could you fit in there? Would it fit grenades? And it's like, no man. Why would I walk around with, you know, not serious talk. Just friends being, they were drunk and being stupid. And just thinking about what all different things could you do with an arm? And then I'm like, I wish it was the future where I could just walk up to a system and be like, okay, I would like a soda from this machine. Or give me 10 grand out this ATM. Have you seen the anime where the little finger pops up and the little wires come out? Like that would be amazing. But yeah, I love the use of the prosthetic. And I feel like that balances some of the difficulty, especially early on. I've seen a lot of people have trouble with that first red-eye ogre. And when I came across 'em I had already done the memory and beaten Lady Butterfly, so I was super powerful. I felt super, I mean I had the flaming barrel, I had plenty of oil, and I totally messed that dude up. He might have killed me once, twice maybe 'cause I didn't know about the add with the spear. Oh man, there's definitely some moves that once you get 'em, they tell you how useful they are and they'll even warn you again. And some of the handholding. That's actually hurt me, and something I'm sure they didn't think about. So I have to take my hand off the mouse, go over to the Escape on the keyboard, hit Escape, try to get my hand back on the mouse before I get smacked. Nine times out of 10 I'm getting smacked. And I know they're doing it to help people and trying to remind them like, hey, this is what this does. But that kept getting in the way for me. I realize what they're trying to do and I know they're trying to make these games more accessible. And I think that fact that it sold two million copies in 10 days, that surprised me even. I didn't think this game would do that good. These games are notoriously hard. My brother said I can't believe you're playing this. Not because he thinks I'm too disabled, but because he thinks it requires too much patience. They all have the impression they're so hard that nobody can actually play these unless you just can control your rage. - [Danny] Yeah, they do sort of have a, I don't know, there's a sort of a mythic quality to this, which is earned in many ways, but there's an urban legend aspect to it as well which has kind of made it a bit ridiculous. One question actually we got from somebody. I put a call out on Twitter just before we went live for questions and one we got in actually rubs up against that which was, Video Attack asks, how much of the reputation for the series being obtuse and difficult do you think could be addressed with proper tutorializing and making more in-depth mechanics easier to understand? I love the series, but I don't always feel they've done well explaining mechanics to the player. I found that in the early games that was kind of part of the discovery of those games, was trying to figure it out. But Sekiro I feel like is so, I feel like you really have to defeat bosses in very particular ways, in ways that I maybe aren't, I don't know. Maybe I'm just lacking the patience for it a little bit or something. How do you feel? 'Cause they've definitely done a better job of the tutorials. It's interesting to here you say the tutorials were getting in your way. - [Clint] They've definitely done that. Yeah, and that's just for me having one hand. Let's say maybe I had decided to put Escape for whatever reason and I macro'd that, or put that on my footboard or somewhere on the mouse, then I wouldn't have this issue. But of all the keys that I could afford to re-keybind, Escape is almost never one of them. Escape and Map are the last two things I worry about in games So they've definitely done a better job in terms of addressing that. But I feel like it's only gonna get as good as it can. Again I tell you, this does this and this is when you should use this. Now whether you remember to use it then, when you're supposed to, that's not really up to them, right? So a lot of I think like is perspective. Like you can die to a boss 10 times and think, oh, this is bullshit. I'm never playing this game again. Or you could die 10 times and during those 10 attempts somewhere you see where you made a mistake. Maybe you panic, maybe you got overaggressive. I feel like their games are trying to teach you certain things but at a certain point they do expect you to put it all together. And not everyone is the type of gamer to have read the messages and pay attention to what it is. Maybe even practice what the move is and been able to put into practice at the right time. I don't really know what they can do to do that besides even more severe handholding which I think would just detract from the game, honestly. - [Danny] It reminds me a little bit of just how games have changed over the past 20, 30 years. And one of the instances where this sort of, at least from my experience, reads most clearly is, the first game I ever completed was The Secret of Monkey Island on the Amiga. And it took me I think three months. I was pretty young when it came out. I think I was eight or nine. And it took me like three months, a whole summer basically, to complete it. And then the remaster came out. I wanna say it was on 360 and PS3 maybe. And it was really cool and updated graphics and loads of cool new music and all that stuff, but they also had the tip system in it. And there were some things that you had to do in that game. Like to get to one of the little islands off of Melee Island, you had to use a rubber chicken and a wire to zip across it which kind of makes no sense. I remember being stuck on that forever. But in this thing, you could use a tip and it would like, I think there was three levels of tip. They would give you a little bit of a nudge, a little bit more of a nudge, and they would just say, just use the fucking chicken wire on the wire, right? And I remember thinking, oh that's a good thing, right? Kind of, 'cause it's helping people. But I guess it says less about how difficult games were and more about where our expectations of difficulty came from. Like when that happened years ago I didn't think, oh they made this game wrong. Or you know, this is stupid. I wish they did something to let me know how to do this. I just thought, oh I'm dumb. I don't know what to do to get to that island. Whereas these days we have this expectation that we sort of need to constantly be getting this positive feedback. Even when, like you said in the boss fights, often times I'll die 10 times in a row but it's because I was using the same tactics 10 times in a row. Other games might actually, some games if you play the boss fight for the third time, they without letting you know will make that boss fight easier. And they don't signal it. Games are constantly doing this sort of stuff. - [Clint] The new Resident Evil does that, I believe. I died one too many times in the police station and they were like, would you like to make the game easier? And I was like offended by it. I was like, hey man, F you. It's not my fault your buddy cornered me. I was trying to leave I was like, I appreciate the offer but at the same time, I was like, that would be great for someone who needs it. And it didn't offend me that it was in the game, it just offended me that they thought I needed it. I was like, hey, hey, I got this, man. Leave me alone. But I have no problem with it being in the game. I honestly don't care. - [Danny] And that was an instance where they told you. Where sometimes they don't even bother telling you. Actually, now that I think about it, there is another bell. Speaking of bells from Bloodborne. There's a bell in Sekiro, have you seen this one? The bell that you can ring and it makes the bosses harder. - [Clint] You know what? I've come across it but is that what it does? It makes stuff harder? - [Danny] I think it does two things. I think it makes one thing easier and one thing harder. Like I think it might increase the drop rate on certain things but it makes the bosses more difficult. I don't know exactly what it is. But definitely if you ring it it will make the game harder in some respects. - [Clint] I've come across it and the message was a little bit cryptic. It sort of made it sound like it was gonna be a harder game if you rang the bell. - [Danny] It's something like, don't ring the bell, or something. - [Clint] Yeah, yeah. I was like, I'm just gonna ignore this for now 'til I know what this is. I'm sure there'll be a lore video on it eventually that I can figure out whether or not I should ring it. This kinda makes me think of Wolfenstein, Doom. You could pick easy mode in those games and then have them like sucking on a pacifier. They're letting you know, like hey, you can play this way but don't you feel like a man about it. Like don't go bragging about it. And you know, I don't think there's anything wrong with that. Why not? - [Danny] And it's pretty funny that you mention that because when this conversation was happening, I think one of the questions I put out was like, let me know a game you play on easy because you don't care. And the one I said whenever I'm in really bad turbulence on a flight, I have my Switch with me usually and what I usually do is I just put it on easy mode and I try and score as many goals as I can and it kind of takes my mind off things. But the one that so many people kept saying which actually, now that I think about it, I have totally done as well is the MachineGames Wolfenstein games. Those games are brutally hard and a lot of the time they're kind of, I don't know, I feel like a lot of us play it because we want to feel powerful but also we just want to see what the story, where it goes. So I feel like that's, again, a lot of people play on an easier mode just so they can get through it and enjoy the experience. - [Clint] I used to play the Call of Duty's on like the Veteran or whatever the hardest one was until I realized, I don't remember which, it was probably one of your videos or somebody's videos, where it was like, you know this is just a visible line you have to cross, right? As soon as you cross that invisible line you stop spawning. And I was like, oh shit. So you mean I've purposely just been driving myself crazy? 'Cause some of those games there's certain sections where you're just like, how the fuck, how did he shoot me, no way. - [Danny] That's your World of Warcraft shit. You are farming them. You're just sitting back and farming these dudes. - [Clint] Basically, and I'm thinking like, we're gonna make it. Oh no, here comes some more. It's just like, I'm killing myself and for what? Like I could be having the same level of enjoyment and my frustration level's not getting near as high if I just turn it to the appropriate difficulty. Now, whether or not they should, there's a whole 'nother can of worms, should they include it? Like if it's gonna takeaway resources and time and if they have a vision, I think you're getting more into the singular vision versus the design by committee, right? Miyazaki obviously has a singular vision for his games but he also, I don't think he enjoys the fact that everyone thinks his games are so hard. I don't think that's something he takes pride in. I think he wants more people to play 'em. I think he's pretty much said as much. - [Danny] So I guess yeah, taking everything we've talked about today, like the different ways in which games can be more accessible to people, the sort of amorphous conversation about cheesing and difficulty and cheats and how they all sort of blend into each other. As somebody who has experience in these games, who enjoys them, who has been playing them, as far as I'm concerned, on a much harder difficulty level than most of us, what do you feel about Sekiro and how challenging it is? And how you were able to play it as somebody with a disability? Where do you land on it? - [Clint] Honestly, since I downloaded that mod couple days ago, it really got me thinking. Because essentially I've done the same thing the PC Gamer guy has done, except I haven't enabled the cheats, right? Some people may say, oh, you're using ultrawide or unlock frame rate, like you're cheating. And I would say, yeah but I paid for that 2880. I want my frames. I paid for this ultrawide. I'm not changing the game design so much as I'm just adding things they should have maybe thought about if they're gonna release a PC port today. I love the challenge. I feel like each encounter, sounds cliche, but it's like a dance of death, right? If you get surrounded by two or three normal guys, they can kill you. The bosses are very, very hard. Now, granted I haven't beaten the game. I'm sure there's gonna be a boss where I'm just like, oh my god, I'm gonna die 20-plus times. But so far, the most I've died was maybe, actuaLly it was the guy after Blazing Bull. I can't remember the name. I've started calling him General Fuck You. Because every time I get to him he'd just be like fuck you, you're not getting past the gate. And he was such a bitch. He had like a grab and a sweep and then also like, it was the first guy I think I encountered that had three of the warnings and they were all different things. So it took me a while. And you're fighting that closed little section between the walls and it made the camp bit, oh that was a pain. I probably died 10-plus times to him. That's probably the only guy I've died that much to. Maybe Lady Butterfly, might have died like seven or eight, nine times, maybe. I love it for what it is. And I can't thank you enough for it, man. I've had a blast playing it. It's really made me think about a lot of different things. Eventually I'd like to make a video on it or something. Do something more. But you know, I appreciate being brought on this podcast, man. I've had a blast thinking about this and ways that we could try to improve the game for people with disabilities. And I feel like they've done the best job they could. These controls are super responsive. I think transcendent's probably the best way I can describe it. I don't feel like I'm using a mouse and footboard when I'm playing and I feel like I'm the one-arm wolf. - [Danny] Well, you are the one-arm wolf and we really appreciate you coming in. There you go, just in case you didn't already have enough really good internet handles. You can add that one to your repertoire. We really appreciate your time, plqying the game and coming on to talk to us today. For folks who want to follow you, where can they catch you on the Twitter and whatnot? - [Clint] DisabledCable on Twitter. - [Danny] Awesome, good stuff. And yeah, how much more time do you think you have with it? Just as the parting question. Do you think this'll be something you play for the rest of the year? Or another couple of weeks? - [Clint] Honestly, probably another couple of months. I tend to have, like I'll have my action game. I'll have my shooter. And then I'll usually have a role-playing game. Some of those can be interchanged, kind of be the same thing. And this has been my go-to. Like alright, this is my single-player game. If I'm gonna play something with my brothers it's either gonna be Destiny or Vermintide. Not playing any MMOs now. So this is, I'll probably beat it sometime, I would say in the next month, month and a half. Something like that maybe. - [Danny] Awesome, well we wish you well on the journey. I'll be right there with you. I'll be probably a couple of bosses behind you actually. Thank you so much for coming on. And thank you so much to all of our Patrons for funding our work. As ever, you know you can follow us on Twitter @noclipvideo. I am @dannyodwyer on Twitter or /noclip if you wanna follow us on Reddit. And of course this podcast is available early if you're a Patron. Go to patreon.com/noclip to support this show, get it early, and also support all the documentaries we make on our YouTube channel. - [Clint] Go hit up this man's Patreon. Come on, y'all. - [Danny] Thank you so much We've actually got another YouTube channel for the podcast, youtube.com/noclippodcast. If you wanna watch this one. Alternatively, we are available on basically every podcast service in the known universe. iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, and loads, loads more. Soundcloud as well. We fixed the Soundcloud. There was a problem with our uploads but it's all right and ready now. Thank you so much for listening. Subscribe, give us a review if you can. We've never asked really, much, so if you can do that on iTunes or whatever. I mean, give us a good review. Don't give us a review if you think it's shit maybe. Just forget this part of the podcast. Go do something else. But thank you for listening, thank you for your time, and we'll see you next time. Actually, hold up one second. One little thing to add to the podcast before we close it out. I got an email from Clint after we recorded who felt bad that he had, in the haze of the podcast conversation, forgotten to call out two important people that helped him quite a lot on his journey. The first person is his brother, Matt, who sent him the Naga which he used when he first started coming back to play games. The other is his friend, Kyle, who was actually building him a two button foot switch when they found out that somebody was actually making one commercially., the Stinkyboard, which he ended up using afterwards. Clint's journey to actually being able to play games was quite long. He was in bed for the best part of a year, had to play on a laptop. And then through the help of using those inputs over the course of the next couple of months, learned to play with his feet and learned to play properly with one hand. So he wanted to give a shout out to the two of them who helped him so much when all this was going on, six, five years ago. And I thought I should definitely make the point of sticking it into the end of the podcast. So thank you so much to Matt and Kyle. Clearly he couldn't get to where he is right now without your support and help, so thank you very much.

Danny Is an entrepreneur ,  He founded "Live it up Israel" an online one stop shop platform for adventures, tours, outings & experiences in Israel. He came by to talk about online tourism, Starting a business in Israel and the best place to learn how to make chicken soup  to listen and download: Follow us @ :https://www.facebook.com/JerusalemRooftop Check out "Live It Up Israel" @:https://www.liveitupisrael.com Follow "Live It Up Israel" on facebook:https://www.facebook.com/liveitupisrael/ Follow Danny @:https://www.facebook.com/danny.zeeee Hosted by: Yehuda Seigel On Production and sound editing:  Chananel Benarroch

Timestamps for Episode 68 0:00 Introductions w/ Nisqy 4:40 Week 8&9 Recap 7:15 C9 Academy 10:35 How to call in. (Sorry if I misspell names) 13:43 Chuckey2 - Thinks Echo Fox has a good chance against TSM. 25:05 Danny - Is mad about how LCS and NA misuse academy and the way they build talent. 43:33 Jaden Favis - Doesn't think TL will make it to finals. 55:31 Fadman - TSM will definitely make semi's, but C9 will definitely beat them. 1:05:10 Diana "DJ" - Thinks Xmithie is the problem for TL, along with being their worst player. 1:12:39 Mark - Nisqy, who would you vote for all-team mid-laners. 1:15:43 Strive - Zikz is going to win coach of the split. 1:28:59 Nox Paragon - Prefers LEC's new playoff format. 1:43:39 Le Buddha Mike - Nisqy, has NA mid-laners been easier or harder to go against? Also, NA vs EU in general. 1:51:18 Outro and promotions 1:52:13 Markz's power ranking outcome

A bit of a change of pace this episode as Danny & Esteban get together to chat about their recent trip to NetherRealm Studios, and all the stuff coming to Noclip in March. iTunes Page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/noclip/id1385062988 RSS Feed: http://noclippodcast.libsyn.com/rssGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/If7gz7uvqebg2qqlicxhay22qny Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5XYk92ubrXpvPVk1lin4VB?si=JRAcPnlvQ0-YJWU9XiW9pg Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/noclippodcast Watch our docs: https://youtube.com/noclipvideo Sub our new podcast channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSHBlPhuCd1sDOdNANCwjrA Learn About Noclip: https://www.noclip.videoBecome a Patron and get early access to new episodes: https://www.patreon.com/noclip Follow @noclipvideo on Twitter Hosted by @dannyodwyerFunded by 4,666 Patrons. --------------------------------------------------------------   - [Danny] Hello and welcome to Noclip, the podcast about the people who play and make video games. I'm your host Danny O'Dwyer and this week, man, if you thought we went real casual with some of these recent podcasts, you've never seen casual like this week's. I'm joined by Esteban Martinez, a producer for Noclip, he's don't a bunch of work for us, including making his own documentary near the end of last year, our Spooky doc, a great insight into the fighting game community. Esteban's up in Philly, how ya doin', my friend? - [Esteban] I'm so casual right now, I'm just laying out on this couch in my pajamas ready to podcast. - [Danny] Is that how you edit? Do you sit on a couch, is that why your back is broken? - [Esteban] Yeah, pretty much, I just lay down and you know those like cool like lazy boy sofas, that's me, that's just the image of me with a laptop and that's how I edit. - [Danny] How do you actually edit because I edit, I've always, I did the standing thing for awhile and then edits take so long and I sit in like, I have a really nice desk that does do the standing stuff but when I bought my chair I didn't buy a particularly ergonomically sound one, I just bought like a nice leather one. - [Esteban] Yeah, I've been to your studio, I remember that chair, that chair hurts. So for me at least, not to get too deep into it, but I did spend a lot of money on the chair and the desk 'cause you're here at it the whole time so I've got a nice desk that can go from standing to regular position real easy and then like, I bought one of those Herman Miller chairs, the Aeron chair. - [Danny] Oh, yes, la de da! - [Esteban] It is the best purchase I've ever made in my entire life. Everything is just so comfortable, you focus more, my back doesn't hurt anymore, 'cause I used to have one of those $20 office chairs from Staples and I was like, this thing's actually killing me. Like, you know, you read all the reports of like, sitting too long will shorten your lifespan. I actually felt my life force draining from my body as I was sitting on this chair. It's like, all right, you know what, things are good, I'm in a new apartment, let's just bite the bullet and buy this chair. And I bought it and, look, I know you've had a child recently and I'm sure that's wonderful and joyous, but this chair, nothing's better than this chair, my first born will not be as good as this Herman Miller chair. - [Danny] God dammit, I got chair envy now. - [Esteban] It's really good. - [Danny] It's wise, its an investment in yourself, it's an investment in future medical bills that you will not have to pay. So really you're just, you're really investing in yourself. Fair play, we got a bunch of stuff to talk about today. This podcast is not just the two of us yammering on about ergonomics. We're gonna just kind of, I don't know, I feel like I need to clean the slate on everything we've done over the past couple of like weeks, like six weeks 'cause so much happened, and what's happening in the next 'cause there's also a lot happening. Like, I'm in the eye of the storm I feel right now and I kinda just wanna talk about all of it. So first of all, let's talk about the thing that both of us did, which is we just returned from Chi town, sunny Illinois-- - [Esteban] It was anything but sunny. - [Danny] Jesus, it was like, yeah, what was it, it was one of those temperatures that like, in like European it was minus 12 I think, so I think it was like, what was it, 15 or 20 in Fahrenheit? - Yes. - It was bloody freezing. Like, when we were flying in it was just frozen lakes. Every lake was frozen. - [Esteban] I mean, not even just flying in, when you stepped off the plane it was like, oh no, I messed up, I'm in the wrong place. - [Danny] Yeah, I had my, I had like a big jacket but I had it stuffed in my camera bag, in the bag with the lights in it, just to basically keep the lights from getting rattled around in the plane so when I got off the plan I wasn't wearing anything warm and that little gangway was like fucking, I felt like going through the six layers of hell, well the opposite of hell, freezing hell, which apparently is Chicago. But we were there to talk to mister Ed Boon and his friends about Mortal Kombat 11. It was like a press event, influencer event, and I've been kind of askin' him about maybe doing something post release, just kind of getting into, nothing confirmed or anything, but just kinda like askin' around just to see and they said, well, we don't know but there's this influencer and media thing goin' on if you wanna come. And I think that was like five days earlier and I emailed you and were like, are you free on Monday? I think you had just gotten back from Japan. - [Esteban] Oh man. - [Danny] Yeah, so kind of it all came together last minute. We were in and out, one day. We turned up, went to a diner, talked to Ed Boon, back on a plane, back to our respective cities on the East Coast, but what did you think, I wanna ask you what you thought of the game, 'cause we don't really cover that so much in the thing 'cause we're not doing fuckin' impressions here on Noclip. - [Esteban] Yeah, I get to put my journalist hat on now. Here's your preview of Mortal Kombat 11. - [Danny] Well you're like the fighting game expert here in my social life as well, but I also wanna know if like, I don't really consider MK a fighting game, to me it's always just like a fun arcade game I buy every time it comes out. - [Esteban] You just offended so many people right now. - [Danny] It kicked Smash off Evo. - [Esteban] That's right, get outta here, it's Mortal Kombat time. The game is great from what I played and what we can talk about but, you know, I've been a fan of Mortal Kombat, especially going back to the arcades, I was a big arcade kid growing up in Brooklyn so I played a bunch of the Mortal Kombats but especially coming from 9, like 9 was kind of like the big rebirth of Mortal Kombat or like the renaissance of the games. So they had a good track record with like 9 and then X was very good and now 11 just looks to be continuing that streak of just really quality games, lotta good single player stuff, good graphics, controls well, and man have the upped the scale on like Fatalities. - [Danny] Yeah, they're pretty wild, I didn't really appreciate how nuts they were when I was watching the trailers because like, that type of grotesque cinematography you're kinda used to in trailers a bit but when you're actually doing the fights and it happens, like, I love those those X-Ray things that were in, was that X or 9? - They were in both - They were in both, okay. Yeah, but they, I really like that, I guess they have the Fatal Blow system which is, they're basically just like mini Fatalities that happen during the fight. And then they have the Fatalities which are just like so absurd, there was one that I wish I recorded. It's Scorpion pulls the head off one, you know, the classic one. And the face, the like disembodied head with the like, almost looks like a tail hanging out of the bottom of their neck was just, like I laughed it was so disgusting. Did you have any favorite ones that stood out to you? - [Esteban] I mean, it's the one that's going around so much now, it's the Johnny Cage one. Not only is it, if you haven't seen it's homage to I think his Mortal Kombat II fatality where like-- - [Danny] Yeah, you punch off multiple heads. - [Esteban] Yeah, he just uppercuts you multiple times and just multiple heads came out in the old school games, like it made no sense. So in this one he uppercuts you and you hear a director off screen like, cut, cut, 'cause you're head's supposed to come off I guess, and so it's just multiple takes like in a Hollywood production and it's a really cool idea of merging his background lore to also this silly fatality existed in these older games. There was that one and Kano's is just, it's very simple where he just headbutts you and your head just explodes on the third one, very simple, very bloody, but just funny, it just made me laugh. - [Danny] Yeah, there's something about the slow mo thing that they do in this game where when the last strike that makes the person dead, as if they're not already dead at the previous couple of strikes, it just slows down in this comically grotesque way and then the word Fatality pops up and everyone on screen, either the person who's dying or the person who's just murdered them has just like the weirdest, the worst freeze frame face. So it's every, it's just so ridiculous, I absolutely, yeah, I'm really into it, no wonder, it's perfect like 2019 social media fodder as well. Like everyone's just sharing gifs of this stuff all day. - [Esteban] Yeah, I mean it's going everywhere, even in the Designing a Fatality, our video you put up, the Baraka one of him where just like, you're dead, you're already dead, he's already cut you up, he's cut you're face off, everything dead. No, he's just gotta go in there, stick in, grab your brain, and he like bites it and eats it and that's the last frame you see. - [Danny] That's what kills you, it's not the removal of the brain from the head, it's when Baraka had it for lunch. - [Esteban] He's hungry man, you know, all that fighting burns a lot of calories, you know, you just make the best of both worlds, two birds with one stone. - [Danny] The Johnny Cage stuff reminded me of when people ask what should Duke Nukem be in 2019? There's something about the tone of these games that they, they're like weirdly self serious in terms of their lore but they're so in on how stupid the whole thing is. Like just how stupid like, they just made these characters in in the early '90s based on what was popular in movies and ninja movies, both western and eastern, like Ninja Squad and some of the stuff coming out of Japan and they'd invent nothing and they had to sort of shamble a story around it but now they have to shamble a story around with like people who do motion capture and like famous celebrities doing VO but it's the same troop of like nutter, like what the fuck is Baraka, he's just a troll or-- - [Esteban] He's a Tarkatan soldier or general, Danny, don't you know the lore? - [Danny] God dammit, it's amazing. Yeah, I'm looking forward to playing it, they seem to be cramming a bunch of different stuff into the single player as well. Which I guess is the problem every time they do it, it's just that most people just wanna pick up and play but I guess they're stickin' a bunch of stuff into the towers. I didn't get to experience that much, what was that like? I know we can't talk about the campaign stuff at all but what was the towers like? - [Esteban] So the towers are returning from, I believe in MK9 they kind of started working on that feature and then they brought it to X. But the towers are essentially, think of like the old school arcade mode where you play like one character and you make your way through a tower of opponents. But they've added a bunch of stuff in terms of like, you have consumables, so you can summon Shinnok's hands to do like an attack or call in a drone strike or something like that, or even call in an assist like a Marvel 2, Marvel 3 style of like, you know, Scorpion comes and he throws his chain and then that sets up a combo, so it's pretty wacky and the computer for some reason at the press event that computer opponent was set to an incredible high level of difficulty for some of them. They had one where you fought the entire Cage family one on one on one, it was like gauntlet and you had like one life essentially and you just had to beat four people. But for a press event I was like taken aback for like how high the computer was set. So they're definitely gonna be challenging and they're definitely gonna be a lot of fun for, that's a bus, gimme a second. Philadelphia. They're definitely gonna be challenging and they're definitely gonna be a lot of fun for single players but I think that's, I think if anything Mortal Kombat and NetherRealm have leaned into the single player, right. We think fighting games in terms of like, just always two people or you go online and you play ranked or what not. But they really know that not everybody can do that or not everybody wants to do that so let's give them a story mode, let's give them these towers, let's give them the Krypt. Like the Krypt last game was essentially like Skyrim, like it was crazy, it was like a first person, or more like Amnesia, it was a first person horror game. I couldn't play, I'm bad with horror games so I couldn't play the Krypt 'cause things will just jump scare you all the time so I never unlocked anything in Mortal Kombat X. But they do that, they lean into the single player and I think that's what really sets them apart, outside of the gameplay, outside of the graphics, what really sets NetherRealm apart lately is them leaning so hard into the single player aspect. - [Danny] Yeah I guess it's some learnings maybe they've brought over from their little flirtations with DC but I was even, I went back and played the arcade collection, which actually isn't on Steam anymore, but I found a key for it, I bought it through Amazon weirdly and it spat out a Steam key at me and then I guess I installed it and realized I think the reason they pulled it is that it's got all that Games for Windows Live shit embedded in it so you have to create a local profile and do all that to get to the main menu. But I played through a bunch of the first three of them again just to get a bit of gameplay capture and just have a bit of fun and yeah, it just reminded me of like, oh yeah, this is what fighting games used to be, and also this is what most fighting games are to me still. It's like way harder difficulty, especially the arcade ones 'cause they were the arcade ports. Way harder difficulty and then it's you against, you know, just a stream of people, it's like a rougelike. in a different way. - [Esteban] How long can you survive on this one quarter, that's all you got. - [Danny] Right, so yeah, it's funny how these games are just like, yeah, it's all about setting up the scenarios. Like even the different fighters, they just do such a good job of like setting up the scenario even with the quips that they talk about at the start, you know, like having Baraka and Johnny Cage shit talk each other before is, it's funny. Yeah, sure, and it makes you wanna like, I don't know, do all the different duos up against each other and stuff so I'm lookin' forward to it, there's a beta open near the end of this month I think. - [Esteban] There's an online stress test I believe next week, so the weekend of the 15th I believe. - [Danny] Excellent. - [Esteban] So they did it with Injustice 2 last go and it worked pretty well, it was a little rough with the stress test but that's why they do it and I remember hearing good things, or decent things about Injustice 2's online netcode. So hopefully that comes true for MK11 'cause I know a lot of people wanna play it. - [Danny] Yeah, all right, let's move on from the game I guess, before we get into everything else, what did you think about NetherRealm and the studio? It's in like a weird office park, right? - [Esteban] Yeah, I remember us getting there and we were very confused 'cause, I think the biggest thing that confused me is like you have NetherRealm on one side and then you have like a kinder gym or daycare center on the right, and like man, these two things don't go together at all but all right, cool. - [Danny] And there's like a big sign, it's not like NetherRealm studios is written in like, you know, Impact on a bulletin board with all the rest of them, it's a fucking, it's the biggest sign on the, you know, the list of businesses and it also just says like NetherRealm Studios written in the gnarliest font ever. - [Esteban] Yeah, it's not hiding, it's making you well aware that it's there. - [Danny] We got a nice tour of the office. It kind of reminded me of like a bunch of Japanese studios, just a lot of, what do you call them, cubicles, not much light, the folks there seemed pretty cool, a pretty nondescript canteen, might get very high in our top 10 canteen video. But the sound stage is pretty cool, they have a really large motion capture stage, it's in the Ed Boon video. But yeah, apart from that though, I guess there was that main area, right, you filmed a bunch of with the-- - [Esteban] Yeah, I think the main area was kind of like what took the cake for me at least where they just had, you know, it's like a little small museum of just NetherRealm's past, they had like, I think the coolest thing I saw there is they had the original, I don't wanna call them figures, but originally the statues they used to make Motaro, Goro, and Kintaro and stuff like that and I forget who was giving the tour, but they said like, hey, we have these encased 'cause if we even touch them once they'll basically disintegrate, that's how old these things are. And they had props from the movie, they had the Goro head from the movie and they had all the various toys. They don't have an Amiga copy of Mortal Kombat II, Danny was very happy about that. - [Danny] Well they might, they said had a DOS one but he did say they cycle them out. So maybe they do have one, I almost brought my copy of MK2 on Amiga 600 for Ed to sign. His office was like right there, and also you said you noticed, I didn't recognize what they were but they were like these long rectangular logos and you said they were the cabinet heads, right? - [Esteban] Oh yeah, so they had the marquees, like the marquee titles for like Mortal Kombat 1, II, and 3 right next to like the museum, or the foyer I guess and they just had 'em right there and I was like, oh that's really cool, they even took pieces of the cabinet. You know, they have their own arcade too which we didn't get to go in but I saw three stations of the Grid which is like so rare to find even one. I was like, man, if it wasn't for this press tour I'd be in that arcade right now. - [Danny] Yeah, that was pretty cool actually. There was a lot of people on that tour so it was kinda hard to actually see anything and I felt like there were other people there who were way more jazzed to be there who were like long time fans or something so I was kinda happy to hang back and hang out weirdly with a bunch of ex press people that I know from London and San Francisco so it was kind of like a weird meet and greet as well which was really cool to catch up with some folks. - [Esteban] Yeah, it felt like you came into NetherRealm, you signed whatever you needed to sign, and then you said hi to Danny, that seemed to be the course of events as people were coming through the door. - [Danny] That's 'cause we turned up early as well 'cause they were all staying at a hotel I guess, we paid our own way of course so we kind of walked 10 minutes in the snow, sorry about that again. - It's all right. - To get there. What have you been up to outside of Noclip stuff, 'cause there's a bunch of Noclip stuff I need to get into in a second and I'm conscious I'm just gonna be rambling so what've you actually been doing? How was Japan, you we're at Evo, right? - [Esteban] Oh man, you know, not to go too far behind the scenes, but like, you asked me what I've been up to and I actually had to take a minute and just be like, what have I been up to? 'Cause I feel like the couple of weeks have been a blur. - [Danny] You've been nonstop, man, yeah. - [Esteban] Yeah, the biggest thing has been Evo Japan. I went to Tokyo for a little bit to do some work and also to just hang out before things got busy and then I went over to Fukuoka, which is a place I've never been before but it was very cool and I got to go to Evo Japan and shoot some stuff there and that was pretty awesome, I'm still recovering from jet lag, it's getting better. - [Danny] Well you were there for a while, you were there for like over a week, right? - [Eseteban] I was there for like a week and half, two weeks. - [Danny] Yeah okay, that's gonna take awhile. - [Esteban] It has been taking awhile. - [Danny] Yeah, East Coast US is also like the worst, it's like 13 hour difference or something, right? - [Esteban] Yeah, it's like they're like a whole half a day ahead essentially. So, Evo Japan was pretty cool but for the most part I've been, we went to Chicago, we did the NetherRealm thing, I've also been kinda skipping around on other secret missions on my own, I'll be able to talk about those eventually. - [Danny] Oh, you're gonna do that, yeah? - [Esteban] Yeah, I gotta do that, I'm gonna big time you right now, I'm so sorry. But the biggest thing I've been doing outside of editing and shooting is just getting back to playing games. Which is something I haven't had the chance to really do until recently. - [Danny] Yeah, I've not over the past month so please tell me what the fuck I'm missing 'cause all I've been doing is playing like Astroneer and Hades for gameplay. Sorry System Era and Supergiant, not that I don't enjoy those games anyway but, you know, I don't know nothing about Resident Evil 2 and the only game of Apex Legends I've played was like the day it came out, so what have you been up to? - [Esteban] I think the biggest game I've been playing recently has been Resident Evil 2. - [Danny] Oh, cool. - [Esteban] I got the remake the day it came out before I left for Japan or what not. And I kind of, I ran through the first campaign with Leon and that game is incredible. Especially coming from somebody who didn't like, I know of the original and I played a little bit of the original but I never like beat it, I just watched all these speed runs, stuff like that. But to see how they took the concepts of the original and evolved them for this remake and not one to one either, like you don't go through the same hallways you did in the same order or even if you do the same events might not happen at the times you expect them. They did a really good job of keeping everything familiar but not one to one copying it and just kinda pushing it forward. Like, if you look at what Resident Evil 7 did Resident Evil 7 brought Resident Evil back but it also pushed it into like a new realm, like it learned from things like Amnesia or it learned from things like Soma, where Resident Evil 2, this remake, is taking all the lessons they've learned from that game and trying to make the ultimate Resident Evil, trying to make that Resident Evil that when people talk about Resident Evil they're trying to capture that essence and that feeling and put it into this game and think they did a really, really good job. It's hard too, there are some mean moments in this game. And I know everyone's posting clips of Mr. X, he's one of 'em, he's just one of 'em, but there's some mean stuff and some mean tricks they pull in this game but otherwise I had a really good time playing this, I'm gonna go back and do Claire next soon. - [Danny] Rad, yeah, I'm looking forward to, I got it and played maybe two hours, actually that might be generous, maybe closer to one hour, and yeah, I was kinda taken aback. I'm one of these people who, like I completed the first Resident Evil a bunch of times, like I've played through that one loads. Res E 2 was never really my jam so I only played the start of it. And yeah, I actually didn't realize until I guess the week it came out that it wasn't just an HD remake of Res E 2, because Res E 1 have been HD remaked like four times by the time this one came around so I was like, oh, they'll just do the same thing. But yeah, now actually I just want them to go back and do this to the first game. - [Esteban] Yeah, I know a lot of people have been talking about that, a lot of people have been talking about Resident Evil 3. Resident Evil 3 was like the first real Resident Evil I actually played all the way through. 'Cause I'm really bad, I mentioned before, I'm really bad with scary games, even like, Resident Evil's not horror scary, like jump scare every five seconds, but it's like that sense of it could happen, like something could attack me at this point. But Resident Evil 3 was the first time the series really leaned into action where you're constantly on the run and Jill's armed to the teeth really. So I played through that, so a lot of people have been talking about, well what if they did what they did with this remake to Resident Evil 3, they already got the thing that's chasing you all the time and they've got the police station so I kinda hope they do that with 3. It's probably too soon to do that with 4 but I love 4, but it could use a little streamlining too. It's on everything, pretty sure it'll be on my phone in like five seconds. - [Danny] It's so much bigger of a game though I feel like. Like, Resident Evil 2 is like one where it's so confined, like the design of it is, you know, I mean, eventually, but it's not like Nemesis or Veronica where now these larger scale sort of things where you go off into parts of the environment. So yeah, I wonder, would it have the same effect 'cause that's what's so cool about this is that it's like, they've made the world of that police station and the city just richer, it's not like it's, you know, they've just made it more detailed than the way that modern games can and with mechanics as well, like adding a bunch of different stuff so it's a bit more emergent than the first one was. 'Cause the first games are just like horror Sudoku really, you're just collecting one thing and going to another. What else have you been playing, aside from your remakes? - [Esteban] I've been playing a lot of Tekken, getting back into fighting games. I haven't played, while I was in Japan they updated the arcade version 'cause it's been back a couple of characters and stuff like that so I actually got to play in arcades again. Part of the reason I go to Japan so much outside of work is 'cause I just like playing in arcades and it's hard to play in arcades in the states 'cause they don't really exist anymore. So playing a lot of Tekken over there, getting better, getting my fundamentals back, becoming a competitor, I might compete, we'll see we'll see. And then Apex Legends, I think everyone's been playing Apex Legends. - [Danny] Yeah, people have just been asking me to make a documentary about it, that's all, over and over and over again. I think mostly because we were just at Respawn for the Half-Life thing, we interviewed Vince Zampella presumably while they were chipping away on that thing. Yeah, that's cool, like I said, I only played an hour or two the day it came out. Have you consistently been still playing? - [Esteban] I play at least for an hour every day. - [Danny] Oh man, really, god, everyone's playing this game. - [Esteban] And it's like the first, we've played PUBG and stuff like that and that was okay, I could at least call people out and be like, oh, we're getting shot from over there, by the way, I'm down. - [Danny] I played PUBG yesterday. - [Esteban] Oh, look at you. But this is like the first, I really like Titanfall 2, in fact I still, Apex Legends had made me buy Titanfall 2 on PC even though I own a PS4 copy and play that nonstop so I'm switching between the two all the time. - [Danny] It's real good. - [Esteban] The gunplay is so good, not even talking about the campaign or the multiplayer, just the core of the game itself, but the gunplay is like insane. And then when you take that and you move that to like a battle royale, and yeah, you lose some movement stuff, like you can't run across the walls or anything like that, you don't have a double jump, but the speed of the game is still pretty quick. I think my longest match in Apex is maybe 25 minutes. And that's like getting to the end, that's last two squads. - [Danny] Which I think in PUBG I wanna say that's closer to 40. - [Esteban] Yes, PUBG's a much longer game compared to Apex but in Apex you have so many more options for engaging and disengaging with all the character abilities and the ability to use the terrain to your advantage. So like, you carry momentum when you slide down terrain and you can use that to jump further or, you know, when you're running and healing or walking and healing you can't run but you can slide down so using terrain to, if you're losing a fight, oh we can disengage, I can create a smoke field or whatever, get outta there and we can come back and try to figure out a way. - [Danny] Ah, this is why I'm scared of getting back into it now 'cause now like, I still haven't figured out guns and you're all learning how to be fucking ninjas in this thing and it's just gonna be like week two of Gears of War when suddenly everyone's figured out the timing of that shotgun kill and you're just like a lamb to the slaughter. - [Esteban] It's not that hard, like I went away for two weeks to Japan after the game came out and that's all we were talking about. Outside of fighting games we were like, man, everyone's gonna be really good by the time we get back, this is really bad. But when I came back I got like two wins Like, it's not hard to adjust and especially, you know, you're a really good shot so there's some weapons that you can take advantage of that other people can't, like long range fights are kind of rare. I feel like this game is more mid range to close range so they just updated some of the guns so that might actually change. But if you've got the reflexes or if you're just a good shot you'll be fine and then balancing that with this pinging thing, like this pinging system is so good in this game. I have not talked to anybody, I play randomly. All my wins have been from random teams. - [Danny] They're adding it to Fortnite now. They're actually like literally adding the same. To me it's the pinging system from Portal 2 just in a different game. It's contextual stuff to use. - It's super contextual. Like it's contextual to the point where like if we're in a building and someone hits me through a window or something like that I can hit the H key and my, or whatever key I have it assigned to, and my character will be like, I'm being hit from somewhere with a sniper rifle. - [Danny] Yeah, I'm doing like a day off tomorrow. I decided to turn the $20 tier on Patreon into I'm just going to like play games all day and stream it. - [Esteban] Yeah, I think that's a really good choice. - [Danny] Yeah, just to take some time off more than anything else. To have some like work dedicated time off 'cause otherwise I'll just never do it and I'll keep editing and keep burning myself out all the time. So yeah, maybe tomorrow I'll give a go at that. Let's get into what's coming up on Noclip and what's already come up on Noclip 'cause it's been a crazy couple of weeks here. The second episode of our Hades documentary has gone up, that was a lot of fun to put together. Shout out to Jeremy Jayne over in Berkeley for putting that one together. The name of it has already escaped me, what is it, what did we call it, we called it episode two? The first one is called, How Supergiant Secretly Launched Hades, the second one's called, the Chaos of Patching Hades, that's right, so it's basically all about them adding the Chaos update and the one that came after that. We kind of split the difference over a couple of months. We're at work on the third one which will be up in about six weeks time, we have like a, five weeks time actually, we have a calendar we're sorta working with that we're gonna make public soon enough that'll show you what's coming out for the rest of the year. There's also a Patreon Q and A video we shot with them which will be going up, I think probably closer to the end of this month and then also we have the behind the scenes from episode two, the deleted scenes rather, sorry, which will be going up, it's already been edited, just going through clearance with them to make sure that we didn't show a screen we shouldn't have and then it'll be up at some stage next week. The Astroneer documentary's up as well, delighted to get that one done and dusted. Shout out to Joe Dorada over at System Era and Samantha Kalman, a friend of Noclip for putting me on that story I guess two years ago. That was a hard one to edit, it's probably one of the more difficult human stories we've covered on Noclip and it was kind of a sensitive topic so I'm kind of, as relieved as anything else that we didn't sort of drop the ball on that one. People seem to like it which is good. Have you had a chance to check that one out yet? - [Esteban] I have not, I downloaded it for my recent flight and then I lost my iPad on the plane so. - [Danny] No, you didn't! - [Esteban] I also cried for my human interest story. Yeah, I got it back though, I got it back. - [Danny] Oh, thank god. - [Esteban] But yeah, I wrote up a bunch of cool stuff and like cool project stuff, got off the plane, got in my Uber, realized I totally left it in the little, you know, where they keep the magazines at. - [Danny] Yeah, how'd you get it back? - [Esteban] So, not to get too nitty gritty, but American, they automated everything, like they're lost and found stuff so you just fill out a form online. You know, hey, this is what it looks like, this is where it is, this is where it was last seen. And they either hold it for you at the airport or they can ship it to you. I was luckily coming back to the same airport and they found it and they gave it to me. - [Danny] That's nuts. I had those Airpods, I held out on getting Airpods for like forever 'cause I just thought they were needlessly expensive and ridiculous and then when you have a kid and not having dangly things in front of their face sometimes when you're around and doing stuff, it's kinda handy just to have one in while a podcast is on. You know, while you're playing with them with the toys for like two hours. So, god, I'm a bad parent, so I got them, but I was in the airplane and I fell asleep with them in my ears and I woke up and both were out of my ears. - [Esteban] Oh no. - [Danny] Yeah, and it was when we were like deplaning so it was, I was like jumping up around. I eventually found both of them but I had an absolute heart attack. Well that Astroneer doc it's up, it's about 50, 45 minutes long I think. The Jeff Gerstmann podcast is coming next after this one. It'll be next week I guess, from when you're listening to this, if you listen to this when it was the week it went up. I did a vote basically on what people would like to see from our backlog of bits and bobs we've yet to finish and this was the far and away winner so getting that done at the moment. It'll be more of the story style podcast we started out with and it's a long one, about an hour and 20 I think is what it's gonna land on. A lot of trips coming up for the rest of this month, I'm off to South by Southwest but before I talk about mine you're also going, right? - Yes. - But now with Noclip. What are you doing? Can you say? - [Esteban] I'm trying to figure that out right now. - [Danny] Okay, you're doing something. - [Esteban] I'll be at South by Southwest helping out with a stream for a very large company, that's all I can say. Apple, IBM, there we go. - Sure, why not. - [Danny] Yeah, get those International Business Machines. Is that what that means, I don't know. - [Esteban] That's right, buy stocks now. - [Danny] I'm gonna be there doing a panel at South by Southwest Gaming called Noclip, Convincing Gamers to Love Developers, which is not Noclip, Convincing Gamers to Make Love to Developers, which was the original rejected title. It's part of the game and design development track. I went on their website and they said it was, level beginner, which-- - That doesn't make sense. - [Danny] They don't know what I'm gonna talk about, I could go up there and talk about fuckin', I don't know, object oriented programming, we'll see what they think then. - [Esteban] Hit 'em with the intricacies of god rays. - [Danny] Yeah, we'll go straight into LUTs, an hour on LUT talk. Yeah, I don't know, I have like three version of that talk in my head and I'm basically gonna do a show of hands and start to see if people are either developers or working in PR or are just game players, not just game players, but you know, just game players, and then I'm gonna do it from there. I've got a couple of meetings as well and there's a couple of other reasons I'm heading out there. And the other reason is that it piggybacks right onto GDC and this our biggest ever GDC. This is the Game Developers Conference in sunny San Francisco. We are all heading out, well Jeremy still lives there. I'm heading over, Esteban is coming too. Jeremy is currently resting up at home 'cause he broke his foot, kicked a chair while he was making food apparently. - [Esteban] Shoulda bought a Herman Miller. - [Danny] He shoulda, yeah. - [Esteban] You guys are making mistakes. - [Danny] You can kick that thing all day, it just takes it. - [Esteban] Oh, it'll break your leg, it's made out of steel. - [Danny] So he's resting up at the moment. So that's, that's not the only reason you're coming but it was definitely like, we had like a mounting amount of interviews and I was like, we really need to bring Esteban, we're not gonna be able to do all this just the two of us. And then we kept getting more and more and more and I was like, yeah, we're probably gonna do that and then he broke his foot and that day four more people confirmed and we were like, yeah. I like called you up I think and was like, can you definitely please come to GDC? - [Esteban] So I woke up that morning and the first thing I see is a Tweet saying from Jeremy where he's like, I broke my foot, dammit. And then I was like, I bet in 15 minutes I'm gonna get a text from Danny that says, hey, are you free for GDC, are you still free? And then like 10 minutes later you were like, hey, are you like free for GDC still? And I was like, yep, yes I am. - Amazing. We have a ridiculous calendar so this is, we did this two years ago and it was really fun and we got a bunch of these little mini interviews, we called 'em Noclip Sessions then. We're not gonna brand them this time, we're just gonna make a bunch of smaller vids, kind of like the Corey Barlog one or the Ed Boon one. Just like a little, I don't know, not super long ones but interesting little chats. I'm looking at my calendar right here, man, and I mean, they're all between 10 and four during the day, we've got the studio of Patreon booked for basically the entire week. Now we have everyone from like mid tier developers, some massive indies, folks from Japan, some big western devs, and a bunch of interesting indies that people have been asking us to talk to, folks to do a unionization and, it's a crazy murderers row of names, some of which people would be very familiar with and some of which people won't. If you're gonna be at GDC we're not gonna be around that much but we will be at the showing of our Half-Life documentary as part of the GDC Film Festival, which is on at 4:40 p.m. on I wanna say the Tuesday, I closed my calendar like a silly boy. That's gonna happen at Yerba Buena I think it's called, yeah it's on the Tuesday, that's the 19th of March. It's gonna be at the Yerba Buena, I think it's called film, cinema or whatever, I forget what it's called, it's just that little one that's right there in the park. And yeah, we'll be around before and after to hang out and talk and stuff. I think myself and Jeremy are gonna get up on stage afterwards and do a Q and A or something, so that should be fun. So we're not an official meet or anything, we just kinda can't, like I used to work in SoMa in San Francisco and getting a bar for 20 people will be impossible. I feel like if Noclip did a meet up at GDC we'd get like 100 people so I just can't do it. So we'll be at the, if you're at the premier or the showing, it's not a premier, you can literally watch, almost a million people have watched it on YouTube already. - [Esteban] I don't know if you know, Danny, but that video's been out for quite awhile. - [Danny] We did this last year too with Horizon and it was amazing, sadly they had to turn people away. So that might happen this year again. The weirdest part about this is that the film festival's sponsored by Valve, who did not talk to us for the documentary. - [Esteban] Oh man, I'm sure they love this. - [Danny] Yeah, so this is gonna be a little awkward. Yeah, so we'd love to see you there before and afterwards, before or afterwards, whatever works for you even if you can't go watch the movie we'd be happy to come up and say hey. If you're not going to GDC though we're doing something weird, we're doing something new on our Patreon. They have this special offers thing which I didn't really ever want to do because I feel like our tiers our fair and cool and what not but just considering how big we're going at GDC this year it would be helpful to get a little bit more cash in the kitty as it were, so what we're doing, if you want, is we're gonna add this thing called an event pass, very careful not to put GDC in the actual name of that 'cause I'm sure we wouldn't be allowed to do that. Although, GDC tickets are pretty expensive. How much did it say when you, like $2,500 or something? - [Esteban] It was like 25 to $2,800 and you sent me this link that was like hey, just sign up for this. And I saw it like, GDC has like a little checkout and I saw $2,800 and I was like, is he out of his damn mind? - [Danny] Yeah, we have press passes so he didn't, you literally-- - [Esteban] You go through another page and then it makes it like zero, like a coupon code but you gave me a heart attack at once point. - [Danny] You literally get a coupon code for like $2,500. - [Esteban] It's crazy! - [Danny] Yeah, like can I redeem this somewhere else maybe? - [Esteban] Yeah, can I buy a mortgage? Can I put a down payment somewhere else with this? - [Danny] Can I buy 10 of these chairs, or three, I don't know how much they cost. But yeah, we're gonna put that in the $10 tier. If you're already in the $10 tier or up you'll get all this already but if you're in the five, if you wanna jump up. Basically what we're gonna do is live check ins every day so we're in the studio from Monday to Friday and I'm also there Sunday and Saturday, we might do those days too but we're definitely gonna do Monday to Friday we're gonna do little live streams from the studio. I was thinking about doing them longer day but I don't know how good the internet is in the studio so I don't wanna commit to it but we're definitely gonna do these live check ins where we basically host a little live stream and let you know who we're interviewing that day, stuff like that, like kinda insider bits which we kind of wouldn't necessarily feel comfortable broadcasting to the entire wider world but it'll be fun to do for some of our Patrons. Yeah, and if you have any questions for those people or questions for us we'll all be there. So that's our, yeah, Noclip at GDC event pass, Noclip games development event pass, let's call it. - [Esteban] Early access Noclip GDC buzzword keyword search influencer pass. - [Danny] There'll be a post about it in the next few days anyway, yeah. - [Esteban] It's the battle pass for Noclip. You can start it for free and then pay $10 later and get all the costumes. - [Danny] I did think about doing loot boxes at one stage where we do like a real world loot box but it's always got something good in it but then I like ran the numbers on it and was like, no one would ever pay money, the amount of money it would take to make everything be really really rad no one should ever have to pay blind. I think loot boxes are inherently evil so even with all good intentions I couldn't figure out a way of doing it. It's a bit of a shame. Yeah, so you'll be there too. You've been to San Francisco but not to GDC, is that right? - [Esteban] I've been to San Fransicso but I've never been to GDC, I've always wanted to go to GDC, I love the talks that they have there and it just seems like a cool place to be. - [Danny] Yeah, it's super cool. I'm not sure how much time we'll have to actually go to the Moscone Center, what I'm trying to do is make it so on the Friday at least we've got a bit of time so we can run in for awhile. But also we can so stuff in shifts, like I'm sure we won't need all three of us all the time over at Patreon but it's gonna be a lot, man, we're gonna come out of that thing with like 20 interviews and then we have to figure out how to cut them and who's cutting them and which ones are coming out and what not so a lot of stuff comin' to Noclip. And that's a podcast, basically. Just wanted to give an update to what we're doin'. That Jeff Gerstmann one will be up next, you know, you've heard all the stuff that's coming depending on whatever tiers you're in. Esteban, where can people follow you and watch you play video games? - [Esteban] So I, you can follow me on Twitter at Twitter.com/TheBesteban, that's where all my stuff is at. I'm also getting the habit of streaming at least once a week, nothing like crazy like Ninja like every day but trying to stream at least once a week. - [Danny] He's hanging out with Neymar at soccer games now, he doesn't have time to stream. - [Esteban] Yeah, come on. But I'm here to take his spot now, dyed my hair red and everything. So you can follow me at Twitch.tv/TheBesteban 'cause branding and I'll be up there, you know, it's casual, once a week we just play games. Right now I'm downloading Devil May Cry 5 actually as we're speaking. - Oh sweet! - [Esteban] As soon as that thing hits midnight. - Is that out tomorrow? - Tomorrow, yeah. So I'm probably gonna actually play couple hours tomorrow, get into that game, 'cause I love Devil May Cry, so that's it for me. - [Danny] I like those Nigerian movies, the trailers for the-- - Yeah, they're cannon now. It's crazy, I can't believe Capcom made them cannon. - [Danny] I mean, they fuckin' might as well be. Like, they make as much sense as the official lore as far as I'm concerned so. - [Esteban] Oh man, now the Devil May Cry Reddit is on fire, way to go, Danny. - [Danny] All our Patrons who love DMC are out. I did really like that Ninja Theory one though, that was quite fun. - Oh no, what have you done. - [Danny] @Dannyodwyer on Twitter, @noclipvideo if you don't follow us there. You know the drill, we're all over the internet, r/noclip on Reddit, we got a Patreon in case you didn't know. This podcast is on Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, loads more, and we have a YouTube channel, Youtube.com/Noclippodcast. We also make video game documentaries at Youtube.com/noclipvideo if you didn't know that. Patrons get all that stuff for the show early, this show early, sorry, for five bucks a month. Thank you to all of those folks for supporting our work, see you next time, Jeff Gerstmann will be up and then we'll probably do a post GDC wrap up as well but we also have a bunch of developer interviews coming over the next couple of weeks as well so stay tuned. Thanks, Esteban for hanging out. - Thanks for having me. - No worries, and we'll see the rest of you next time.

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Danny talks to Steven Spohn about growing up as a gamer with a disability, and the work he does at the Ablegamers charity to make games more accessible. (Recorded January 10th) iTunes Page: https://itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/noclip/id1385062988 RSS Feed: http://noclippodcast.libsyn.com/rssGoogle Play: https://play.google.com/music/listen?u=0#/ps/If7gz7uvqebg2qqlicxhay22qny Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/5XYk92ubrXpvPVk1lin4VB?si=JRAcPnlvQ0-YJWU9XiW9pg Watch our docs: https://youtube.com/noclipvideo Sub our new podcast channel: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCSHBlPhuCd1sDOdNANCwjrA Learn About Noclip: https://www.noclip.videoBecome a Patron and get early access to new episodes: https://www.patreon.com/noclip Follow @noclipvideo on Twitter Hosted by @dannyodwyerFunded by 4,913 Patrons. -------------------------------------------------------------- - [Danny] Hello and welcome to Noclip; the podcast about people who play and make video games. I'm your host Danny O'Dwyer and today I'm joined by somebody who kind of has a finger in both of the pies we generally talk about; people who play games and also people who make games. We're gonna talk to him about a lot of different areas of his work and also the ways in which he enjoys playing games as well. He is the COO of AbleGamers, he is a fellow Trending Gamer nominee survivor. I am delighted to be joined by Mr. Steven Spohn. How are you doing my friend? - [Steven]I'm doing well. Can we just talk about pies for the next 15 minutes? - [Danny] I wanted to bring up the pie because I was trying to think about how you fit into the world of video games and, in a way, your work at AbleGamers is involved in both sides of the equation. You help individuals who have trouble accessing video games to get controllers and the means by which to play the games they wanna do, but you're also talking to game studios and hardware manufacturers about they ways in which they can make it so you don't have to do the other thing. - [Steven] Yeah. The truth is when I did the game awards video, one of the things that they captured me saying was that I don't know how I got where I am and I don't know what I'm doing and it was the absolute most truthful thing I had said during the whole piece. I don't know exactly what you would call my job. My job is literally whatever AbleGamers needs and sometimes that's talking to hardware, sometimes that's talking to developers, sometimes that's talking to fundraisers, sometimes that's talking to people with disabilities who need tech support, so I have really become the Jack of all video game trade at the moment. - [Danny] I've got a lot of questions about your work at AbleGamers and we've got some from the Patrons too. We've actually been, like, I feel like we've been working on the AbleGamers documentary, in some respect, either us having conversations or filming stuff like we did last summer, it feels like it's been going on forever and it's something that we eventually will get done. Today I kind of wanna talk a bit more about Steven; about how you came to be in the position you're in because, like you said, in a way I can't imagine anyone else doing your job, but also I couldn't imagine anyone doing your job until you did it. So, let's go all the way back. When did you start playing games or when did you start getting interested in games? - [Steven] I became interested in video games actually thanks to a friend I had made in high school. We were in a vo-tech class and we were doing AutoCAD designing and... - [Danny] Oh, cool. - [Steven] I, for just a brief hot second, I wanted to be an assistant engineer and then I wondered how much work it is and I said, "Nah". - [Danny] What was the name of the class? It sounded like volt-tech class. - [Steven] It was vo-tech. - [Danny] Vo-tech? - [Steven] Yeah, vocational technical school. - [Danny] Oh, okay, okay. - [Steven] Yeah, vo-tech is like the American, "We're not going to real school, we're going to fancy 'you're going to learn actual useful life skills' classes". - [Danny] Awesome. - [Steven] Yeah, like its where your mechanics go and all the people who are gonna do computers and what they do is, or at least in my school, you did your math and your science in the morning and then they shipped you on a bus during lunch to go to the other school. It's kinda cool. - [Danny] Wow, we had something similar in Ireland. It was called Leaving Cert. Applied and it was where all my friends who are tradesmen went. Like electricians and plumbers and then they all ended up moving to Australia anyway because the economy crashed and nobody was building houses. So you were in that class and you were learning AutoCAD. Was that the first piece of software you ever encountered? - [Steven] It was the first time that I had really worked on computers for more than a few minutes. Of course, everybody had Oregon Trail on their MathLab or whatever, but I grew up poor so we didn't own a computer and that was really the only time I got to have hands on a computer from multiple hours at a time. One of my friends there worked at a computer shop and he was telling me how he just got all these parts for computers secondhand because people would turn them in for repairs and then they wouldn't want them, so he would just end up fixing them and taking them home, and I was like, "That's amazing", so he started talking me into getting into video gaming and he told me about this fabulous game where you could go online and you could have a life and you could do amazing things like walking around the town of Britain and you could fight dragons and you could own a house, and I was like, "This is amazing", and so he sort of talked me into this persistent world, he was a Guild Master in his own right. That's how I got sucked in to Ultima Online and from there I just became super interested in the alternative reality that video games present. - [Danny] Was there an element of the escapism that appealed to you? Escapism is something that we all enjoy, but perhaps somebody in your position, maybe, was there an added element of escapism for you? - [Steven] For me it was the timing of where it hit me in life. I had gone into my senior year of high school and I had discovered friends and it sounds corny, cheesy; it's something that I'm probably gonna get up on a stage and give a TED Talk about one day, but it's interesting how our school system kind of segregates people with disabilities away from the main population if you let them. They'll put you in a special classroom and they will put you in a special room to eat lunch and they really keep you almost walled off from everyone else and I was super lucky that I had a friend who talked me into doing that and I made friends. Long story short, I sort of got a huge case of senior-itis and I just didn't want to do the school thing anymore. I wanted to go have a social life because holy crap having friends is awesome! And so I just wanted to go experience that and have fun with it and it was fantastic. The only problem was that I was just at the age where we were transitioning from middle-teens to late-teens so it was a couple of years of doing... - [Danny] Hell. - [Steven] Oh, hell! But also doing video games in your friends garage, to, "Hey, let's go to the club and pick up girls." and its like "Well, the club has a stair to get into it, so I can't do that, oh damn". So I started kind of being walled off by life. Just happenstance of things not being wheelchair accessible and here's my other friend going, "Hey, here's a world where your wheelchair doesn't eff-ing matter". I don't know if I can say swears on this show. - [Danny] Say whatever you want, man. - [Steven] Right, cool, so they were like "Who the fuck cares if you're in a wheelchair. Go play this world where everybody's equal", and I was like "Oh, this is my first experience where everything is a level playing field" and it was amazing, so... Was it escaping or was it choosing to forge a different path in life? I don't think I'll ever really know the answer to that, but consequently, through the butterfly effect, deciding to do that and take that friend's advice led me to where I am right now. - [Danny] You're an incredibly social person. I feel like everyone in the industry has met you and had a conversation with you. I've noticed that you're very good at advocating for people's time, which is something that a lot of people who like having friends and like being social, they sort of don't put themselves out there to, you know, they don't want to be a bother or something like that but I've always found you to be incredibly inviting and sort of proactive in your friendships, which I think is a really important trait, especially the older you get. Video games, in that way I suppose, have sort of provided you with a lot then, in terms of both your social life and your professional life. Is it fair to say that most of that sort of revolves around the world of games? - [Steven] I think it is now. I mean, you hit the nail right on the head. When you're in your thirties, going out and making new friendships is exceedingly difficult and we could literally talk for the rest of the podcast about the difficulties of living the disabled life and having to fit in to the norms of society. But as far as the video games industry has been, to me it's been a very welcoming and inviting place and I am super honest guy, you know, you follow me on twitter, we've been friends for a couple years now. I, to my own detriment, I am way too honest sometimes and I am sure that there are people in the industry who love me and there are people who probably wish I would just stop talking so much and I feel like if you don't have some people that think you talk too much then you're probably not making change and that's what I'm trying to do. I have terminal illnesses, I have a disability for those of you who don't know me. I am aware that there is that shot clock ticking and I don't talk about it a lot but I'm aware it's there probably more than your average person and I'm trying to use all the time I've got to do something with it. - [Danny] It's an interesting dichotomy you bring up there, in that, in many ways, who could say a bad thing about Steven and AbleGamers, you know what I mean? At least, who could say it out loud? But you are kind of creating problems for companies, right? Like you're creating a problem that, by the fact that you're even having the conversation with it was a problem that they thought didn't exist. You're fashioning it for them. Is that the case? Like, is it different now talking to companies than it was when you first started doing this work? - [Steven] The difference really is that I didn't make the problem. I shined a spotlight on a problem that was in the darkness. It was always there and the more technology advances, the less accessible it becomes, just by the very definition of advancing technology. So, we banded together, me and Mark Barlet and Craig Kaufman, and a bunch of amazing people, now AbleGamers, got together and decided that we were going to take this problem head on and we changed a multi-billion dollar industry. I tell you the weirdest thing that I could ever say to another human being because it is entirely factual, you could prove it, in fact, we're doing a documentary talking about it, so it's, you know, it's something that's kind of shock and awe to even try to talk about it, but here we are, years later, where developers went from laughing at us and walking away to now coming to talk to us, so, you know, it's pretty amazing. I am very fortunate in my position that I am able to walk all these different sides of the video game life. - [Danny] When you think about some of the ways in which you guys have changed the industry, the one that comes to mind right away, for me at least, because it's probably the most recent, is the work that you guys did with Microsoft on the, is it the Adaptive Controller, is that what the name is? - [Steven] Yeah, it's called the Adaptive Controller. - [Danny] What other stuff comes to mind for you, over the years? - [Steven] You know, I think some of the biggest were going into Harmonix and getting to talk to Alex. Sitting down in his office and doing the whole Rock Band thing and talking about the various ways that you might wanna play the game. The fastest way I can tell this anecdote is we were sitting in his office and we were talking about how, if someone wants to play the video game, how many buttons would they have to use at minimum? Could you do this if you only had three fingers on on hand? Could you do it if you were one-handed? You know, yes, no, yes, no. So we talked about that for a minute and I just came up with a question to ask; "Why did you come up with three buttons as the minimum to be able to play?" and his answer was, "Well, it's just the number that we thought was the smallest that people would ever wanna do". I said, "Well, what about somebody who only has the ability to push one button?" He said, "Well, we never thought anybody would want to be able to play Rock Band with just one button." I looked him in the face and I said, "I would." And the color just drained out of his face and he just nods his head and goes, "Okay, we'll have to work on that" and that was sort of a great beginning point for, not only my friendship with Alex, but AbleGamers as a company we have worked with Harmonix ever since and they've been really great partners of the business and I've made some good friends over there as well. It's this amazing thing of how, one of my friends put it best, my job title is to go out and be who I am very visibly and let people learn lessons from my experiences and I've been able to thread this needle of using personal experience and second hand experience from the gamers I've met along the way to then translate that into the friendships that I've forged in the industry and then turn that into making changes for other people. So it's this tightrope act of making sure to be friends with everybody because the only way that you really can get people to make change is if they want to. If they don't want to, they're not gonna change. - [Danny] When you think about changing those games, were there games when you were growing up that you were like "Oh man, I'd really love to play that", but then you realized that there were barriers in your way to doing so? - [Steven] Yeah, I can tell you that I wanted to play Dance Dance Revolution and that'd be a great sound bite. Of course I'm in a wheelchair but I've always been a very realistic kind of guy. I am a logic-based person, I have the weird sort or emotional Spock thing going on where I wear my heart on my sleeve and I will fight for anybody if I believe in them, but there has to be logic in my brain, also why this is a thing, and I'm never gonna be on Dancing With The Stars. I'm never gonna be a ninja. It's just not in the cards for me. So I am okay with that and there was no particular game that I wanted to play that made me start advocating for people. It was simply having a disease that was advancing slowly, taking away abilities one by one, made me go, "Oh, shit, I guess I need some technology" and somewhere along the way I discovered that it was a lot more fun to help other people than to help myself. - [Danny] What was it like then for you, trying to gain access to that technology? Presumably you were doing that before AbleGamers existed, so was it a case where your conditions were getting worse and you were effectively looking for solutions as the issues presented themselves? - [Steven] So it's interesting when you're doing a technology upgrade as someone with a disability because it's often a mismatch of just MacGyver-ing your way through technology. To eat potato chips, I used to use hot dog tongs as I couldn't lift up my biceps, but I could rotate my wrist so I would just pick up one chip at a time with a hot dog tong. It's the same thing with video games. I used a little tiny dental hygiene tool that has a little crook on the end of it, has a little rubber tip and I would use that to push W, A, S, D when I couldn't reach it and operate the mouse with the other hand. So I was already using technology, it was just this way... Doing things the low-tech way was beginning to start to fail, so I had to find a little bit more high-tech solutions. - [Danny] And how did you do that? Did you fashion stuff yourself? Were there people out there making custom rigs for people? - [Steven] Well, you know, I started doing it by finding ways to play video games with only the mouse and just getting rid of keyboard entirely. Fortunately, I had found a program called TrackIR which generally allows you to look around in the cockpit of a Microsoft Flight Simulator and when you're looking around, you're also telling the computer to push different directions and I found that you could use this to push keyboard buttons and it was a totally unintended thing that this program was offering. They were trying to use it to help people have a more virtual experience, more immersion, and I ended up using it as a disability tool and now I teach others how to do the same thing. - [Danny] That's incredible. So you sort of hacked it in a way to be quick key-binding stuff. How many buttons could you set up on a TrackIR? How many directional ways are there to use it? - [Steven] So the best way to think about it is to think about a dartboard. - [Danny] Okay. - [Steven] If you think about each position, each little block, being a different key then the laser pointer that is attached to the brim of one of my hats allows the laser pointer to move around based on the way I'm looking. - [Danny] Right. - [Steven] So I can move it to whatever block. The only downside of that technology, of course, is if you're thinking about moving in a straight line. If you gotta get to block number three, you gotta run through block number one through two. - [Danny] Right. - [Steven] So, it sort of becomes this interesting way of lining up the buttons so that they don't do the wrong thing at the wrong time. - [Danny] It sounds like key-binding is something that is one of the most powerful ways of allowing people to use controllers in these interesting ways. You say using a mouse only; I imagine setting up 'run' to be right-click or something like that would maybe fix one sort of problem. We talk about the hardware issue, but also one of the biggest issues in games that has sort of been slowly fixed over the past five, 10 years, well, maybe closer to five, is the ability to re-bind controls, which certainly has never been something that was standard and is a lot more common now. Is that a big issue with accessibility as well? - [Steven] Yeah, re-mapping has gotten a lot better. Now, re-mapping is almost as standard as closed captioning is for TV shows and movies. That's a lot thanks to the groundwork that people have done, demanding it to be a thing. It's not just a disability thing. Everybody loves for you to be able to re-map things so that they're more comfortable, so that your hand isn't stretched out in weird ways that the developers didn't quite think somebody would try to do. So it's good for everybody, it's good design and it allows us to be comfortable playing video games. - [Danny] So what other big games were you a fan of? Or what other games were you a big fan of, rather, back in those days, back in the Ultima Online days? Eventually those doors closed, but you could've got back into that fantasy world. So what other games are your favorites when you look back? - [Steven] Back then Diablo was huge, I loved that game. Star Wars Galaxies actually was the bait that Mark used to get me into AbleGamers. - [Danny] How'd he do that? - [Steven] Okay, so I loved Star Wars Galaxies so much. Star Wars Galaxies was, and maybe is, my favorite game of all time and they had just changed it to the NGE and the NGE made it more into an action simulator game, which took away a lot of the accessibility. - [Danny] Oh, really? - [Steven] Yeah, in SWG, the original vanilla version, you had macros, you had slash commands, you had buttons on the screen that you could click, you could do macro ability to do more than one action at a time. It was a very very friendly game for people with disabilities and they didn't even realize they were designing it that way. They were just trying to make it friendly for everybody. So, it just happened to be accessible and I happened to latch on to it as the most amazing thing since pizza and it was great and they changed it and then, right after that, they were gonna change it again for the combat upgrade and they were gonna make it into this, I don't even know what kind of 'Barbie Ken Dreamhouse' thing they were trying to do with this game, but it was just destroying it from the inside out and then then closed it so I literally told Mark that I would come work for AbleGamers, volunteer my time, and at the time I was just being a writer and trying to help the cause, and I would do it, but only if he would give me the email for Smedley so I could tell him off. - [Danny] And did you? - [Steven] I did, yeah, absolutely. - [Danny] Oh, God. - [Steven] I wonder if he still has that email. - [Danny] Did he respond? - [Steven] No. I was nobody then, so just an angry guy yelling at him, which he had a bunch of those already. - [Danny] How long is the email, do you reckon? Is it like one paragraph or was it like 20 paragraphs? - [Steven] It was like five paragraphs with expletives and doing something between rational explanation of why he should change it back to, you know, "I hope both your eyebrows catch on fire!" It was not my most refined moment but I was just so passionate about it. - [Danny] Yeah, shoot your shot, fair enough. So what have you been playing at the moment? We were playing a bunch of PUBG I remember last year and then you went off and joined the Fortnite gang. You said you could never be a ninja but there you are, every day, playing Fortnite. Are you still playing it? - [Steven] Actually, no. I don't play Fortnite as much as I used to. It is still a fun game for me, but I've actually began to fall away from first-person shooters a little bit. I've been doing the Rocket League thing, I've been really into Kingdom: Two Crowns recently, just playing that 8-bit life. Yeah, it's the third installment of this franchise where you're just a little dude or a queen that's got a kingdom to take care of and there's little greedy things that are trying to take all your money and beat up your people to get it, so there's no fighting involved so, I don't know, I'm one of those gamers that, I used to run a violent game like a Diablo and then I would run The Sims Online. I would just bounce back and forth to satisfy both sides of my brain, so I guess right now I'm just like, "I don't wanna shoot people, I just wanna watch little monsters be murdered." - [Danny] Okay so by that rationale, Rocket League is the violent game? - [Steven] Yeah, well, if you've ever seen me play Rocket League, it depends how many times I get scored on. - [Danny] Oh dude, I swear to God, I have never been as angry and stressed out as when I play Rocket League online. - [Steven] It's like a stress test, they should replace that at the doctor's office. - [Danny] I swear to God, I had to start playing on PS4 because then I couldn't type shit at people. Then I just started doing it on that as well, bringing up the little PlayStation keyboard. In between goals where you've hardly any time to trash talk anyone and you just figure out ways of doing it. - [Steven] What a save, what a save, what a save! - [Danny] Oh, yeah, totally and all that sarcastic stuff for sure, yeah. It's ridiculous. Did you do a 'Top 10' list or anything for 2018? - [Steve] You know, I think I'm one of the three video game industry people that didn't do a 'Top 10' post. - [Danny] You need to get Alex Navarro over at Giant Bomb to email you as well next year. - [Steven] Apparently, yeah. Next year I need to get on the list, I was like, "every one of my friends has a list, what the hell?" Damn. - [Danny] So what was the stuff last year that really caught your eye? Were you playing a lot of those games? Well, playing Rocket League I guess, since 2017. - [Steven]Yeah, it was a good year for video games, man. The one I wish I could have played the most was Spider-Man. Man, that looked like an amazing game. I couldn't personally play it, so it was actually one of the only games that I sat on Twitch and watched friends play from the beginning to the end. It was so good. I loved it so much. - [Danny] Is that because it's a console game and it's just the accessibility issue? - [Steven] It was the way that the accessibility was set up was just a little bit rough for trying to aim and change your weapons. Anything that has a weapon wheel just adds another layer of complication for people who have a limited number of buttons that they can push, so, yeah. Even if you were using a QuadStick on a console, the weapon wheel is just difficult, so, you know. - [Danny] How does the QuadStick interface with the PlayStation? Because obviously Microsoft now has a controller that's like officially doing it. Do you have to hack it to get it to work? - [Steven] Yeah, its just an adaptor. - [Danny] Oh, really, just like off the shelf? You just get it off Amazon or something, or eBay? - [Steven] Well no, it's not off the shelf, but there are adapters out there that let you use PlayStation and Xbox things, vice versa, depending on which console you need to use the most, so we can put a QuadStick on either one. It doesn't really work on a Swtich, unfortunately, looking at you Nintendo. But, yeah, PlayStation and Xbox works just fine. - [Danny] Is it the type of thing that they know about and they're cool with or they know about it and they're just gonna go, "Ah, whatever"? Like what is it that Nintendo are doing that stops people being able to make adapters for that? - [Steven] You know, I'm not really sure what I can say, legally. I can tell you that it's still works on Xbox and PlayStation and it doesn't work on Nintendo. - [Danny] Fair enough. Sorry, you were saying, what other games are you playing? - [Steven] The God of War series was, of course, super amazing. I had a lot of strange indie taste as well, like Tricky Towers was a really good game I found. Just something sort of different. I loved Into the Breach. I think the only one I've lost a lot of time into was Odyssey. Odyssey is just so good; I can't stop playing it. - [Danny] My wife is playing it too. It's the most game I've ever seen. - [Steven] It is ridiculous, it is. I mean there were so many good games that came out last year, but Odyssey is maybe the first one in forever that I've been playing off-stream. There's usually, for me, only two kinds of games that I play; either I play them for work or I play them for stream work. Don't you get it where it's like, I'm sure, just like you, I don't like play just to play very much, so when I do, a game's gotta be great and Odyssey was fantastic. - [Danny] Did you play the Origins? The one that came out the year before? - [Steven] I didn't. You know, Odyssey was actually my first venture into Assassin's Creed world. - [Danny] Oh, cool. It's crazy how people are, I feel like there's two groups of people; there's the people who played so much Origins that they just can't play Odyssey because it's just like, it's just so too much, too quickly and then there's people who didn't play Origins who are loving Odyssey because it's a lot of the same sort of systems and stuff that worked there, but in a much bigger map with so much stuff. It's ridiculous how much stuff is in that game. Like how much of the map have you uncovered? My wife's been playing for months and like a third of the map has been opened up. - [Steven] You know, I probably have got a little over half of it at this point, and it just seems like the game just keeps going and, I gotta say, I'm into it though. It's one of those games where I'm finding I don't mind how much time has been sunk into it. Normally by like hour 50 I'm like, "Alright, come on, we gotta wrap this up", but this one I'm like, "You know, I could probably play this off and on for the next year, I'd be alright with that." - [Danny] What is it about it? Is it the setting or the combat or is it the ticking off the things on the list? There's a lot of 'do these things' and then you do the things and they give you stuff for it and you're like, "Yeah, give me more things to do." Is it that? - [Steven] I think it's a combination of the story and the never-ending tasks. I love the bounty hunting system, oh my goodness. I love how you just randomly get hunted and then you get to kill them and then more people hunt you. It's just awesome. - [Danny] That's rad. What are you playing at the moment? So you're playing that at the moment still, are you? - [Steven] Yeah, I mean whenever I get spare time, that's where I'm sinking my time right now. That was after I beat Far Cry. I don't know if you got a chance to sink your teeth into that but, man, that was a mind trip. - [Danny] Yeah, that was another one, my wife is basically just on the Ubisoft open world ticket at the moment, so that was another one I watched her play a lot in the evenings. Had you played previous Far Cry games? Was that your first foray into that one as well? - [Steven] That was another first note as well. It seemed to be my year to break into story games. I guess now we're looking back at it and I liked it but, this is gonna turn into spoiler-cast if I'm not careful, but, man, the ending in that game. At the end of the day I am a writer who just happens to be doing other things right now and so I love, love, love a good story. So, if it had something that can just grab my attention and make me wanna find out what happens at the end, then I'm in. - [Danny] You're one of the first people we're talking to in 2019, I mean you're one of the first people we're talking to on this podcast, this is the 5th episode. I feel like I haven't been able to stop and take stock of what's coming out this year. Is there anything, I have a list in front of me here but is there anything off the top of your head that you're looking forward to? Because I feel like 2018 actually ended up being a fantastic year but I worry that we ended up going into a slower one, when that happens. But is there anything off the top of your head that's popping out that you're looking forward to in 2019? - [Steven] I don't know, it can't be a slower year than last year. Last year was just boom, boom, boom. I would say, right off the top, and the same thing everyone is gonna say is Anthem. If Anthem is bad then I am going to riot. I'm going to grab a pitchfork and I'm going to the studio and I'm gonna stand there and be like, "You guys fix it." I'm gonna do it in a very non-threatening way. I'm just gonna stand there and it's gonna be a safety pitchfork, there's gonna be little plastic things on top of it. - [Danny]Orange tips. - [Steven] Yeah, orange tips on it. I'm gonna have a peaceful vest on me and just be like, "I just want you to fix the game." - [Danny] Well you say you're a fan of stories, does that mean, are you a fan of Dragon Age and Mass Effect, the other BioWare games? - [Steven] Oh yeah, oh my goodness. Dragon Age: Origins is... So Dragon Age: Origins, I love it so much, so anybody who really is a fan of mine may have picked up my one and only book that I have out there and if you look hard enough at the book, you'll see that one of the main characters is actually nearly directly pulled out of the Origins video game. - [Danny] Oh, careful, this is fucking EA man! - [Steven] I did not steal their IP, but that was like my main inspiration. It was so good. - [Danny] That's awesome. - [Steven] It was like, you know, the character and the everything just was so great to me that I was like, "I have to create my own version of this and plug it in somewhere", and I ended up doing that. - [Danny] That's right, what's the name of the book? Where can you get it? - [Steven] It's a horrible book, you don't wanna go find it. - [Danny] Hey man, I a 33 year old video game fan. I don't read books, I just buy them and put them on my shelf. - [Steven] That's fair. So the book is called The Finder. You can get it on Amazon still. I got it under my pen name, Steven Rome. Honestly, I hired an editor but the editor really kind of let me down so there's grammatical errors and there's an audio book uploaded to it. I really tried pretty hard and it sold actually pretty well. So I've actually got a screenshot. Back in the day, you could put your Amazon book up to be downloaded for 72 hours for free and I put it up to be downloaded for free and it was downloaded as much as Game of Thrones was bought. - [Danny] Oh wow. - [Steven] So I've got picture of my book right beside George R. R. Martin's Game of Thrones. - [Danny] That's rad. Yeah I see it here, right here on Amazon. Go pick it up everyone, 13.95 paperback, Amazon Prime, you can have it by the time your next bowel movement comes, that's the way Amazon works now, it's pretty good. - [Steven] Yeah, if you need bad reading material, then... It's so sad too, because it's one of those things. It was a good story in my head and then it's like you can tell there's a certain point in there that I just wanted the book to be done. So I was just like, "You know what, I'm just done with it", and it goes from a very slow-paced book to "Alright, it's done." - [Danny] Steven, I feel like people go their entire lives trying to write their books so do not kill, or kick yourself over the fact that your first novel wasn't exactly what you needed it to be. That's incredible. Are you writing another one? Are you looking to write another one? Are you too busy with AbleGamers stuff? - [Steven] You know, I am super busy, but this is actually AbleGamers' 15th year. So, as I was saying to you privately when I agreed to come talk to you, not only because we're good friends and I wanted to help you launch this thing and if three of my fans will come listen, that'd be great. You know, its one of those things where I'd like to get into the writing and doing some of my own flights of fancy that I've been putting on the back burner for so long because I feel like after 15 years I've put in a little bit of blood and sweat into the cause and now maybe I can do a couple of other things I wanna do before the shot clock quite runs out. - [Danny] Well, I think there'll be a lot of people who would be interested in experiencing whatever you put out there into the universe, so... Let me tell you about this place called Patreon.com and it lets people do their dreams and get funded by the people who want to experience those dreams. - [Steven] Really, I'd never heard of that, Danny! Do you have one of those? - [Danny] Steven, can I ask you some questions from people who pay us money? - [Steven] Nope! I'm out of here, bye everybody. - [Danny] Thank you to Steve for being here. If you wanna get your questions in, go to Patreon.com/Noclip. If you're on the $5 tier you also get this podcast early. You don't get it exclusively. We had some people be like, "Hey, I can't get the podcast" and we had to be like, "No, you literally can't, everything we do is available, except the behind the scenes stuff". But if you're on the $5 tier you get this beautiful podcast early as well as a bunch of other stuff and we put the word out for some questions, we got a bunch of them. I'm gonna ask about two or three of them here. This one's from Matthew Glenn, he said, "What accessibility feature should indies and small teams prioritize when hoping to be more accessible?" Any come to mind? - [Steven] You know, I think the thing about being an indie, and I've had so many great conversations with Rami about this, indies have such a luxury of being flexible. Being an indie developer is super hard, right? It is back breaking work in a mental way. It is blood, sweat, part of your soul going into this game and here I am telling you you have to do even more. To indie developers out there, keep in mind everybody on the accessibility side understands that you didn't need one more thing to worry about, but if you add things like re-mappable keys, you add things like sliders for all of your settings, or allowing people to edit the INI files instead of keeping them hidden or encoded. Allow people to move the game as much as they can, without breaking your game or altering it, ` then let them play it your way and you'll have more sales and you'll have happier customers. It's interesting how some games tackled problems. Let's take, for example, one of my favorite indie games of 2018 called Raft. Raft was a cool little indie game where you basically were on a raft, spoiler! You had to fish junk out of the ocean and build a bigger, better raft that had air conditioning somehow, I don't know. It was a fun game but the settings in it were bare and minimal and when I reached out to say, "Hey, I can't play your game because the mouse sensitivity is very low, you capped it barely above what you'd need to move the mouse across the screen if you got an entire mousepad, not to mention you don't have the ability to re-map, you didn't have stuff like that. And within two days they turned around; they added the ability to map the mouse, the added the ability to uncap the mouse sensitivity. These are all things that don't take developers a lot of time, but if you don't do them, they can lock people out of your games. I happen to be one of the people that gets caught up in those times when you're alienated, so I always recommend, you know, do as much as you can with little effort and things like adding settings and adding re-mapping are often relatively easy, nothing is "easy" in development, but if you do it early in development cycle, it's doable without too much cost. - [Danny] Raymond Harris asked the question, "Have you tried Microsoft's new accessibility controller, if so, what do you like and dislike about it? I mean you guys were involved in the whole R and D aspect of that, is that correct? - [Steven] I was privileged to be one of the people that Microsoft pulled into it first. Me and my co-worker Craig, we were the ones that were asked to come sign some NDAs and check this out on a low key, 'here's a tablet with a drawing on it because our lawyers won't even allow you to look at the real prototypes, so here's what it looks like' kind of thing. Yeah and then from there we brought in AbleGamers and we became an entire organization to help, not just one or two of us, but everybody had a hand in making this thing better, so it was great to get to be a part of that and it's honestly going to go down in my brain as one of the highlights of my career. I had a very small part in personally bringing about a controller that is now available in freaking Walmart. Well, technically the Microsoft Store, whatever. Walmart, Microsoft Store, same difference. I'm definitely not gonna get an angry message from Microsoft PR tomorrow, its fine, right? - [Danny] Matthew Rogers asked the question, "Do you find that people with disabilities often write off video games as a hobby and don't realize that there are organizations like AbleGamers out there?" - [Steven] I do. I think one of the things that my job has become has been fighting against the stigma of being a gamer, let alone having a disability, so, in a lot of ways, 15 years ago when I got into this game and when AbleGamers first started, we were not only fighting for people with disabilities, which, back in the early 2000s and early 90s, was not as welcomed as it is now and neither is being a gamer and both of those had negative connotations on them. If you were a gamer, you're lazy. If you were disabled, you're lazy. We had to fight all these stereotypes and yeah, I think that there are so many companies out there who don't even understand what we do, what I do and my daily operations and what my company does and what even is represented by gamers with disabilities being a part of the world. I don't know that everybody's quite yet aware. I think we're making it so. I think people like Danny are helping us push the narrative into the mainstream that it's not some little niche bunch of people that just wanna play a couple of games, but gamers with disabilities are everywhere. People like Halfcoordinated who are out there on the stage of Games Done Quick, who are out there pushing, me being on award shows pushing. I think we're all doing our parts and I think everybody who is listening can do their part by saying to their friends, to their family whenever the situation comes up, that people with disabilities want to enjoy every hobby, including gaming. I think it's gonna be interesting watching companies get involved more and more as they figure this out. - [Danny] We go back and look at the commercials of the 90s, where the prevalent idea of the teenage boy, the white teenage boy, right? The able-bodied, white teenage boy was the... - [Steven] Straight, able-bodied, white teenage boy. - [Danny] Yeah, lets keep going! Eventually we'll find that gamer. The one that gave birth to us all. Do you find that accessibility and people with disabilities have a place at the table now in a way that they didn't five or 10 years ago, or it is for people like you that are visible, but for most people it's not? - [Steven] Here's the thing. I think that accessibility has come a long way in a lot of ways thanks to the work that has been done at AbleGamers and our allies and our people that care about our narrative, right? There's no question, accessibility is better. Full stop, period, end of sentence. However, to continue the conversation, if you are not somebody that has a high profile, you do not have as good of a chance of things being made accessible quickly. I am extremely privileged, in that if somebody gets a hold of me and says, "I can't play this game because of this feature being in the way", chances are I can get to a developer and say, "Hey, is there something you can do about this?" Sometimes they can do it quickly, sometimes they can't. I've had developers literally, and I will not tell you who, go behind their bosses back and find code and tell me slash commands in engines to get around the accessibility things because the publisher didn't want to deal with the problem and the developer cared enough that they were like, "Just tell them to do this and it'll be fine." Okay, cool, I am super privileged in that I can do that, but there's not a lot of people in my position that can do that and I can't do that for every single person all the time. Everybody at AbleGamers has their people that they can turn to and they can make magic happen sometimes, but there's only so many of us and only so many hours in the day, so you can't do that for everybody. What happens if you're a gamer who can't play a certain game and its because of a feature in a game and there's nothing that can be done until that feature is changed? Well, you can tweet and you can email and you can send a feedback report, but you have to wait your turn, right? So there's definitely a position of privilege there for people like you and me who are in the game industry because we have the right ears. We try to do that honorably. Danny and I try to use our power for good. At least I do, Danny, I don't know... - [Danny] No, no, honestly please don't even say us both in the same sentence because you give me credit that I do not deserve. The work that you've done is literally changing people's lives. Maybe I'm making people smile a little bit, but you're doing some work that is really affecting people in incredibly important ways. - [Steven] I think we all have a different part to play though. I think that everybody who's listening has their part to play. This magnification of positivity that I have turned my "brand" into, if you will, is 100% honesty and compassion. We're all playing a part. I think anybody who's listening to the 75 minutes of this that we've done so far is doing their part by absorbing this information that they might not have known, about the struggles of people with disabilities. They may not have known that these are problems and issues. Now they can watch out for them. Now they can be an advocate. But, to get back to the original question, you do everything that you can and I think that we're in a position that we can make as much change for as many people as we possibly can, but I think that there are minority groups who are very vocal. The LGBT community which, of course, I support and Blacks in Gaming is one of my favorite GDC groups. I support every minority I can because I know my own struggles and while I may not know theirs, I know how difficult mine were and I can imagine and empathize with their struggles and I try to amplify where I can. The problem that I always find, and it breaks my heart, is that I'll see people that I respect so much in the industry, tweeting about how we need to support races, genders and sexualities and then they'll leave out disability and I don't understand why we're still not putting disability on the same level as these other minorities. Because guaranteed every single one of those groups, there's also people with disabilities within that group. So I would like to see when we're all unifying a bit more, to say that my LGBT friends who are disabled need support, my black friends, my latino friends need support. We are all in this together and I think that if we continue to amplify each other, we'll make this battle just a little bit easier. - [Danny] Is that why you make yourself so public? Like, you talked about your brand, right? You don't strike me, I'm not gonna bullshit you, you don't strike me as someone who suffers fools, you've got an incredibly intelligent head on your shoulders and you talk about this like feel-good brand that's really really important. Do you have to be watchful of people who would try to utilize that for their own optics? Like who would try and manipulate or would try and use the feel-good narrative to make their brand look good and then ultimately not really invest in your mission in a way that is substantive? - [Steven] Oh, absolutely. It is a hard and fast rule at my place of work, that no one with a disability is to do work without being compensated in some way. It does not have to financial because sometimes the government frowns upon that kind of thing, so maybe someone who is on government assistance can't take a payment because then that could endanger their insurance, and that we would feel horrible about, so instead maybe they get a copy of the game. Maybe they get a free tablet. Maybe a new webcam, who knows? It's that you don't use people. You utilize their skills, you utilize their experiences, you do not use them. And I think that's something you have to watch out for, and again, just anybody who has followed me so far, or if you plan on following me, Danny knows all too well that I am a lover but I'm also a fighter. If I see an injustice, I will strap on a sword and I'll go to town. I have no problem with picking up the battleax and running into the fight. I am not somebody who thinks the world is rose colored and we can just all love each other because that's the right thing to do. I think sometimes there comes a time where all people must fight. - [Danny] And whenever the battle happens, I'll be, hopefully, standing right beside you, swinging my morning star as well. Steven Spohn, an absolute pleasure to talk to you as ever, my friend. Where can people follow your work? What are you up to? Where can they consume your delicious content? - [Steven]I don't want that advertisement on my phone. My most active place right now is Twitter. I find it's the best place to amplify positive messages to fight some of the darkness; you can find me @StevenSpohn and you can find me on Twitch at the acronym that is my name: SteveInSpawn, like the comic book character, and I stream on twitch five days a week, just trying to showcase that people with disabilities are out there and we're not innocent snow flowers that don't so anything but sit around and watch TV. We're out there playing games, we make dick jokes and we're funny and inappropriate and we're just human beings like everyone else and I'd encourage anyone that has a disability that happens to be listening to the amazing Danny O'Dwyer, that you too should go out and live your life as visibly as you can because that's the only way that we're gonna change the world. - [Danny] Steven, thank you so much for your time. I really appreciate it. We'd love to have you back on if you're up for it again in the future. - [Steven] I'd be more than happy, Danny. Thanks for having me. - [Danny] No problem. Thank you, as well, for listening, everyone out there. We don't know who's up next week, but if you follow @NoClipVideo on the Twitters, you'll get an update over there. I'm @DannyODwyer on Twitter. If you have any feedback or any ideas for guests, you can also hit up our sub-Reddit, r/Noclip, or if you're a patron there is always a Patreon post you can just jump into, or hit us up on the DMs. The podcast is available on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, Google Play, the whole sha-bang. Anywhere podcasts are sold, stick 'noclip' in there and hopefully we'll pop up. We also have a new YouTube channel as well. If you type 'noclip podcast' into YouTube, we'll get that short URL soon enough, but until then if you hit that up, you'll be able to watch, slash, I mean 'watch', it's just a static image, pretty much with some gameplay in the background, but it's up there on YouTube. We also have full transcriptions as well. We don't talk about it very often. We do closed captions on all of our videos, but we actually also provide full transcriptions of the docs if you go to our Libsyn page, so that's like noclippodcast.libsyn.com and there's a link in all the descriptions no matter how you're listening to this and you can go check that out as well. Patrons get the show early. $5 if they're on the $5 tier. Thank you to them for making this ad-free and making it possible in the first place. Patreon.com/Noclip if you're interested in that. I hope, wherever you are, this finds you well. I hope you're enjoying some video games and we look forward to talking to you again on the next edition of the Noclip podcast, next week. See you then.  

Liking Netflix’s Iron Fist isn’t rational. But it it would be in-character. This podcast contains adult language and spoilers for Captain America: Civil War, Daredevil season 2, Independence Day, Iron Fist season 1, Iron Man 3, Jessica Jones season 1, Luke Cage season 1, Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Quigley Down Under, Stranger Things … Continue reading 21: Danny Is an Angry Boy →