Podcasts about swtich

Welcome back to the club!Been a lil while, but Allan Muir and Emmett Watkins Jr have returned to talk about what they've been playing the last few weeks, as well as the final Nintendo Direct for the Switch 1. Did this Directg finally convince Emmett that the Swtich 1 isn't mid? Did they announce any features we could look forward to in the upcoming Switch 2? Did anyone on the show purchase a different new handheld recently and fall so madly in love with it that they may never touch their Switch again? Who knows? Find out on this episode of The Player's Club Podcast!Also, in this episode, Al talks about their time with Fallout New Vegas, Atomfall, and Avowed, while Emmett talks about his time with the ROG Ally X, Sniper Eliete V2, and The Finals.Timestamps:Start 00:00ROG Ally X Impressions    5:49                              Atomfall    26:20                              Sniper Elite V2    49:16                              Fallout New Vegas    1:07:08                              The Finals    1:25:16                              Avowed    1:41:32                              Final Switch 1 Nintendo Direct Thoughts    2:03:17                              Housekeeping    2:26:49 Housekeeping:To Pimp a Butterfly: 10 Years Later - VGU Blind ReviewMaze Mice | VGU Test DriveWheel World (But Cursed!) | VGU Test DriveAFTERBLAST | VGU Test DriveLiminalcore | VGU Test Drive Tainted Grail: The Fall of Avalon on SteamThe Big VGA Crossover Episode by Welcome to the ThingNinja Gaiden Black II Review: Back in Black...Again! - VGU.TV Games About Letting GoCheck out YouTube Channel here!⁠⁠Follow us on Bluesky, @vgu.bsky.social!⁠⁠Like us on Facebook!⁠⁠Follow us on Instagram!

Dustin Rhodes vs. MJF Megan Bayne vs. Maya World Penelope Ford vs. Kris Statlander AEW World Tag Team Championship: The Hurt Syndicate (c) vs. The Gunn Club Hook, Shibata, & Samoa Joe vs. Aaron Solow, Rosario Grillo, Jon Cruz Hangman Page vs. Max Caster AEW World Trios Championship: The Death Riders (c) vs. The Undisputed Kingdom

Nos reunimos para platicar sobre la tercera temporada de "The Witcher", la serie original de Netflix. Es el principio del fin o el final del inicio, no lo sabemos, lo que sí sabemos es que esta serie lo intentó. En la sección de noticias, comentamos la llegada de un juego de la nueva generación a la generación pasada; algunas actualizaciones con proyectos del mundo del cine y los detalles más recientes sobre el Swtich 2 - nombre no oficial. Esperamos que lo disfrutes.

二月份最重要的半導體消息，除了ChatGPT震撼全球，帶動AI晶片生產，半導體景氣回春，另外就是美中爭霸之中，日本韓荷蘭政府終於證實將加入美國圍堵陣營，根據艾司摩爾最新透露消息，這次恐將擴大到DUV曝光機，連中國專家都承認，中國將回到45奈米時期。 45奈米是一個什麼樣的概念，中國半導體廠目前受到制裁令的影響有多大？長江存儲裁員至少六百人，公司人資甚至想盡辦法，要把發出去的薪水挖回來，最恐怖被裁員經歷就在長江存儲。 最精彩的半導體追劇，現在就去追！ ———————————————— 本影片由啾啾石斑獨家贊助製作，支持Emmy團隊製作優質內容， 也支持台灣小農和製造商，請上 Emmy.tw 享受台灣美味 或按 超級感謝 贊助我們喔！ 請你也加入我們吃石斑的行列吧！ 蜜汁石斑魚肉條隨身攜帶隨時補充營養！ 啾啾石斑，救救石斑，大家一起吃爆台灣石斑啦！ 購買連結：https://www.emmy.tw/products/chuchu 再提醒大家一次，記得購買時要填入折扣碼「EMMY」喔！

Theo does a deep dive on the scandals of the past [Digging in the Crates - 1:46 ] before discussing the latest  [News - 9:06 ]  and [SvB Feature - 14:44]  on the new Disney CEO and FTX Collapse   ----------Show vs. Business is your weekly take on Pop Culture from two very different perspectives. Your hosts Theo and  Mr. Benja provide all the relevant info to get your week started right.----------Follow us on Instagram - https://instagram.com/show_vs_businessFollow us on Twitter - https://twitter.com/showvsbusinessLike us on Facebook - https://www.facebook.com/ShowVsBusinessYouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCuwni8la5WRGj25uqjbRwdQ/featured----------Subscribe on iTunes, Spotify, Stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

¡Hola, gente! No nos olvidamos de serviros vuestra dosis ¿semanal? ¿quincenal? ¿mensual? de Antihype (eh, retrasarse no es olvidarse...). ¿Quien dijo que los GOTY de 2022 ya están repartidos? ¿Elden Ring? ¿Horizon 2? ¡Hay partido! Hoy hablamos de nuestra bruja preferida y comprobamos como Bayonetta 3 se mide con sus anteriores iteraciones en una Swtich que es llevada más allá de sus límites (y nos recuerda que necesitamos una Switch Pro ya). Pero también hablamos de como God of War: Ragnarök es un firme candidato a GOTY, de la transformación personal y familiar de Kratos, de como sus tribulaciones contra los dioses del norte no tienen nada que ver con sus locas aventuras griegas, y de como Sony Santa Mónica se mira en el espejo de Naugty Dog para elevarse y crear historias memorables, vibrantes y emotivas. Disfrutadlo y saboreadlo.

Kim Tserkezie meets Danny Hibbert, the mastermind behind Switch, a sport of sports consisting of football, basketball, volleyball, netball and handball. She learns how the game is crossing generational and cultural divides in White City, a fast-changing area of west London, and giving opportunities to many, where more established sports are failing. Through speaking to those who Switch has impacted, Kim comes to understand how important Switch, and Danny, are to this diverse community.

Chris and Wendy Yi take a look at a cooperative game of pick-up-and-delivery, Switch & Signal.

Big box companies are discriminating against their unvaccinated employees and customers. Bribing employees with cash rewards to get the jab, and punishing those who don't. In BC grocery stores are allowed to turn away the unvaccinated customers. It's coming here. Stop the tyranny.

With the conclusion of the NFL Draft Britt (@TheFFSandman) and Zack (@ZackyNFL) dive into the most elusive position of the draft, Wide Receiver. They break down tiers from the position and which players stood out as they were adjusting to the NFL Draft. To find more of Britt's content you can find his writings here, his Devy writing here, and his the Devy film breakdown here. For more of Zack content you can find it here.

【号外】我们发布视频节目啦！请多多关注~ Youtube: https://youtu.be/H3Q_BPgi1WM ———————————————— 提起国外/外企职场的社交文化，大家会脑补一副怎样的场景？ 是不是隔三差五happy hour，经常团建，同事们人均social king/queen，天天跟不同人约着喝咖啡catch up，周末还要约在同事家搞爬梯？ 社交对于国外的职场文化来说，是公认的一大助力。通过工作以外的接触，让同事之间的关系更近，信任更多，也是networking文化的一大元素。 但是，并不是所有人都能'享受‘这样的社交，都能get不尴尬的聊天技巧。甚至，对于很多人来说，这样的社交场合是一种巨大的压力：要维持客套的微（假）笑，要绞尽脑汁找话题，要在下班时间还要面对同事… 所以想在国外职场上步步高升，这些社交场合，必须要去吗？ 除了逼自己去参加这样的社交场合，有别的替代选项吗？ 我们邀请到一位在英国职场担任中层管理的嘉宾W姐，聊一聊《社交恐惧症的职场生存指南》。 ———————————————— 【01：05】隐藏在听众群里的W姐经常为大家出谋划策，生活中却自认社恐？ 【03：15】社交恐惧在职场中有多种多样的表现，今天你纠结了吗？ 【11：50】社恐的我们到底错过了什么？社恐会带来职业发展的瓶颈吗 【23：50】W姐的体系能帮助社恐的我们绕过社交这道坎，立稳人设直接体现工作能力 【48：55】划重点：我们不需要跟社恐死磕，而是有技巧地展示我们的能力 本期有奖竞猜彩蛋问题： W姐最近通关了哪一个Swtich独享的游戏？ ———————————————— 《杠上开花》是一个严肃又活泼的大型「留学」「职场」「脑洞」花式抬杠播客节目。 小Y，小M与各行各业的好朋友们，「记录」和「分享」留学到步入职场几年来的心得，留学职场，组队升级。 杠上开花，节节高！ 微信搜索“杠上开花播客”关注节目公众号，加入节目微信群，与小Y和小M现场开杠！ 欢迎关注我们的微博@杠上开花ABouquetOfArguments 接受干货推送参与互动和讨论~ Music attribution: Cheery Monday by Kevin MacLeod Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/3495-cheery-monday License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/a-bouquet-of-arguments/support

Mike and Rich Talk the week of sports ending 1/16/2021 --- This episode is sponsored by · Anchor: The easiest way to make a podcast. https://anchor.fm/app

Hey Lovlies! Today we will be talking about 3 Way's you can switch off stress for a happier life and hormones! Joining us today is Heather Thatcher. Heather is an RN that realized that being proactive in our health is much more effective than being reactive. Heather shares with us her tips for managing stress in our lives. Enjoy! Tania xox Get In Touch: Instagram - https://www.instagram.com/tania_dee_/ Email: stopdietinggirl@gmail.com Website: www.over40andsexy.com The Link To The 21 Day Hormone Reboot, I added a bonus week! : https://www.over40andsexy.com/3-day-hormone-recovery-diet-plan.html My Facebook Group, I'd love to see you there: https://www.facebook.com/groups/773268416455038 Get in Touch With Heather: My business is called the Ultimate Life Survival Guide Website: https://theultimatelifesurvivalguide.com Facebook: https://facebook.com/groups/theultimatelifesurvivalguide Instagram: https://instagram.com/theultimatelifesurvivalguide Be sure to check out Heather's GUIDE: Stress Risk Assessment: https://heatherthatcher.com/optins/ultimatelifesurvivalguide/stress-risk-assessment-2/

Somehow, strategy has become a very fragmented practice, with digital strategists, brand planners, comms planners, social strategists etc. This week, we take a question we've seen on Fishbowl (yes...), and discussed whether it was a possible (maybe even natural) fit for a digital strategist to become a "strat planner".

Celeste Roberts guests this week to talk all about lore in video games and the way Nintendo has used lore in their games. We also talk about the rumors of a July Nintendo Direct, the Xbox event, some difficult news related to EVO and the Smash Bros. competitive community, and much more. We close with a discussion about the games we've been playing recently. Listen to Super Switch Headz on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube or wherever you enjoy podcasts. 0:00:00 Introduction 0:03:22 News 0:33:15 Main Topic: Lore and Worldbuilding 1:13:41 Games We're Playing

In this adventure Mike from the Funnie papers joins to help us understand why Ghandi loves Nukes and why strategy games can turn into "Spreadsheet gaming". For the first 15 minutes of the Episode I talk about the tragic passing of IceyCat25 and what he meant to the Rainbow 6 community. Executive Producer Bryan “President of Calendars” Dressel Viceroy of Producing Jonathan Hardesty @movieguyjonKing Koopa of Editing Ryan JamesHost: Brok Holliday @damageboostpodcastTwitch at damageboostpodcastEmail us at damageboostpodcast@gmail.comGuest: Mike from The Funnie Papers https://thefunniepapers.podbean.com/https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-funnie-papers/id1480648579https://open.spotify.com/show/4mk7HdL2PJNnOCF8CA4A1qhttps://twitter.com/thefunniepapers

Avete amato Snowpiercer? Siete in fibrillazione per la serie Netflix? Potreste rivivere emozioni simili giocando The Final Station e il suo dlc The Only Traitor, sviluppati da Do My Best Games e pubblicati da TinyBuild, giochi disponibili su tutte le piattaforme possibili, di matrice Sovietica, ma fortemente legata ad atmosfere e dialoghi del film apocalittico ambientato su un treno verso il nulla. Caldamente consigliati da il Nick, il quale vi spiegherà, con la sua voce calda e suadente, perché dovreste fidarvi del suo gusto in fatto di arte.

Discussing the emotional side of the brain, expecting and reframing first failure, growth vs fixed mindset and Charlie Munger. Concepts from Swtich by Chip & Dan Heath. --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/mdrnac/message

Em mais uma semana de gravação solitária, Ivan conta sobre sua semana de isolamento e como vem mantendo a sanidade durante o difícil período.Eduardo tá aí, jogando videogame (Breath of the Wild, FIFA 19, Dragon Quest Builders 2 e Stardew Valley), estudando e fazendo exercícios caseiros.LAVEM AS MÃOS, SAIAM DE CASA APENAS PARA O ESSENCIAL, EVITEM CONTATO FÍSICO. CUIDEM DOS IDOSOS.Blocos do episódio:A semana do IvanCurso de pixel art: 01:14.Animal Crossing: 02:23Drops de notíciasLançamento de Jedi Knight 2: Jedi Outcast para Swtich e crossplay não intencional com jogadores de computador: 04:37.Data de lançamento de Outerworlds para o Swtich: 06:08.Boato sobre jogos do Mario, da Nintendo: 06:30.Atlus lança questionário sobre tradução de Persona 5 Scramble para o Ocidente: 09:08.Lançamento de Persona 5 Royal para PS4: 09:37.NASA comemora 30 anos do lançamento do Telescópio Espacial Hubbles com hotsite: 10:25.Decisão sobre potencial cancelamento ou adiamento da Gamescon 2020: 11:07.PS5 vence enquete promovida por celebridade do Twitter: 11:42.Música de encerramento: Alors on danse, de Stromae.

In dieser Folge des Podcast sprechen wir über das Fan-Demake von Fire Emblem: Three Houses, die meistverkauften Spiele für Wii U, 3DS, Wii, DS und Swtich, die Games with Gold im März 2020, die PS Plus Spiele im März 2020, die KI-gesteuerter Verkauf von Mikrotransaktionen bei Sony, den Brave-Browser mit eingebauter Zeitmaschine und wissenswertes zum Disney+ Deutschlandstart. In der Pre-/Postshow exklusiv für unsere Unterstützer sprechen wir u.a. zusätzlich noch über Asterix Comics, das Spiel Wolcen - Lords of Mayhem, den neuen Delorean, wie Rare auf den Namen Banjo-Kazooie kam, über McDonalds Frittierfett als Futter für deinen 3D-Drucker, den Witz der Woche "Maik vs. Hörer" und einiges mehr. Dazu genießen wir einen “Proviant Smoothie". Viel Spaß beim Anhören! Übersicht: Männerquatsch#68 Die kompletten Sendungsdetails mit allen Links und Fotos zur Sendung findest du auf unserer Webseite: www.maennerquatsch.de/podcast/season-4/folge-68/ Genussmittel: (02:50) Björn: Proviant Smoothie - Liebesgruß Maik: Proviant Smoothie - Mango-Maracuja Themen: (04:20) Fire Emblem: Three Houses Fan-Demake. (06:06) Die meistverkauften Spiele für Wii U, 3DS, Wii, DS und Swtich. (20:02) Games with Gold im März 2020. (23:23) Playstation Plus Spiele im März 2020. (26:20) KI-gesteuerter Verkauf von Mikrotransaktionen bei Sony. (29:57) Brave-Browser mit eingebauter Zeitmaschine. (33:38) Wissenswertes zum Disney+ Deutschlandstart. Was geht ab: (52:30) Björn: Ausflug: Retrobörse Bochum März 2020. Pre-/Postshow: (Unterstützer Content) - Unsere Unterstützer erhalten jede Folge exklusiv die Pre- und die Postshow (ca. 20-30 Min.) zusätzlich. Hier hört ihr persönlichen Geschichten und Neuigkeiten, so wie weitere auch lustige Inhalte und natürlich den Witz der Woche. - Warm-up - Warum so viel Papier? - Vegane Bohnen mit Hack. - Asterix Comics. - Angespielt: Wolcen - Lords of Mayhem. - Der neue Delorean kommt. - Wie Rare auf den Namen Banjo-Kazooie kam. - McDonalds Frittierfett als Futter für deinen 3D-Drucker. - Witz der Woche: Maik vs. Hörer. Dieser Podcast von zwei quatschenden Männern für Alle über Retrospiele, Videospiele, Filme, Serien, Technik und Gadgets bietet dir handverlesene Neuigkeiten und viele Hintergrundinformationen, damit du gut informiert bist ohne selber zu viel Zeit zu investieren. Neue Folgen erscheinen jeden 1. und 3. Montag im Monat. Für Feedback und Kommentare nutze gerne unseren Discord Channel: discord.gg/4n35eHU Wenn Du uns unterstützen willst, dann schau doch mal auf unserer Unterstützerseite vorbei: www.patreon.com/maennerquatsch Oder nutze für Deine Einkäufe bei Amazon unseren affiliate-link: amzn.to/2uVop1y

En este Pixelbits con cerveza hablamos de los juegos exclusivos: Cómo funcionan los exclusivos Los juegos más vendidos no son exclusivos... (Al menos no todos) Éstos son los juegos más vendidos en ps4, y cuáles son exclusivos ¿Los exclusivos garantizan el éxito de una consola? NOTICIAS DE VIDEOJUEGOS - WTF: Rod Fergusson se va de The Coalition - Los Sims cumplen 20 años - Global Game Jam fue del 31 de enero al 2 de febrero, y aquí pueden checar los juegos. - Kingdom Hearts All in one es una nueva colección con el Story So Far y el Kingdom Hearts 3, sólo para PS4, saldrá el 17 de marzo de este año. -El 28 de abril sale el nuevo juego de los creadores de Overcooked. Se llama Moving Out y llegará a Switch, PS4, Xbox One y PC. stadia-launches-today - Dan Houser, co-fundador de Rockstar se va de la compañía - Ubisoft compró un estudio de juegos móviles llamado Kolibri - Platinum presentó una página con el número 4, por lo cual se esperan 4 anuncios de la compañía. El primero fue el Kickstarter para el remaster de Wonderful 101 (el cual ya cumplió todas sus metas por lo que llegará a Switch, PC y PS4). -Infinity ganó el Rainbow 6 LATAM Masters -Te odio, Nintendo, por presentar estas ediciones especiales de Swtich tan adorables -Fuimos a la expo de HR Giger en CDMX - Streamers made a lot of fucking money el año pasado -Final Fantasy XV y Wolfenstein Youngblood llegaron a Xbox Game Pass -Ya se anunciaron los juegos que estarán en el EVO de este año -Pues que Warcraft 3 Reforged no está chido -Por Pokémon Day llegará todo esto a Pokémon Go -Toxtricity Gigantamax llega a Pokémon Sword y Shield -Qué greedy se vieron con el pase de Fire Emblem Heroes -Ya se vendieron 52 millones de switches -Ya está la página oficial del PS5 -GeForce Now ya está aquí: el Stadia que nos merecemos NOTICIAS DE CINE Y TV -La película de Violet Evergarden estará en cines en México el 14, 15 y 16 de Febrero -Así serán los estrenos en Disney Plus: The Falcon and Winter Soldier (Agosto), The Mandalorian (Octubre), Wandavision (Diciembre) - Ya salió el one shot de Death Note y lo pueden leer gratis, en español y legalmente en Manga Plus Todos los miércoles por la noche, hacemos un talk show en el que hablamos de noticias de videojuegos y otros temas de entretenimiento y tecnología. Recuerda que nuestros streamings son: Miércoles y Jueves (9PM) http://www.pixelbits.mx http://www.twitch.com/pixelbitsmx Podcast: http://bit.ly/PodcastPixelbits … /// http://bit.ly/iTunesPixelbits Discord: http://www.discord.me/pixelbits Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/pixelbitsmx #juegosexclusivos #noticiasdevideojuegos #Pixelbitsconcerveza

YouTube首页变了，我买了Switch给孩子，着迷于Jordan B Peterson，小米米沙是个1%的up主。 - 时间轴 - YouTube新界面 (01:08) Swtich入手 (08:24) Jordan B Peterson的「人生十二法则」 (18:27) B站小米米沙 (36:06) - Happy Xiao - 我的网站：https://happyaddone.com/ 我的推特：https://twitter.com/coolXiao 我的b站：https://space.bilibili.com/6971044 我的Youtube： https://www.youtube.com/happyaddone 我的Patreon： https://patreon.com/happyaddone 我的爱发电： https://afdian.net/@HappyAddOne 我的QQ群： 939588251 - 链接 - Retro Tech S1 - YouTube Binge the first four episodes of The Age of A.I. with YouTube Premium - YouTube 教育孩子不是砸坏Switch的借口 - 触乐 人生十二法则 生活的12条法则 - 中英双语字幕完整版 - YouTube The TRUTH About The Top 1% of Society - Jordan Peterson - YouTube Jordan的播客 我的国区Apple播客地址

26 ans après sa sortie, la magie Zelda est-elle intacte ? C'est la question posée par le épisode du Casque et l’Enclume #LCLE.  Une pluie battante, un bateau de fortune luttant pour raser les vagues et l'orage qui gronde au loin. Un éclair lumineux, un bruit sourd et Link le naufragé se retrouve au  Village des Mouettes. Vous avez sans doute reconnu The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening qui s’offre, 26 après la sortie du jeu original et sa réédition DX sur Game Boy Color, un remake sur la console Swtich.  Pour retrouver avec Jean Zeid le gout de l’enfance, les Marcel Proust de la critique vidéoludique : François Collardey, Marilys Vallet et Pierre Maugein. iTunes : https://itunes.apple.com/fr/podcast/le-casque-et-lenclume/id1381355825?mt=2 Twitter : https://twitter.com/CasqueEtEnclume Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/Le-casque-lenclume-646277368880581/ Tipeee : https://www.tipeee.com/marcel-pod Patreon : https://www.patreon.com/marcelpod

Sponsored by Ethique – a New Zealand zero-waste beauty company on a mission to rid the world of plastic waste. We chat to ‘The Nappy Lady’ Kate Meads who is an expert in cutting down waste while parenting. Kate lays out just how UNscary cloth nappies are, what we should we doing for school lunches and the unexpected health risks of baby food pouches. Check out Kate’s website with tons of info and videos, and join her on Facebook and Instagram. Top tip: Swtich to cloth nappies. every baby had just one cloth nappy change per day, we would stop one million nappies going to NZ landfills every week! See acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information.

Mike Velasco joins Timothy Keirnan to critique the E-sds HDMI 2 Port KVM Switch Box. This item enables the use of two computers with a shared keyboard (K), video monitor (V), and mouse (M). The holistic excellence of this product is surprising. When a company does the mundane as well as this product, it shows what can be done with all details gotten right. From its excellent user interface, to its rugged build quality, to its beautiful packaging, to its well-written and well-illustrated documentation, E-SDS did everything right. This is what a good team can accomplish when value, rather than cost, is the focus for the customer. It also proves that goods made in China can be of terrific quality. Even the sales entry on Amazon.com is done extraordinarily well and ,while this show does not have nor want affiliate links, we’re going to put the Amazon link here so you can see how well the catalog entry was done. It has all the photos and text one would need to make a good decision. https://www.amazon.com/Supports-Auto-scan-Hot-Key-Netware-HDMI1-4v/dp/B07DFFFPR7?ref_=bl_dp_s_web_11891183011

This week we have Twitch's Contra_Viction and we're talking about the Swtich lite, colorways, E3, and much more This has been a Knowitsgood production and keep it cheesy

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.  

Spring is here and the video game train keeps rolling. Always new games releasing, announcing or updating and the VG Boys are more than willing to share their views on the current news in the video game world for early 2018. 

Smash Bros Cast Episode 6     What the pros want from Smash for the Switch  From NintendoLife article Knockback seems to be a hot topic Thinkamana moderator for the Smashboards forum had this to say, “The oversight is that rage should never have applied to base knockback, as that messes up the consistency of low-% combos; this means that with some characters, the person losing might have fewer viable options,” Dabuz, a long time top ten Smash 4 player had this to say, “It's a great mechanic because it prevents fishing for KOs at specific damage percentages, but it scales largely with the base knockback of a move (that means the amount of knockback a move delivers at zero percent, basically.) This makes multi-hitting moves such as Zero-Suit Samus’ 'up-B' attack extremely powerful because high base knockback ensures one hit leads into all of its 'hits', which causes the opponent to pop out and die at very low percentages, largely due to rage.” Thinkaman’s solution is, “Applying rage to only knockback growth (like all other damage/knockback modifiers in the game) is the number one thing that I'd like to see fixed in Smash for Switch,”   Larry Lurranother top player would like to see the return of DACUS. A technique where you cancel your dash attack and do a sliding up smash. Fine tuning stick controls and upping the speed of rolling onto the stage were mentioned also. Nario, another professional Smash 4 player had this to say about the stages and stage hazards.“I hope we can further develop on that with something like a 'turn off hazards' option for most stages, similar to what PlayStation All-Stars had,” also this,  “Sometimes in competitive play, to have the most fair result, we need to play on extremely conservative stages, (but) that can get stale quickly. This would liven up the stage list by a lot.” Dabuzwould like to see the training mode fleshed more.“There's a lot of stuff missing from the current training mode (frame by frame speed, recording inputs, testing rage, etc.) so I would love to see a more fleshed out training mode. Right now, there's a lot of things that cannot be tested out there.” Multiplayer wasn’t the only area that Nario would like to see more of story mode like brawl had “I'd love to see a kind of story mode or adventure mode, similar to Brawl's Subspace Emissary,”and  “I love seeing characters in a crossover series interact with one another, like Meta Knight, Marth and Ike.” Who do the pros want to see in Smash on Swtich? Zero: I really want Cloud to stay for the next Smash title. I also want Sora to join the roster and for Snake to return. That's my wishlist. Other characters that made the list were Bayonetta Crash Bandicoot Waluigi Ice Climbers Isaac from Goldensun Banjo-Kazooie Tavis Touchdown Characters suggestions from the Discord Poudigne- Rex and Pyra/Mythra Ryno- Dixie and Funky Kong NintenDavid64- Cappy for Mario. Sylux, Trace,or someone else from Metroid. Another FZero character. And Rex of course. Nightcrawlr724- Not that I “want” to see it but I think they will have a ARMS character on the roster. Maybe the 4 champions from BOTW Ganthet-san- Cloud and the same Fire Emblem Characters would be cool. DarkPanda45- Banjo and Kazooie Ctsmitson-Rex/pyra for sure. If they wanted to add more xenoblade representation maybe have Reyn from the first game and Zeke from the second.  Other than xenoblade characters I would really like a monster hunter character, despite MH World not being on the switch. AllexandertheG-Id like to see game n watch back, all rabbid characters from kingdom battle, rex would be cool too Mels-I'll throw in a vote for Travis touchdown to make my man Suda happy Character Spotlight: Mario Mario’s versatile with ranged and up close attacks He can be played as an offensive or defensive character Utilize fireballs to move on opponents that are shielding and go for a grab Mario’s down throw followed by Up Tilt is an excellent combo for players that are at low percent as lon

We get the opportunity to talk with The GENTLE BROS artist/game developer of the new Indy game hit CAT QUEST (PS4, STEAM, iOS, SWTICH) as we talk about the development of this massive 2D Open World Action RPG.  If you are a fan of Zelda, Skyrim, Final Fantasy, or an inspiring artist and/or game developer this interview is a must for you!

On this week's Pre-Flight, the heads of Toonami Jason and Gill talk about the movie Patlabor and discuss their favorite cop movies! Next, catch what's to come on the next Dragon Ball Super and Attack on Titan. Then, stay tuned for a new music video by Nick Hakim, and listen to the newest track from Adult Swim Singles. Finally, catch an Swtich Update from Dana, aka voice of SARA!

Kaz loses herself to mobile games yet again, Kyle can't leave Genesis platformers alone, and William starts up Majora's Mask 3D. In news, we talk through the trickle of Swtich info after last week's flood, and muse on Mass Effect Andromeda and Switch sales projections. Then, special guest Josh Whiting joins us for a nostalgic Save Point where we discuss DOS platformer Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure. Come pause with us!

Kaz loses herself to mobile games yet again, Kyle can't leave Genesis platformers alone, and William starts up Majora's Mask 3D. In news, we talk through the trickle of Swtich info after last week's flood, and muse on Mass Effect Andromeda and Switch sales projections. Then, special guest Josh Whiting joins us for a nostalgic Save Point where we discuss DOS platformer Cosmo's Cosmic Adventure. Come pause with us!

It's the first Big Red Barrelcast of 2017! Pacman, Kev, and Dave kickoff the new year by babbling on about: The Nintendo Swtich Switch accessories Switch online Swtich launch titles Other miscellaneous Swtich news Season passes Nintendo classic gets hacked Shoutouts Bonus content for lovely app users.  

Welcome Back Everyone!!   We are back in 2017 with a brand new episode of the Dialogue Options Podcast! We had a very enjoyable time on our break, in which we played a LOT of games, and lo and behold, we talk about all of them! Joel has played FFXV and The Last Guardian and really enjoyed Firewatch and Thumper, while Kyran has settled in with Ratchet and Clank and Gravity Rush Remastered!    Along with what we've been playing, with the looming Nintendo Switch press conference a meer week away, we give the rundown on all the latest rumors and leaks, plus we chat about what we want to see at the conference (Spoiler Alert: Joel wants more weird Nintendo sketches). We also answer some questions from YOU, THE LISTENER!    Got a question you'd love us to talk about? Hit us up on Facebook, Twitter (@dialogueoptions) or email us:   dialogueoptions@gmail.com   Until Next Week, When we will go all in on all the glorious Swtich info!

The guys discuss the newly revealed Nintendo Switch *Click* and if Nintendo can pull it together this time, a recent study that IBM did on Mac computers, the new Macbook Pro line, Nathan shares his thoughts on the Playstation VR after trying it out, and a new development on the Hideo Kojima conspiracy. Enjoy! Sources: Nintendo Switch *Click* Macbook Pro Hideo Kojima

The Swtich From 'to' To 'for' [Inner Transformation Series by MK Ramanujam]

How do you remove dried thin-set from grout joints?   Use Sulfamic acid…more on that in today’s show.   Plus: one of the coolest time switches ever by Leviton     Join our free Home Repair Tutor Facebook Group if you’re a do-it-yourselfer   https://www.facebook.com/groups/hrtcommunity/     Today’s podcast was sponsored by Ironclad Gloves       SPREAD THE WORD!   If you liked today’s show subscribe in iTunes and write us a review!   This helps us stand out from the fluff out there.   Click here to subscribe via iTunes You can also subscribe via Stitcher WOULD YOU LOVE A NEW BATHROOM?   Does your bathroom need a makeover?   Check out Bathroom Repair Tutor   You get access to over 80 video tutorials and our great private Facebook group where you can post questions and get answers.   Plus there’s a 30 day guarantee…it doesn’t get any better.   Check out Bathroom Repair Tutor

Teaching Pastor Jeremy Redman continues in a study of Philippians with a lesson called “Recipe for Happiness”. We’ve all experienced the emptiness of happiness based on circumstances; it’s time to Flip the Switch and learn how God defines happiness.Support the show (https://centralnow.com/give/)

“Attitude Adjustment” – The New Testament book of Philippians offers great help as we try to live in a way that pleases God. Teaching Pastor Jeremy Redman brings the first of three sermons in a series called Flip the Switch. Lesson #1 is Flip the Switch and experience an “Attitude Adjustment”.Support the show (https://centralnow.com/give/)

Dave and Alonso make their way through a sea of '80s remakes this week. Leave us a nice review on iTunes (and subscribe to the show while you're at it), like our Facebook page, follow us @linoleumcast and he be makin' like a beeline, headin' for the borderline, goin' for broke.