Q&A and A.I.- Drive Thru FM #36

0:20 this video is sponsored by game Toppers turn your own kitchen or dining room table into a premium portable game solution at a fraction of the cost hey everybody welcome to another episode of drive through FM today we're going to cover a variety of topics I opened up a thread on social media and Board Game Geek and basically turned into kind of like an AMA and ask me anything I was just fishing for topics and I got so many good questions that I was like oh I'll just answer all of these so I think there's about five or six good questions that folks kind of asked me about and so we'll get into some of those talking about like a content creator sort of burnout and sort of how the content creator thing sort of affects you know their overall gaming collecting versus playing games you know simple versus complex games uh some of the new AI stuff um I'll leave the AI thing for the end because I actually got into sort of uh um protracted discussion with some of my other content creator friends so I'm going to try to pull all that stuff in at the end uh but before we get to that I'm going to jump in and do uh six reviews the reviews will be pretty quick um just kind of the general Impressions I don't think I played more than the no I played a couple of them more than once but most of them I've only played one time so yeah so they won't be super in-depth reviews but I just kind of wanted to touch base on some of the games I've been kind of light on the review game there's some more games coming up uh that I'm excited to review

1:52 I'm not going to spoil it here because I don't really exactly know the order um but yeah there's definitely some reviews coming shortly but I wanted to kind of circle back and you know kind of touch on some of these games that won't be getting the video treatment for reasons which will become clear later um but yeah so a couple of reviews and some good topics from some folks so take a short little break fix yourself some tea some coffee uh whatever your beverage of choice is and we'll be back in a second okay so the first game that we're going to talk about is a game that I was very excited to try it's called shadowgate it is a sort of a board game style of an old video game that was from I think the 1980s I have just amazing memories of going to a friend's house a couple of times and doing like a sleepover type of thing and they had a computer there in their living room and we played this game called shadowgate and it was just like puzzly sort of Click point and click kind of Adventure game but it was from a first person perspective uh just I think it's a groundbreaking game I think it's kind of considered that and just really cool fun adventure thing you could just die at any instant so if you're familiar with uh like those old games myth or Zork which was a

3:22 text-based game uh shadowgate was kind of that same thing and the board game name is actually called shadowgate The Living castles from trick-or-treat Studios and they've done a fair bit of releases here over the last year they did a remake of the uh Trump fabric the Dream Factory game from Reiner knencia which I reviewed oh a few months ago now and I enjoyed their their remake of that and I was really excited for shadowgate and I was like gosh how are they gonna do this you know Point click adventure game you know in a board game form and it really just did not do any I mean it's one of uh the worst games I've played uh it has this really terrible dice rolling mechanism for doing your actions which just can like just hose you up and leave you basic basically without any resources and he kind of just bounced around to these different locations doing these different quests and things like that um that it's just pure like jump around and you know enroll Dice and try to either fight monsters or you know collect these different items that have just symbols on them and that's all they really amount to for like comboing up uh you know some of the requirements on kind of the quote-unquote quests and stuff like that and really I'm just mentioning this game to sort of steer people away so if you see this game you're like oh I remember shadowgate I'm also in my you know like 30s or 40s or whatever you know that'll be fun you just don't even bother because I was just severely disappointed

4:53 by this game it was like they fully just I hate to you know talk like this but they fully just kind of phoned in a design to claim this IP that I'm sure is just sitting out there that nobody even remembers um I do I do know that they came out with like a recent video game and I looked on Steam and it had some good good reviews I think um but I do recommend I think you can get like a remake of the original which is like you know verbatim but updated Graphics you can get that and that can be a lot of fun I think the game will probably show its age but then there's like a you know a new version of the game which is totally new quests and puzzles and things like that and I believe that the folks that made that new game also implemented some of the design alongside trick-or-treat Studios based on um the credits on the box so Trick or Treat Studios probably isn't fully to blame I think they kind of picked it up as after like a failed Kickstarter and that kind of stuff um yeah I mean it's it's just something to avoid and the only reason I mention is because I think some people might get stuck in by oh that looks cool I remember that uh don't don't go for that at all um I don't want to spend more time on it uh the next game I'm going to talk about is classic art which is a Reiner kanitzi game it is sort of like I guess trying to be a different version of Modern Art or Modern Art the card game and you know part of the thing with modern art in modern art the car game

6:24 it's sort of like a gambling thing I mean Modern Art which also uses cards it's different than modern art the card game very confusing Modern Art I really enjoy it's an auction game you're sort of playing cards out of a hand so there's cards in it and then you're trying to sort of try to guess at and sort of evaluate sort of the scarcity of the different artists that are depicted on the cards and then kind of bidding accordingly it's really simple but it's a lot of fun um Modern Art the card game is kind of the same thing without the bidding it's just kind of like playing cards and sets and it's pretty good like it's okay like you know it's kind of fun this one is now this new edition is from cool mini or not or come on or whatever you want to say and it looks nice I like it because it uses a lot of like real art um sort of classical art if you will and everything looks good in that in that regard um but the game I mean it's just it's just not a game that is worth playing either you're it's the same kind of idea where you're kind of betting on the different cards to come out but it is absolutely like dry and gimmicky and gamey and it just is just sucks I mean this is this is one of those games where if people say you know Reiner kanitza is a seamless mathematician kind of thing and I'm like well yeah here's a good example of that um that's kind of where I fall on this game and I think he's unfairly labeled that in many many of his other games but this one just feels like kind of a leftover bits of the modern art and Modern Art card game design

7:55 you know kind of just hanging around and kind of you know just the leftovers of that and it just really was very disappointing I mean similar to shadowgate where I was like oh this is going to be like a Twist on Modern Art and I've you know moderately to you know exceedingly enjoyed each of those other two games and this one just did not not deliver all it's just so purely mathie and gaming and setting the you know frequency of the cards is like this whole grid board thing uh it just is not not fun at all okay so that's kind of the uh well almost all of just the pure nonsense out of the way that these next few um they I think these have some Merit it's just I have some particular issues with them uh and so I played those first two only once each um but that was enough I needed um now this this third one here this is Darwin's journey I played this one twice and I wasn't sure about it the first time I played it and it has a lot of cool stuff it's by the same designers that did uh marker Polo I'm just looking here yeah so barrage which I really enjoy it's Lorenzo ill magnifico which I enjoy Newton which I enjoyed so much other things and this feels like a lot of those games especially kind of like kind of like Marco Polo in a way and what this is you're sort of following along the Journey of Darwin and sort of like retracing his steps in

9:26 a way so he's had his you know great discoveries in the Galapagos Islands and his sort of theory of evolution and all that kind of stuff and he sort of piggybacking off of his research and sort of developing uh you know your own sort of stuff along the side of that and you go to these different worker placement spaces and you move your little ship along this kind of map which is kind of cool and you find these discoveries you write letters home and it's this work replacement game so the thing that bugs me about it and I'm still kind of unsettled on it is you have these little seals that are these different colors and there are places where you go and you collect those and to activate some of the other work replacement spaces you need to have those different seals collected and that will kind of unlock the you know more powerful things and that part to me I think I do end up coming down a little bit negatively on because it feels like you have to kind of do that and I've seen it in a in one of the games where I played it where I just was not able to get there before everybody else and then that kind of just hindered the rest of my game and then I've seen it in the other game that I played that something happened to somebody else because the second time I played I was like okay now I know you got you gotta get in here and get these seals and so that that kind of bugs me and I kind of liken it to a game called hanza teutonica where and that's a that's a great game but it has this one spot where you kind of like have to go to it sort of depends on the strategy but it you know early strategies of the game are like go to the spot to get yourself

10:57 extra actions and even if you don't end up getting it you want to go there to block other people and then it gets you kicked out and so it's like the opening game is like you got to go and get to the spot to get the extra actions and this is similar where you've got to go to this spot and get the different seals and just to do the other thing so if you get locked out of getting these seals which is just a very abstract thing and then you can't do these other cool things and the thing is if they were somehow pull that out of the game somehow and then you know you couldn't the design would unravel to a certain degree but if they could do that then you the rest of the game is really cool like I like all this other stuff like you know doing the research and going and exploring the the islands and all that kind of stuff is just really neat and I like the theme of it the components are great it's just a it's just a very interesting game but this that little hook of it bugs me and the other thing that bugs me is there's some of these special ability tiles that you can Shuffle Up and Deal out and they will give you like these you know beefed up work replacement things one of them bugs me because it basically is like a copy action where you can sort of copy the a camera with the term is but like the let's call it the knowledge or the research that they somebody else does so somebody kind of sets themselves up to do this big thing and then you do it and then somebody else comes and copies it now it's available for everybody to do I just don't like that that's in there now you could easily pull that out and it's it's not that big a deal but that was just like uh this is weird

12:29 because I've in thematically I've done all this kind of work and putting things together and now there's a space where you can just like copy it or something I don't know that one's not a big deal but that was just kind of a stickler for me so Darwin donor I would you know some people have that like try buy or you know ignore or whatever I would put this in the try area because I I just that seal thing just bugs me and it just take it's two gamey and it really to me kind of detracted from a lot of cool stuff that I thought was going on and I was like kept having to focus on that I'm like this is just oh yeah that's right I'm playing a board game you know I don't you know what I mean like it's kind of like I'm getting into this other stuff and it's just this so you know apparently mechanical thing that's getting in the way and so you know that happened I mean we're playing games here right so that's gonna happen but it just didn't marry up right so that you know sometimes I play a game and it's just like pure mechanic calculation blah blah I'm just you know trying to get in there and crunch the numbers and then other times I'm playing games where it's like oh I'm just into the theme and I'm not even worried about the mechanics the mechanics are like this effortless Breeze behind me sort of like you know fill in my sales and put me on this journey this kind of was starting to do that but then there's this thing kept getting in the way so anyway it's a little tricky but take you can take or leave that but I would recommend folks try the game though because that may not bother you as much as me

14:00 and the other thing the next game we'll talk about that was Darwin's Journey uh this will be beer and bread it is a similar kind of thing this is a two-player card game coming from uh Capstone games and it's been out for a while and I like a lot of it so you have these cards and you're playing them and it's you know it's it's kind of like a straight card game a San Juan Style game but you have these places on these on this board that you're playing cards and so what you do is you have these like different types of resources that you can you can get so you get like the different um ingredients for creating the beer and the bread and then you have the water spaces to like generates water and they have abilities so you can play the cards for the abilities so they have this kind of multi-use thing and then you can kind of like play the cards uh for later so you get the cards back for later and so what ends up happening and that's all really neat like I love a multi-use card game I love all that stuff um and the game is pretty interesting like most of the way through but then at the end you have this kind of like feels like super lucky like top decking thing that's kind of out of your control based on like which cards you get to go with the combos and stuff like there's not enough like I don't know and I don't know how this would work in this design but like ways to dig out and get certain cards you know somewhat reliably it was just kind of I don't know it's it's it's a lighter

15:32 game though so I don't think that you know it needs to be that you know sort of taxing or involved or complex but the way that that sort of the end game sort of comes out you're just it feels like you're top decking and I'm realizing I'm not being very clear actually uh so when you play some of those cards down for those abilities that you get you're not sure like how well they're going to interact with the other cards that you get right but again it's a pretty light game um so you might get some more mileage out of it I just kind of found again that it didn't kind of marry up and sort of come together uh in the way uh that I that I would have would have wanted it to anyway so that's beer and bread and so two more games here next one is going to be uh Witcher old world and this one I did play a few times I think I played this three times at least three times actually um I might have played four times because I played some solo games of it as well as games with other players and this is another one where like Darwin's Journey where I kind of struggled with it because I was kind of like do I like this and I think at the end of the day no I I don't like it now it has a lot of cool elements similar to Darwin's Journey there's a lot of different parts of it that I like um but there's a couple of issues with it so the the game you know you wander around with your Witcher and you fight uh different monsters and you can fight each other and you try to sort of like level up your Witcher and then based on you know the kind of expansions and

17:03 stuff that you have which I did try with some of the expansions um the end game is a little different so the main game is like you level up your Witcher and you've gotten like these different achievements through leveling up or fighting and that kind of stuff now there's an expansion I forget the name of it where you actually add like a big bad monster I think if you're gonna play the game you should definitely add that to it that's that's a must-have because that gives you more of a targeted sort of end game and it's a little bit more you know climactic instead of somebody just like you know well uh you know I leveled up and then I had a fight and then I won so this has you kind of targeting this monster and this monster is sort of like roaming the countryside wreaking havoc and stuff and so that kind of adds some Dynamics to the game where you can get little bonuses and things like that kind of following in its ruins um and you know it's got this weird card play Combat which I just at the end of the day just do not like it's like they have these like weird icons and colors that you try to play and line up and it kind of reminds me of sort of like a Lords of hellos Lords of Ragnarok style combat I've not played Lord of Ragnarok but I've played Lords of hellos and that combat system I liked and learns to hell is but this one feels like it has no Rhyme or Reason because you kind of every turn you're automatically buying these cards and adding them to your deck so it's like a deck building thing and it just is like yeah I take that one you know I'll take this one there's it doesn't feel like there's really good sort of Combos and stuff that you can

18:33 try to go for with different things it's like well this one has a little thing where I can link up to this other card so I'm just going to take the one that has all the linkups that seem to work and you know this this one does two damage but has three link UPS on it and this one has three damage but has two linkups and it's like I don't know why which one matters so that it just feels like this just that's that was like two whatever was in that deck before early in the design it was like ground out of it and whatever like you know flavor was just removed um and then the other part of the game that is tricky is a lot of the beginning of the game you don't really have like enough ability to go do a lot of things so you just kind of have these encounters and these encounters are like uh Crossroads cards you know in like dead of winter or something where so somebody flips a card and reads it you make a choice and then you do the thing so there's a lot of that going on and it's fine you know I would say with one or two players but once you have like more players this is like a lot of reading in the middle of this like sort of efficiency you know what's the most efficient route to move my Witcher to these locations to get these upgrades and get these abilities and you know fight this Combat on this turn so I can kill the tier one monster and then move on to kill the tier 2 monster and then okay then I can go here and get the upgrade so you're trying to like puzzle that stuff out and that part's kind of interesting but then he was like oh stop everybody stop we're reading you know it's again it's like the

20:05 marriage of the thing I'm trying to have this cool adventure or I'm trying to do the sufficiency puzzle not both necessarily and sometimes you can marry those things up and this in this case I don't think you can um and so that's kind of the main sort of problem with it is you have that and that kind of adds a lot of time to it especially with more players but you kind of you stop doing that you know part way through the game so that kind of story reading kind of goes away because part of the outcome of those stories is you get cool stuff and you know upgrades and other different things and you know cool items and and then so everybody kind of stops having to do that then you start getting into the nitty-gritty of everything and started getting to the end game it's just like you kind of happen to get into good cards you know and then you just like okay well I've leveled up I can draw extra cards I can add these extra Combos and I now have some items that will go along with things and then you know we're at the end of the game and then that's it and so again this this one just did not really come together in all of its parts for me okay so that was Witcher old world we got one more game to talk about and this one I was I didn't play this one but I'll explain why um because there's more of it's more of a piece of commentary this would be a nice kind of dovetail into the Q a stuff so I got this game from Games Workshop called Space Marine which is based on the popular video game series uh the original space Marine's like a third person first person shooter game

21:35 it's pretty fun I never really played it very far but it was fun and the new one looks really cool Space Marine two is coming out that looks great I'll probably pick that up but uh Space Marine the board game is Loosely based on those video games and you play like one Space Marine against you know like a dozen or so uh tyranids it's a little Miniatures thing with a board and it kind of bugged me because it looks really dumb and simple but the thing that sort of triggered me on it was instead of like a little punch out sheet with cardboard tokens they actually have you cut out the insert and those are the cardboard tokens so you're supposed to go and cut this thing out and then it gives you some is this a handful of tokens it's not a lot so it gives you a handful of tokens and I'm like that is the cheapest thing I've ever seen my entire life and Games Workshop is this multi you know million dollar company and they're like they're put actually putting out a game like this or you got to go cut out the friggin tokens and use them in the game and they don't why can't you just stick a little small punch board or you cutting costs that much you know and I don't want to get in anybody's business and maybe they have to cut costs because you know there's a belt tightening going on but it this is largely largely a point that I think the board game division of Games Workshop has just fallen off a cliff lately um there's really been nothing that interesting coming out I mean they keep churning out underworlds underworlds is

23:07 is you know it's just its own thing it's it's it's not really a board game though I mean it's like a little miniature game with hexagons that it's like a deck building Magic the Gathering cell game so it's not like a you know they don't have like a Warhammer Quest that's come out a curse City thing was that was terrible game and I don't care about all the production who cares about that the game was awful um you know Blackstone Fortress was like the last great game you know and they have the blood Bowl um what's it called Blitzball that's a good game but I mean they just keep coming out with that every year so what's what's the point of that and they keep like reiterating the whole Gore chosen uh you know um thing I can't remember what's the a combat arena is like the 40K version so they keep regurgitating that and these other crappy little Barnes and Noble games um but they what whatever happened to like you know where's where's freaking another Warhammer Quest that's good you know that as somebody it's like they just yanked the plug on all like any kind of you know really good chunky board game design and that's just disappointing and you know I got that Space Marine in the mail from it I was like what is this what are you guys doing like what's you're just cashing on on your own IP for somebody to go buy models cheaply and that's you know there's a part of the segment of that side of the hobby where they're like oh I got this board game because I can get these models at like a 50 discount because of the board game you know you could edit a box and you get it cheaper than if you buy like the normal Army boxes

24:37 and that that is like that side of the hobby is just full of people that just do that and the noise the junk out of me I'm like this is whatever you know it just annoys me and I was like why don't you get some folks to design some games for you that is good you know like there's there's good stuff going on in the hobby like there's this is this is going to tie into the the last part of the discussion with AI um but there's like good things happening here there's good people making good designs with you know uh good quality and lots of good effort and all that all that stuff and then you guys are just like cashing in on this junk and so that that's my review of Space Marine which is more of like a review of like what's going on with games workshops uh you know board game division these days because they don't seem to really have one it's just like a uh an automated machine at this point speaking of AI but uh anyway so that's kind of some brief reviews there and uh so yeah let's take another quick little break and we'll get into some of your great questions okay welcome back everybody we're gonna jump into some q a questions here and uh most some of these are multi-part questions or there's similar threads between some of the questions so I'll just kind of work through it more conversationally uh as I go through these so let's just

26:07 Jump Right In and I'll I'll I will also paraphrase so yeah so one question that somebody had is was on the idea of the content creator burnout and also when and how creators should disclose potential biases when covering uh games and I these two things actually go together this is from the same person here and so I was talking about this with some of my friends this is a couple of months ago we had this conversation and the thing that will burn me out more than anything with the content creation is and this is going to sound clickbaity but is other content from other people but let me clarify that so when and it's not just even board game Space it's just in general so when I'm you know looking for something to watch or whatever and I see something that is bad or just I think there's something not good you know sinisters is a terrible word but it feels Sinister that bums me out that I am like on the same platform as this this person theoretically right so I'm on YouTube and I post a little bit on Facebook and Instagram but when I see something that is like upsets me basically it makes me somehow like internalize that and go man what am

27:40 I doing I'm on the same I'm doing very something very similar to this idiot you know or whoever and I'm like in the same space as them and I'm like I don't want to even be anywhere near this person I don't want to even be confused with this person at all um that's what burns me out more than anything that's what bums me out now on the flip side of that take that away that's Tuesday Wednesday I'll go watch a watch a played video or listen to a secret of all gaming podcast podcast and be energized and rejuvenated and be like Oh I'm gonna go make a video I'm going to do something on my own or not just you know not just those guys but like anything if I watch a cool YouTube video about like I don't know breaking down like the cinematography of some movie that I enjoy you know or whatever this is like and it's a really well made thoughtful dissection of whatever then I gets me excited and I'm like oh okay so it's that's what burns me out it's like bad content will burn me out and good content will reinvigorate me and re-energize me and so the dovetail with that is you know when and how creators should disclose potential biases when covering games that's kind of looped into the same question there and I think that has to do with that quackalope turkey um that you know that's that's something that bumps me out as that guy and then all that stuff to happen with that guy and if you don't know what happened to that guy you can just go Google it and you know he basically got caught out in a lot of ways doing something he shouldn't shouldn't be doing in an in a way

29:10 shouldn't be doing it I also don't think he should be crucified for eternity either but that stuff you know that kind of thing really bums me out I'm just like oh why are you making everybody look bad you know first of all and again like that's the thing about being associated with people that that do those negative things is I don't want to be anywhere anywhere close to that and as far as answering the question like you know when and how should creators should disclose potential biases I mean you just you just should do it I mean just for yourself just you know I you know like if it's a you know sometimes you get get friendly with a designer or publisher or something in this industry just because it's kind of a small space I don't know I mean that kind of thing you can just kind of take like I think I'm pretty friendly with most people that are in the Hobby in general like just generally I'm I don't really have like a negative relationship with anybody that's out there publisher designer content creator um I mean you know and that's just should I have to disclose that I mean I guess I mean I'm disclosing it now but yeah I mean there are certain situations where you know if you play tested a game or something you worked on it or something like you gotta you gotta just disclose that um you know I don't let that affect me even if I if I really like somebody or you know I'm not gonna let that make me enjoy a game you know that kind of thing so

30:41 um I don't know I mean just disclose whatever you feel like you got to disclose I mean it's a tricky like I mean you can just run through a bunch of theoretical instances of like okay well this in this case you know oh yeah is you just gonna know what you should disclose there was a good um I'll find a link to it there was a good um I think it's one stop Co-op shop did a podcast on this and and then um Jason I can't remember his last name and I'll put all these links in the notes he did a really good thing with some actual journalists breaking down that kind of thing and I thought that was a very well um dissected and thoughtful presentation about like you know proper journalism and kind of some of the problems that happen in the board game Space uh with that because a lot of us most of the people are just like hobbyists you know that have like a patreon or whatever and you know run crowdfunding campaigns or that kind of thing and do Kickstarter previews some folks um and that kind of thing that's that's the only source of income that they have and they don't work for like a big press outlet that floats their boat and then they can ride completely you know unbiased and stuff yeah and I don't know I mean the thing is is like this is not a good enough answer because I'm thinking of that podcast now that I just

32:11 mentioned and the answer I'm going to give you they would say is not good enough but I'm saying in my advice to other creators is just be honest with yourself about what you like and don't like and just live with it and go for it and Bo and you know don't be afraid to like not like something either I mean the internet has its own little problem with that with people if you don't like something then they get all up in arms or something and then and then those same people will go and like comment in every social media post about how they don't like this and that thing but then if you put together like a production around it somehow that makes it more of a Target but everybody's just crapping all over everything all over the Internet anyway like the whole the whole situation is like it's a big bummer I mean talk about burnout the whole social media landscape content creation landscape is just a huge it can be if you let it get to it can just be a huge burnout thing because like why am I even in the same place I mean here's here's an example of stuff this is I I have I have a Litany of examples but you know like I enjoy the NBA and basketball and I like you know like the I'm from Southern California I like the Lakers don't comment I don't want to hear about it and you know so I like like the Lakers page on Facebook and I have a couple of things and so I'll comment and type uh not comment but I'll chat with people and then the algorithm picks that up and then it shows me stupid stuff like Dad bod Sports which just like complete you

33:44 know this isn't this is not really curse word [ __ ] takes right it's complete garbage takes and just click bait you know and it puts that in my feed and it's just nonsense sports stuff and I get a ton of those on my Facebook that's another piece of burnout like I don't need to hear your stupid opinion and then everybody with the same 60 comments over and over and over again like they're like they're enlightening somebody like why am I in the same room as you that's the burnout kind of thing I'm talking about it's just annoying so anyway that's just an example and you can go across every kind of industry and everything to uh to deal with that so the the the trick there is to block all those pages which I do but you know it's usually like the third or fifth time and I'm like oh yeah I need to block this this is terrible all right so the next question is saying so have some board games speak by becoming more complex having a campaign having multiple scenarios started to require such a Time Commandment that there's some similarity to the dedication required for you know Miniatures games and I think 100 yes much of my gaming time of the last probably for this entirety of 2023 has been spent playing oath's horn um and that's that's with the happiness and pleasure I always look forward to our host horn game we usually played it a couple times a month um and we had some breaks in there just to vacations over

35:16 summer you know that kind of thing and work stuff gets in the way here and there so where else we'd be done by now but um but then I mean that's just taken over um in some aspects you know the entirety a large part of the kind of the gaming the gaming life right so yeah I mean and that's the exact same way as if you were playing something like a frost grave or a Warhammer kind of thing where you know you have your little Miniatures and you get together and you play a single game for about two three hours or so and you know or sometimes for um but uh depending on the game right but uh you know it's the same kind of thing right so if you have a lot of people I know some of my friends have the gloomhaven groups that they're in or Frost Haven and it's the same kind of thing you know they get together once or twice a month and they play the game takes a few hours and then that's that's what it is and that's the same sort of Rhythm and pattern of a Miniatures game with these Style style of games and what the person that asked this their name is Ian they said you know it it's kind of becoming a problem where they kind of want to have multiple uh games of that style to play and it's in he's right it is a problem and like I said it's it has eaten up you know certain chunk of of my gaming time you know where I don't play maybe some of these one-off games as much as I as I normally do and I don't know it kind of depends on if you look at it at that as a

36:48 problem um for example I mean one thing we've talked about is playing um some more League of dungeoneers um at some point you know once we kind of get down oh sworn so it's like okay we can we're not really going to take a break from oshorn to do that when we could right but you know we'll we'll finish that up and then we'll go play this other campaign game and then I'll eat up a lot of time uh you know that just seems to be something that's happened for me since covid was you know a small group of us kind of started to get together after a little bit of time and it's just a you know small group of us and so we said well you know we had kind of like-minded folks at that time and it was like oh let's play through warham request Blackstone Fortress which we did and we played through um a whole campaign of alter Quest and what else we do there was one uh Lucky Duck game that was like four or five games we played through that and we played through something I'm forgetting one I know I am some other campaign that took us like four or five months you know in there and then now it's on to osworn so that's been really good though because it's been something that's been hard to do and like this question or ask it's it is hard to do so I think it's something you you do have to kind of draw a line and say like you know what I'm gonna do this for a while and really commit to this and try out this kind of style of game and you know that may or may not be for you because I think you know people will burn out on a game I mean oh sworn

38:19 wearing our like 16th or 17th scenario like we're getting pretty close um but uh you know 16 17 there's gonna be two end up being 20 games of it a lot of people will burn out on any you know a regular game that doesn't have a campaign way before 20 games uh you know usually they play game you know 10 10 or 12 times maybe if they really like it and then maybe they'll move on from it at least for a while put it you know kind of put it on the Shelf let it sleep for a year or two and then come back to it so it's uh it can be tricky to to get those kind of games played that's for sure so the next two couple of questions here there's a few questions from uh Justin and Andy and they they kind of similar to some of the stuff we're talking about here um with kind of the how the content creation sort of affects things and sort of the gaming lifestyle stuff um I'll start with the one from Andy because it's I think it's it's a little bit singular in its in its scope and he seems to kind of wonder if people that are kind of like a newer player or they don't like to play you know big complex games but they still like to play games and they're but then maybe they're not really that competitive do they rate games differently um then somebody that likes the big old complex games and I think 100 they do um I think that's there's an interesting interesting sort of dynamic there where you kind of have people that want

39:51 different things out of different games right so like I was talking about earlier during some of the reviews sometimes you have that kind of like high adventure sort of seat your pants kind of thematic experience and then you have that very dry kind of mechanical you know spatial mathematical kind of attitude and so those kind of two styles are gonna definitely view things as you know a lot differently um you know I think the kind of thing that I would I guess encourage or something would be to dabble in other things and I know that like it's it's trickier to ask somebody that likes some of your Lexus can't call them more casual type of games to say why don't you dabble in some that's all the soda games and they're like oh no don't don't do that to me and so I mean I get that um but I know on the other side of the things you know somebody likes a vital asserta is it tricky to ask them to like enjoy like a good old game of just one I mean I don't know I mean everybody's different though so I don't I don't know I mean some people maybe wouldn't really enjoy that you know they maybe would enjoy just one for like 10 minutes and they'd be like okay I get this game you know then they would move on and be like whoa of course okay you get it but let's sit here and have fun okay you got it you understand it you've digested it you've deciphered the mechanics why don't you just sit down for a minute

41:21 and we'll have some fun you know what I mean so yeah I don't know there's different personalities and stuff it's It's Tricky but um I think I mentioned this earlier in the earlier question about like it's okay to not like things you know I don't know um I was an analogy I would give is a movie analogy and I was talking to some friends about this the other day actually and I said a lot of times I'll see you know trailer or something and they're usually like you know movies that you would expect to kind of get nominated for an Oscar and that kind of stuff and I will get turned off by them because I expect that they were gonna they're going to make me angry so for example like Schindler's List I did not watch that in the theater I did not watch it for the longest time I eventually watched it it's a fantastic but I mean it's it's a it's not like a fun movie but it's a great movie it's well done it moves you and it just I mean I mean it's just it's mind-blowing it takes your breath away in a lot of in a lot of the worst ways a movie can take your breath away but it's well done and I'm glad it exists I think everybody should you know try to watch it but it the sheer horrifying event that's betrayed I don't want to subject myself to that right and so there's there's a lot of movies that come out I'm like I bet that's good but I don't want to watch it

42:52 because it's gonna upset me and I just don't well why would I purposefully put myself in the situation to watch that and be angry you know because a lot of these you know Oscar movies there's always some point in these movies a lot of times where somebody says absolutely like betrayed or brutalized or something because the movies often are about how these people will overcome certain difficulties and you know just imagine anything and that's great but it's also like man just punch him in the face you know what I mean like you know I'm being a little facetious here but like it's just tricky so sometimes I want to have a movie that just is like okay let me forget that the world is exists and there's lightsabers and dinosaurs you know so it's different things for different folks and how you want to spend your free time so um but I'm like I've said I'm not opposed I eventually did watch Schindler's List and I've watched a lot of other things you know the one movie I can think of recently I watched a couple years ago but it's called lion um it's about uh um I don't really want to spoil it but it's it's a it takes place in India to start the movie uh it's about a young Indian kid and then it kind of goes through his whole life you know as he gets older and it's called lion like you know the animal a really amazing movie and just completely like angering at many instances and you know moving and it's funny in certain parts and all the things so it's a great movie but it's like one that I was like oh man okay I'm

44:24 gonna watch this and it was like it was so good but you know it was rough okay so the next kind of comments here from Justin Justin asked a few different things um you know do you ever get tired of teaching yourself new games how do you balance spending time with the game versus other things that you want to do and I think I talked a little bit about some of this kind of with the whole campaign thing you know versus like these games um do I Tire of teaching them uh you know sometimes but that goes away you know there'll be certain times where I'm like man I've just taught a lot of games you know recently for some reason and I just I want somebody else to teach me um that kind of stuff I really enjoy teaching the games you know and like doing the overviews and the videos and stuff like that I I really do enjoy doing that especially on the video and you know and it's different when you do it for a game group and getting everybody to play and making sure everybody's on the same page because it's it I mean that's like game time right you know we gotta I gotta make sure I get all the rules don't forget any rule and make sure I say it correctly you know because now we're gonna sit down and enjoy a couple hours whereas a video I mean I don't do a hundred percent rules exhaustive overviews I kind of try to do enough to give you the hooks and all that stuff and try not to get it wrong you know but um so it's a little different there but I enjoy it I mean I really do and sometimes you burn out but then that kind of stuff go comes and goes that's like a cyclical thing you know um what was the other part of the

45:54 question there oh how do you balance you know gaming versus doing other things you know I don't know it you just do I guess I don't know I don't know if there's like a how to that question like you just kind of have to do it because if you don't balance things then you're going to be out of balance and then quickly hopefully we'll realize you're out of balance and then you just take actions at that point to try to correct it you know like uh been having too many game nights or something then you just don't do game nights for a while you know what I mean like and just you know I think the important part of that would just be open in communication with you know whatever's going on you know and just tell your game group like I can't make it today because you know whatever I mean I couldn't go to game night uh the last dose for night it was my fault I couldn't go because when I had work but um you know so I can't do anything about that but um you know that kind of stuff you just kind of have to just make your calls and um and kind of go from there and so the next one here is um a couple people actually asked me about this part and they mentioned Rodney from watch had played where it's kind of the balance between collecting games versus you know playing them and and then there Justin had some you know bits about how does a content creator

47:25 uh affect you it's like yeah well I'm kind of like a lot of contender struggle for I'm like accidentally collecting games you know not accidentally of course because it's all on purpose but you know it's like my collection just grows without any money leaving basically um which is not I mean don't get me wrong that's that's nice but um there is a balancing act because I I do get more games than I would probably you know buy I mean 100 so my shelves and stuff get full way quicker than they would and I probably inherently spend a little less time with the game than I would than if I'd like you know purchased a game that kind of thing because you know I also get the games too for the purpose of doing the video or doing the podcast so it it's trickier so from The Collection aspect The Collection grows and I constantly am like purging um they either go out to folks in my game group or some of my kind of like acquaintances in the area um or they end up at the uh typically I've been going to the Union Gospel Mission there's some other Charities and stuff they end up there the Union Gospel folks seem to really appreciate them like they get excited they're like oh you got the games okay so that's cool so it makes me excited to bring him there so the collection part um you know I just kind of take care of it because it gets tricky though I mean I have one friend oh it's called Billy in my group who constantly teases me he's like I thought you rated that game at

48:55 eight and now you're getting rid of it I'm like I don't have infinite storage you know like I can't just keep everything I mean there have been like heart-wrenching like cuts of games that I've gotten rid of that showed up you know like on top 10 lists from previous years and stuff and it's just like but the thing is I mean the good thing is there's like an abundance of good stuff so all the stuff that I like still have that I'm looking at right now I'm like oh I'm super happy about all the stuff that I have and you kind of forget all the other stuff that you you did like because you I usually got enough good stuff so if you got enough good stuff that's all you really need and I think you know if people are struggling with that like sort of uh you know retaining like having too much sentimentality about the games just like pick half your collection and get rid of it just do it and then you know there will be some like pain involved in a way you know it's just like uh I don't want to get rid of that you know because I like that it's good you know just get rid of it anyway and see what happens I mean I do that all the time and you know but it almost makes me appreciate the stuff that I still have even more because I'm like this is the one I committed to this one right I locked in on this one this is the small group that I have and these are the ones that are you know for the time being you know in the collection so

50:25 so yeah um and then you know theoretically he says you've committed to it the game enjoyment will be even more because you're like oh uh you know this is this is the one I have kept I don't like look at I'm trying to think of a good example here I don't know here's an example let's say I had I don't have the original keyless anymore but let's say the original Chaos on the shelf and Kayla's 1603 and they're sitting right next to each other and I'm like I really want to play keyless which one do I choose now Don from Secret cabal would say Joel you choose the original and I say no Don I choose 1603. if I somehow got rid of 1603 for some reason and I just had their original I'd be like yeah that's fine that's good but I chose Kayla 1603 so I don't have the original more and now I don't have any problems because I just picked that one off the shelf easy that's the only one there I just picked that one and I'm happy it's great you know and there's other games like that where there's some similarities that you can you can kind of tease apart and say well I choose this one like tigers and Euphrates and yellow and angsty I really like both those games like almost equally and I don't I don't even care what it says about me that I chose tigers and Euphrates over yellow and Yanks yeah who cares if you somehow stole tiger senior phrase from me stuck into my house took it and then you swapped it for yellow Yangtze like if you just took it I'd be

51:56 upset but if you swapped it for me only you can see I'd be like that's all right I won't call the police I don't know what my point where that is but well yeah I was saying you know you kind of you don't get too precious with anything and then you know the stuff that you do keep it makes you kind of enjoyed even more I think I don't know that's been my experience okay so I was kind of all over a little bit there so I got one more question and I'll talk about the kind of the AI stuff here at the end um so I'll just kind of read this it's easier so I love your take on the massive shift to Nature themes in anthropomorphic features a creature characters in most games these days is not to offend the masses by any theme people take offense to these days I like some of the games at first but man it seems like a lot of them have moved in this design choice and it's getting very samey hmm okay uh I think I have two answers to that I don't think it's a massive shift you definitely seen a lot of them don't get me wrong but you still can get it you can still get find a ton of games that aren't you know nature themed anthropomorphic characters there's a there's a ton of them out there um and I don't necessarily think it's to not offend I mean maybe probably some Publishers are doing it for that reason because it is I mean it's an easy thing nobody's really going to get pissed off you know with some anthropomorphic little beavers that are like you know developing

53:27 the environment to sustain their habitat like there's nothing wrong with that um but I don't think they're necessarily just not to offend I mean I think the point of it is that it's it's going to appeal to a certain type of person because I mean I don't know who doesn't like an anthropomorphic creature again you can overdo it and I think you know there hasn't been a lot I will grant um let's see Kenny is the person that asks this question I will grant him that yeah I mean there's been a lot um I don't know I I think it's fine I think you know we never used to see that like nature themed or like with um what was the one there was a game where you like you're growing flowers I think there's another one coming out where you're like you know you're trimming a bonsai tree and that kind of stuff so that kind of stuff is kind of neat it's interesting like oh you made a game out of that okay cool um and so I think some of these sort of environmentally sort of themed games are kind of cool too um you know nature theme that kind of thing I don't know I I think it's fine um I don't know that it's necessarily just to I mean I don't know I it's I give what you're saying like you see a lot more of these these days but you know we had zombie games forever for like four or five years so things will shift you know you know there's always these Trends and that's part of the problem though because I think some of these original games like I'm not a huge wingspan fan but that was kind of one of the original

54:58 ones and I think that was and from a thematic perspective the game is really good because you got all of these different birds and there's facts about the birds and it's it's very well integrated with the theme it's like I said I'm not a gamer particularly enjoy but from a thematic perspective I think it was very you know honest with what I was trying to do it was very well intentioned you know it was purposeful and the theme it was trying to accomplish without any of this like you know trying not to offend people that wasn't the reason the game sort of was burst out of the designer and the publisher and everybody the artist involved but then you get copycats right that are like oh well this did well so I'm going to do this and so this is actually going to dovetail perfectly into this AI discussion so the Integrity of the people that are copying is probably a little I don't know weaker is the right word like they still want to put out a game that people enjoy it so don't get me wrong they're not like this is not a bad person making this decision but they're doing it from a different place they're not like you know what I've got this great idea for a game about birds and their habitats and all this stuff and they're not coming from this sort of you know mythical pure place they're coming from a very sort of almost cynical marketing point of view which I don't like and I think maybe that's some of what uh Kenny's trying to get out there uh maybe not to put words in Kenny's mouth there but

56:29 that yeah I appreciate that and I you you get that where it's like ah you're just following the trend and you can tell that I mean sometimes but on the other hand some people might just be inspired by wingspan and be like you know what instead of birds I'm gonna do one about you know beavers and building dams and stuff like that because I really have enjoyed that and I'm got a gaming mind and I'm gonna try to apply that to this area or something um so yeah you kind of have to do a little bit of that discernment yourself and parsing you know what you think the intentions are of who's doing the creation of the game and again that can be tricky I mean sometimes you can get fooled or whatever you know um and they didn't really do it with all those almost like sincerity of like the original wingspan and how that was developed okay so that's all the questions that I had um again some people kind of ask the same thing so um I kind of smushed them together but uh this let's segue in a little bit into this discussion about Ai and so this come up you know with the terraforming Mars is doing a Kickstarter I believe it's a Kickstarter yes campaign for their new expansion new edition of the game and one of the questions you have to answer now on Kickstarter projects is are you using any AI generated art in your Kickstarter project and in this case terraform and Mars said yep we are we're using um I think mid-journey to which is an AI

58:01 software that to generate some of the art or at the very least I'm not you know they didn't give you like a step by step of what they're doing but the very least like some of the ideas for the art to then later be manipulated and changed by a human being into being you know the final art for the cards and they don't really say how much they're going to get manipulated you know like are they going to run like a Photoshop filter color on it and then leave the art as is you know or they're actually going to go in there and do some work who knows um so people are upset by this because some of the uh ideas behind some of the current what you would call AI which I'm gonna try not to get in this conversation but it is not AI it's a very sophisticated Google rather Google algorithm with some very interesting outputs but there's nowhere near the right uh structure for building artificial intelligence so that's fine let's just call it the AI part of how these programs were developed the data that they were used to kind of train was using copyrighted artwork as well as a bunch of free artwork and so you're kind of standing on the shoulders of existing artists that have not given you permission or any kind of access to your own work to use in the development of you know future art now a human being could go

59:32 and copy and learn from if I you know get picassos and study picassos and go into an art gallery or an art museum and copy picassos which is something that art schools I think they still do it they used to do it so you would go and copy the Masters and learn how they composed a picture and how they put the colors together and all that stuff that was a completely legitimate way of learning how to draw to kind of copy that and then you would go out you also go out and they're in the real world in in and represent things that you saw and you know however abstract or whatever you wanted to do so that's part of the deal so okay is the computer kind of doing that yeah yes no whatever and part of the problem is the computer can do it in like two seconds or whatever and it takes him being like a lifetime to get to that you know point where they can sort of imitate other art or artists and stuff like that so I come down on this in a couple of places one I think it seems somewhat lazy the way they're doing it now I don't know all the ins and outs the way the terraforming Mars thing is working because you can go generate some pretty you know convincing you know legitimate art looking type of things with it and okay fine but my point is and I kind of I think I have two points but it's probably more buried under one is the first part when I sit down to play a game or listen to music or watch the movies or something like that I want to have a dialogue with the designer with the artist with the writer

1:01:02 with the actor you know um with a publisher that's a human to human connection okay when I sit down and play 51st state Ultimate Edition right to me that's me in a sense having a dialogue with ignaci trevorchek the designer and publisher of that game and the artist that he's hired artists plural that he's hired the developers and the testers like part of that experience for me is interacting with that and being happy that I am alive at the time that they were so that I can experience their thing so if you think about like Bob Dylan I love Bob Dylan so I'm very happy that I'm alive at the same time he is and I'm able to kind of get like Bob's take on things right so you know pick any artist you want you know Bob Dylan you know Ice Cube uh Bon Jovi uh whatever right and you are getting their information you're getting their sort of take on the Universe on the life on the world that we live in on the things that are happening you get that from them like that's them talking to you through their medium and games is just another one of these art forms and that's that's why I like that I like that a lot it makes me feel good and then I can also the cool thing with games probably a little more so than some of the other you know art forms is you're doing it with people there so

1:02:33 again the people that I'm playing with I'm happy that I'm alive at the same time as them and we're experiencing this together we're experiencing the Reiner canizia Masterpiece that is tigers and Euphrates you know that's all part of the thing that's part of the attraction of it you know it's part of what engages me to it this this mind came up with this and if you start like plugging in a computer to generate this stuff it turns me off immediately because then what you're telling me is you care more about knocking out product then creating an experience for me now this is this is this is mostly personal here I don't know if this is objectively true I feel like it is but again I'm really biased um so because like terraforming Mars in them is you know using AI to generate the art theoretically they didn't use it to generate the design I don't think there's any AI good enough to design a board game of any you know like and we're close to decent um but because they're doing that they're like they're telling me like we don't really care you know we don't really you know we don't really care about the art we just want that it's just it's just there as a placeholder and you know what that's something that is kind of natural unfortunately about this hobby the art can kind of be secondary like I've seen this brought up a couple of times you know okay you have the designer's name on the front of the box

1:04:05 why isn't the artist name on the front of the box you know I think you know tool does he get his name on front of some of the box I think so sometimes Vincent do Trey sometimes gets his name on the front of the box but a lot of artists don't get their name on The Box I think that would be cool if they did even if there's multiple artists you know put them on the back of the box if there's like you know eight artists you know then put them all on there um and I think that you know most of the time they get mentioned in the rule books and stuff but I think it's important enough that they get treated as more of a First-Class citizen in the Hobby in general and I think that what what this is a little bit of an indicator of with terraforming Mars is like they're of the mind that you know oh well in the art doesn't really matter it's all about the game design and stuff so we're just gonna generate some random you you know AI art that's the feeling I get from it and I know I don't like that I don't want any part of that now having some discussions um what some of my my friends uh Jamie from the secret cabal and Rodney from watch it played we had we kind of went around 15 rounds on this because I was kind of coming out on different ends of this through the conversation uh uh because they they brought up some some of these points that I'm bringing to you that they brought up and we've discussed pretty thoroughly and the other part of it is is there could be a point at some point where we have some real AI it's not like

1:05:35 a you know uh a language model or some kind of image generation thing but it's like a real type of thing that it's you know it's going to pass all the Turing tests and you know there's some argument about well if something passes a Turing test easily then it's too good so it fails the Turing test because it's obviously a computer because it answered all the questions in three seconds you know um anyway but uh we could get to a point where we have some kind of entity that is creating games or stuff like that or or kind of existing more on a same playing field as as we are well you know and yes that could happen and I think kids today and the kids of our kids or whatever are gonna have all these tools at their fingertips and it's just going to be part of their world and they're going to be like hey I opened my little AI app on my digital glasses and created this little holographic play of Shakespeare but it's also like The Sopranos and there's dragons and magic and look at this cool thing I made and then we're gonna go to my house and we're gonna watch it after school yay okay and you know then you know tomorrow we're gonna go to Billy's house and he's going to have made this interesting like digital painting thing with music soundscapes and you know you know they're just going to have tools and fun things to play with and I'm like okay you know I'm kind of imagining that world and like you know what lets those kids have fun these theoretical kids in the future 20 years

1:07:06 from now I'm like okay whatever you know but I think you're gonna start wanting to and who knows what the full ramifications of this are nobody knew what the ramifications of the internet social media were going to be everybody got that wrong right so but you're gonna have a desire to be in spaces and places and in environments and interacting with art that has not been touched by Ai and I think the important thing to notice and I think they think that my kind of key takeaway with this is kickstarter's doing the right thing by asking people if they have ai used in this you know creation of this project tell us and how did you use it so all that's doing is giving the backer of that current project the ability to kind of make the Judgment call for themselves now for me no chance I don't even like terraforming Mars that much you know but no chance that I'll be want to be involved with it it just is a turn off that's fine if it doesn't bother you also fine but I think the clarity and transparency of that existing needs to be upfront 100 that's probably the most important thing because again if I was listening to I was I used this example with uh with Jamie Rodney there there's there's a David Byrne and Brian Eno album I'm a little old here but David burnson the Talking Heads Brian he

1:08:39 knows like from the 70s anyway um and they've done a couple of albums together over the years there's one they did probably about 10 or 15 years ago it's amazing I love everything about it it's one of my favorite albums of all time and if you had told me an AI made that I would hate it so bad because I would be like oh this was created with this like artificial endorphin inducing maniacal machine that is trying to trick me to have emotions it's not David Byrne and Brian Eno writing their life experiences expressing it to me and and in putting down on paper and into the air what they care about it's some magical Corporation that's just trying to like piece together all of like the perfect algorithm of the seven you know things that trigger human being's emotions I would absolutely load that existing so I should be able to know that I can get into that space and be aware of what's going on and who am I talking to am I talking to some computer generated junk or am I talking to Billy across the table and I just want to know I don't want to be tricked and that's this is part of the issue with AI stuff is you know the ability to create fake things fake audio fake video like you know misrepresenting politicians or

1:10:10 famous people or regular day people that's that's a big concern right and I think the the most important part of this is going to be transparency about what is and what isn't this generated thing and you know if you told me like hey I brainstormed some things with chat GPT before I wrote my novel I would be like okay you kind of just did a glorified Google search you're like you know tell me about the eight kinds of dragons in literature or something you know what I mean and you're like trying to come up with something and like okay I could kind of pull these two parts about this Dragon together like I mean I've done that I mean I've gone on chat GP and just farted around on there you know it to me it's glorified Google search and that's how you have to look at it don't tell me it's some AI thing that's thinking and it's aware of the freaking it doesn't know what a dragon is all it is is spinning to you language back it's tricking you that it knows what a dragon is so I think there's you know like I said there just has to be clarity about what people have done and then let you make the decision don't try to hide it because that's when you get sneaky right because that's when you get these fake videos and fake audios and fake art and fake design and fake emotions and fake this and fake that but if you're aware of that going in and you're like I'm just going to play with the little emotional morphine machine today and then you know what you're gonna do maybe some days you need that you need a stupid robot that's not going to have you know or it is going to have infinite patience with you and because

1:11:42 you just need like a therapist or something you know whatever that's fine but then if you want to deal with a human being you can deal with human being and that's it okay so that is pretty much it uh thanks everybody for listening hopefully I wasn't uh too long uh just over an hour here it looks like not too bad okay uh thanks everybody any comments or anything feel free to leave them and I'll respond to them any questions follow up you know I enjoy that kind of thing so thanks everybody and look forward to some new reviews coming soon thank you thank you