Split the Corner Podcast
2 ex bartenders have their favorite bar conversations. Your home for phone down bar discussions on movies, music, sports, history, hypotheticals and whatever else we feel like.
Split the Corner Podcast
Season 1, Episode 9: This One is for the Nerds
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On today's episode of the Split the Corner Podcast, Kaz and Kyle are taking the opportunity to celebrate everyone's favorite animated Italian plumber and using that as a jumping off point to explore some things that get cast with a very wide net as "nerd" stuff. Today's big topic is that of video games. Once a niche and almost exclusively nerdy pastime, video games have entered into unprecedented territory, not only as an activity, but also as a replacement for traditional television watching by an entire generation of people. And not to be outdone, "Dungeons and Dragons" at MSG...who would have ever guessed? Grab your gauntlets, gamers, because we are on a quest for the best of the best of nerd culture.
Welcome to Split the Corner. What can we get you? What's up, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Split the Corner podcast. My name is Kyle. With me, as always, is my buddy Kaz. Kaz, how are you doing today, pal?
SPEAKER_02I'm excited, man. There's a lot going on today that we need to talk about. There is a lot. We're going to dive into some things that are near and dear to my heart, and I can't wait.
SPEAKER_01Well, before we get to all that, Kaz, I want to wish you the happiest of days today, because today, my friends, is the International Day of Awesomeness. The International Day of Awesomeness.
SPEAKER_02Wow. I like that it's international. We don't often get to celebrate days with our international listeners. So, you know, all of our fans out there, uh, not from America, this day is for you as well. It's it's an all-inclusive listener day, right? Yeah. We're not doing just American awesomeness. No, this is International Day of Awesomeness.
SPEAKER_01I really like this day because in the four and a half seconds of research that I did before we came on to record, one of the things that they're talking about is it's a day to spread positivity. And I think that's awesome.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's like a Bill and Ted kind of, you know, in instead of celebrating the awesome, we're wishing the awesome upon people.
SPEAKER_00That's right.
SPEAKER_02Right? Like, like, all right, man, be awesome. You know, like it that that's a cool, that's a cool little way to sort of end a conversation. If you're listening to this in the morning and you're starting your day, if we're your morning drive podcast, tell someone to be awesome today. Or or have an awesome day, or something along those lines. Let's do it that way. Let's pay it all forward.
SPEAKER_01And just be awesome. Just be awesome all day. I think this is a wonderful day, and it's inspiring to make this episode as awesome as we possibly can. And I think that's a wonderful jumping off point because there's a national day today that we want to celebrate, and that is National Mario Day. And for those of you wondering, yes, I am talking about the little Italian plumber from Nintendo Gaming Fame, Mario. We are taking the day to celebrate him.
SPEAKER_02So I I like this one because it's one of the few national days that came about kind of organically, right? Like it's March 10th, and and M-A-R 10 spells Mario, and that's why it's National Mario Day, and I love that so much. Um, it's probably at least slightly international, right? Like, I gotta think Japan joins us on this one because it's also March 10th for them, unless it's unless it's not, because this is lost in translation. I don't know. But Mario, March 10th. Uh, this one and and May the 4th be with you are are my are my fun ones because they're you know they're not someone just arbitrarily looking at a calendar like it has to go on this day because of because this is where it is. That's right. So you I'm were you a Mario guy? I oh big time, man. Big time. You can kind of tell the the generation that people got into video games as to as to where their main character is, right? Like our generation, I think, and and those uh maybe not, right? Because before us was the Pac-Man generation, right? So for so the the the group that came before us that that grew up in the arcades and not so much the home consoles, your main character was Pac-Man. So then we get Mario, and then the the next next round is Sonic, and then you get what Crash Bandicoot and in the PlayStation era, and yeah, you you can kind of you know, maybe, maybe after that you go Master Chief? Maybe. Yeah, from Halo fame. And then nowadays it's probably Fortnite or something like that, right? If you were talking about like you got into you got into gaming and this is your main character.
SPEAKER_01I think you skipped over Call of Duty completely. I think it went from Halo to Call of Duty, and I think after Call of Duty came out, Halo really took a hit, didn't really get played as much.
SPEAKER_02Well, is there and I wasn't a Call of Duty guy, because like we said, I'm I'm a Mario generation. I really enjoyed Halo, but I enjoyed the story mode, um, which you know makes me the weirdo, which again we'll circle back to. Um, but I who's the who's the main guy in Call of Duty, or is it just like there's a bunch of them, it's miscellaneous Call of Duty army man.
SPEAKER_01You know, like there is a story mode. There's I remember there was a guy named Ghost, and there were a couple other guys that kind of just like appeared through throughout the whole thing, but they did a good job of not using necessarily a l a linear storyline, but using all kinds of things like the World War II one I thought was great. It had that zombie thing where you ran around a movie theater and just endless hordes of zombies came at you, which I thought was a lot of fun. But to bring it back here, I was a Mario guy. I got my first Nintendo, if I recall correctly, in 1991 from my dad. And if you remember, the original Nintendo had the the cartridge with Mario on it came with Duck Hunt as well. Yep, with the gun. Yeah, so we had that whole setup, and I remember getting it, and you know, I was six, I don't remember a ton of it, but I remember sitting and playing this and being completely flabbergasted by it and also being really bad at it because I was six, but it was mind-blowing to me at the time, and to think of where things have come from since then. I mean, even if you go back to like the Nintendo 64 when they revamped Mario, and there was a whole open world element to this character and to this story. I mean, think about the longevity from Mario, man. I mean, they're still putting stuff out today. It's 2026. I'm talking about 1991, and I believe the console came out in '89, if I'm not mistaken.
SPEAKER_02The new Mario movie was fantastic. Oh, hilarious. The old Mario movie was fantastic.
SPEAKER_00With John Legwizamo?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and and Bob Hoskins. Bob Hoskins and that that movie gave us the song Walk the Dinosaur, which I heard in Target the other day. So you know, with Mario and and video game culture has become sort of all reaching, right? But but no, you're right. The the Mario World or whatever it was on the on the N64 where you could run is the first time that I remember playing a game that you could run in. Yeah. Like it wasn't just left to right, up and down, you could run in, and it it changed the whole dimension of everything. Sure. Um, but my my parents actually had an Intellivision, um, which if you again it was a cartridge-based, you know, sort of Atari type system. Um, the controllers looked like television remotes, and they were wire connected to the console, so you plugged them in. But that was it. It was just a a bunch of remote control, like there was an up and an over. There was a couple of buttons, it was like a plastic laminated. Like now it looks like the kind of thing that that turns on my LED Christmas lights, you know, like it's just one of those little half-inch piece of plastic kind of things. But we played a lot of like pitfall, you know, things like that, where it was, you know, run, shoot, jump, run, shoot, jump, all left to right. So so the Nintendo for me was about the controller. Like all of a sudden, you've got a controller that that makes sense, right? Like you've got a left side and a right side, and you're not overlapping your thumb thumbs and and fingers on this thumbers. Thumbers, thumbs and fingers together, just hands. Just in case you didn't have called them thumbers, but we called them hands. You were trying to save time by combining those two words together and right, and then I spoiled it by explaining it. So the controller, and that that brings me back to your to your duck hunt, right? Because the gun blew my mind, but we also had the power pad. What's the power pad? For the track and field events. Okay. That was like uh it was like a portable dance dance revolution pad, but it had a left side and a right side, and the left side had two uh it had six dots. You know, there was a front pair, a middle pair, and a back pair, and then the right side had six dots, and you would literally run on the pad, you know, like like in place, and the guy on the screen would run, and then you would cheat, and if you wanted to run faster, you would just like kneel in front of it and smack it with your hands real fast, right? And then like when you had to jump, you just stop. And then you'd start again. So I've I remember all the controllers changing, and that's the thing that that I I'm surprised we've gotten away from, right? And maybe I'm just not deep enough down the rabbit hole of of all of that stuff, but how come how come we're not playing Call of Duty in front of large screens with you know modified duck hunt guns that we can reload and and interact with and and shoot at the screen? Like, how come we haven't gotten there?
SPEAKER_01Well, I think we have with something like the Oculus, you know, like the 3D thing that you wear on your face with the two hand controllers and stuff, and and I think that they have things like that, but I don't know if the technology has caught up enough for it to be that popular because I know that Xbox and PlayStation are still outselling those sons of bitches by a considerable margin. I I have one and I don't really use it for anything outside of you know boxing for exercise purposes. I'm not running around doing Call of Duty and that thing. I mean, it would be dope, but at the same time, I'm really afraid I'm gonna run into a wall or something.
SPEAKER_02Well, and I've seen those sort of omnidirectional treadmill things that you strap yourself into where you can I if that's the future, I'm I'm here for it, but I I'm with you. I need it to be a little more affordable. Yeah, um I can't spend my mortgage on that. Well, so so is there a is there a line? Because I know we wanted to talk about sort of sort of kind of the the prevalence of of nerd culture, right? And and the nerdy things in our life. So so is there a line where first of all gaming has become more socially acceptable in our lifetime. So has it become less nerdy? And is there a line where it becomes nerdy again?
SPEAKER_01I think we've crossed the line because of the popularity of streaming and things like that. My kids don't really want to watch uh TV shows, they want to watch kids uh playing games on YouTube, and that's a phenomenon that I think is so interesting and such a conversation to its own. Um but I don't know if it's a line that we can cross back on on video games at least, because of the popularity. I mean, there are kids that are making millions and millions of dollars by streaming themselves playing Fortnite or or baseball for crying out loud. I mean, these people make exorbitant amounts of money by doing something that everybody can do. And I think that's such an interesting dynamic for this generation of kids coming up. I mean, they're not my kids are certainly not the first generation that have dealt with this. My kids are still pretty young, but I don't know when the shift happened, but you know, kids don't watch cartoons the way they used to, kids don't watch shows the way they used to, they watch other kids doing things, and I think video games had a huge hand in that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, and that left me behind because if if you would have told me as a child, your brother gets to play, you need to sit here and just watch happily. I would have been like, no, I want to play also, and when he's done, uh you know, like why can't we take turns? Like, watching someone else play a video game that you can just be playing at that moment, I don't it doesn't connect with me. I don't understand that. Even to this day, the only time I'm going to watch someone else play a video game is if I am watching them do something that I haven't figured out, right? Like I don't know how to solve this puzzle that I'm playing in this game once I got to level 42. So I'm gonna quick Google it and see, you know, what boxes I had to open in what order or whatever the thing is. That's it. I'm not I'm not grabbing a cup of coffee in the morning and you know turning on Tom plays FIFA. Like I know plenty of people are, but if I want to watch FIFA, then I'll watch myself play FIFA or I will watch actual soccer. So I mean see now, but I just stuck myself because I do see the rise of esports being something that's interesting.
SPEAKER_03Hmm.
SPEAKER_02You know, like I can I can see myself watching the the national EAFC 26 championships, right? The two best FIFA players in the world playing against each other. I can see myself watching that, but just sitting down to to watch, you know, random Joe play video games for you know for the the 47th time this week, I'm not I don't know, I don't get it.
SPEAKER_01You could see you could you see the merit in competition-based e-gaming or esports, but the sitting down and watching a guy play a story mode or something that doesn't resonate so much.
SPEAKER_02Right. Right. I I I just watched the other day, I watched a guy speed run, and this this might hit you in a certain spot. Speed run the underwater board from Ninja Turtles on Nintendo. Whoa, right? You you know what I'm talking about, right? You gotta swim up to the thing and you keep getting electrocuted, and you can't find your way through the map, and you die over and over and over and over again until your mom tells you we've got to return it to Blockbuster. So I watched this guy speedrun this, and he's like telling you which gates to take the hit versus which gates, you know, which gates to wait and time it out, and and that I thought was interesting. So, yes, I I think I think you nailed it. If there's a competitive aspect to it, if you are going for the record of the fastest time through Mario level two, I I do kind of want to see that. The only time that doesn't apply is I watched a guy try and beat some level of guitar hero on super ultra fast, and it's just a whole lot of clicky clicky, and there's no like actual music being played, and it's just like it just sounds like like you let your cat lay on your keyboard, and I'm I'm out on that. I don't care about that one, but yeah, competitive, and maybe that's my line in the sand. You know, maybe that's what makes me more than just a casual gamer, is uh I will watch competitive gaming. If if that's the line, then I would have to say yes, I'm across it.
SPEAKER_01Many years ago, I was invited to a party at a beach house with my girlfriend at the time, and we were promised a partying, like real good partying, you know. And we drive the hour and a half down to this shore house, and we get there, and it's rainy, and it's kind of later in the evening, and people are having beers and everything, and they're all playing guitar hero. Cool, you know, it's it's late, it's kind of crappy out, no big deal. But these kids are the ones that are turning their backs to the screen at ultra high speeds on this game and going ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, ticket, tick, tick. So for the first, you know, like okay, it's still it's the first night, whatever. We're supposed to be there for three nights, two nights, whatever it was. We wake up the next day and it is still kind of crappy out, but we're gonna make the best of it. These kids wake up, and I didn't know half of them, I knew one guy there that I worked with, and so he invited us down with all of his friends because we had gotten to be buddies at work. So we wake up the next day and they're back at Guitar Hero again. Clicky, clicky, clicky, clicky, clicky for hours. We're my girlfriend and I are trying to figure out something to do where hey, let's go down to the beach. Who cares if it's rainy? We'll we'll make our hay, you know, whatever. Um long story short, they did nothing but play guitar hero from the time they woke up until the time that it was that I had had my film. So we faked an illness. Both of us faked an illness and left and went home. I tell that story because don't lure somebody to a beach house with promises of partying if all you're going to do is play XXYZ on ultra hard over and over and over and over again. Just don't do it. Was it a generational thing? Were they were they younger? Same age group, man. Same age. I was in my very early 20s. And you know, guitar hero was a cool thing. I think I had guitar hero at one point, but don't lure someone to a beach house with a promise of a party. For that party to be like a couple of wine coolers and watching some dude I'm never gonna see again in my entire life play Guitar Hero really, really rapidly.
SPEAKER_02Well, maybe that that's what I'm saying, right? They were definitely across that line, right? They were definitely so so maybe that was the party for them. You know, maybe, maybe that was maybe that's you know, maybe, maybe they have a podcast now, and the guy is like, let me tell you about the most amazing party I've ever been to ever in my life, bro. This one time we had a beach house, we didn't even go to the beach.
SPEAKER_00I was so locked in on Rage Against the Machine, don't even know. You're locked in, you don't even know.
SPEAKER_02Well, alright, and and maybe I'm opening myself up for all sorts of stuff, you know. But you know, let it rain. Couldn't you actually I'm I'm very Randy Marsh on Guitar Hero, like I'm the one sitting in the corner going, I can actually play that. Couldn't you learned to play the guitar in the time that you spent playing Guitar Hero? Like, I alright, acknowledge I could have learned lots of things in the time I've also spent playing video games, but during none of those video games, and alright, I played Power Washer Simulator for like three days. But but that comes back to this, because same point. At no point in time during most of these video games am I doing something that I could be aspiring to do in real life, right? Like when I am playing a space warrior, that is not time that I could be better spent learning how to be an actual space warrior, right? Like, like that's kind of off limits. I stopped playing power washing simulator because I did get the feeling of I could actually be outside power washing something with this time. Maybe this isn't the best use of it. FIFA is an extension of of all of the things that I have played, but have never gotten video game good at, right? My physical limitations. But Guitar Hero, man, if you spent the same amount of time with an acoustic guitar on your lap, which you can get at the pawn shop for cheaper than Guitar Hero cost, you could have learned half of those songs.
SPEAKER_01You'd have middled your way through them, but you could play them. And I think that's the point of it, you know. You can uh learn how to play uh some rage against the machine, you can learn how to play pretty much anything if you put the time in, but you're instead using that time to do uh fake guitar music. And I think that at the at the base of it, man, that's the whole argument against video games. And you know, as somebody with young children who want to play video games, you know, you have to limit that time so that they go and actually have experiences outside of the video game world. But it's also very difficult to say you're never gonna make anything of yourself by sitting around playing video games because there are people out there making quite a good living playing video games. So at this point, uh it's such a uh a strange thing to have to consider because uh it was not a viable process. Profession when we were kids. It is now a viable profession. Is it going to save the world? No. Is it going to stop global warming? No. Is it going to be bring peace across this big blue marble of ours? Absolutely not. But they can make a comfortable living doing it. So where does that line get drawn? Talking about drawing lines. Where do you draw the line with your kids when they are enamored with watching people play video games? They want to play video games and they see these people, you know, having comfortable houses and nice cars and and not having to worry about where their next bill money is going to come from. It has changed itself into a profession and something that you can make money on.
SPEAKER_02Well, I I think there is an inherent value to the hand-eye coordination, to the problem solving, to the to the resiliency of you know working on a level until you beat it. And I also think there's a value to sort of the leveling of the playing field that has come with some of this, right? Because if you play Roblox or you play Minecraft, right, everyone is everyone is starting at the same level playing field, right? If if you and I grew up in an era where sometimes you want to go to this kid's house because his toys are better than your toys. Right? Or sometimes people come to your house and play with your Nintendo, but then when you go to their house, you play with their Sega Genesis. Right? Nowadays, if everyone plays Minecraft on all of their platforms, then everyone has the same amount of Legos. Right. Right? Everyone starts at the same place. So you made a castle, I made a castle. It's not a matter of your parents can afford the Millennium Falcon and my parents got me a race car. You know, like everyone has the same, the same kind of creative outlets, and all of that is is universal. And some of the stuff they've done with with some of these games is again across that nerd line, but real impressive. Somewhere in Minecraft lives uh libraries, like the like whole national libraries where you can go explore books that you've never had access to, and you can do that through Minecraft. Like you can go, this crosses into another nerd realm of mine, but you can go explore all of Minecraft Middle-earth and start off in the Minecraft Shire and follow the Hobbit's footprints all the way to Minecraft Lonely Mountain. Like it, it's it's really impressive what people are able to do with this sort of thing. And I wonder you know, I wonder how much of the crossover becomes productive, right? Can you use can you use city skylines to teach about actual proper city planning? And and go ahead and you know use it as a as a as a tool to digitally visualize you know how it should work and what it will all look like and and does it all connect right and and press play and see what happens. You know, it's a the the roller coaster tycoon games of our of our past, I'm sure it's still out there, but it it had a heyday. Um, you know, where you're sitting around designing amusement parks. How much different is that video game than the software used by actual roller coaster designers?
SPEAKER_01When my kid comes home from school sometimes and I say, Hey man, like what'd you do today? What did you learn? He's like, Well, I beat this level of whatever the educational software is. So if you take elementary school learning at a as your base and they are using educational uh video games as tools to teach children things because it helps them connect with it, it helps them connect with the material easier, then I think you open yourself up to things like that at a at a much higher level of education. So using City Skylines as an example, and for those of you unfamiliar with City Skylines, it is a city building game where you are basically building a city from the ground up. And if we're using that as as you know, something for city planning, I think absolutely. I mean, if not that, then something similar. Because if this is a generation of kids, it's coming up where education is connected to video game play, even at a level where you know you just need to get this turtle across this island by spelling words or whatever, and there's an element of completion and there's an element of of winning, then yeah, I think that you're going to see that more and more prevalently as education continues to evolve.
SPEAKER_02I love that. I love the gamification of learning, and I was a huge proponent of like the ABC mouse and stuff like that when it was, you know. It's a it's a great way to keep it going, right? Like you're you're doing that as a parent anyway, right? You're you're trying to use every moment to teach them the correct way to say this, or that's not the right word there, or you know, sound it out, or you know, that sort of thing that that you do in your daily life, and to be able to switch them to game mode and still have them get that positive reinforcement and you know the the the learning direction and all of that is is exactly what I think gaming at that age should be. And and I think there is even even to our age, right? If I decided tomorrow that I wanted to change career paths and be an airline pilot, one of the first things I would probably do is buy Xbox airline pilot simulator, right? There's a there's a flight simulator game that is super professional and all about, and it at the very least, it's going to teach me all the vocab. It's going to teach me all of the, you know, I'm gonna learn about all the different planes, I'm gonna learn about all of that, and it's gonna be gamified, right? I Ted Lasso, those guys used FIFA as you know, the video game FIFA to learn soccer for that role.
SPEAKER_01I did not know that.
SPEAKER_02That's so there is there is a value to the gamification of it in terms of you know what we're learning while we play. But I think I think for our generation at this point, and and it it's it's an interesting theory that I've had for a very long time that I think is quite fun. Um the theory is this uh old folks' homes, nursing homes or or retirement facilities or whatever whatever we're calling them, are filled with people doing the things that they felt they didn't have enough time to do while they were working. So it's a generational thing, right? All my grandmother wanted to do when she retired was read. Because that's what was big when she was coming up and losing all of her free time to working. The next generation was probably a lot of TV. Our generation's gonna be playing video games. Oh, I think. We're gonna be a bunch of senior citizen gamers. We're gonna there's gonna be Mario Kart tournaments on you know in the rec center for everybody once a week. It's it's gonna be it's gonna be gaming central. It's gonna be like college again. You know, the land parties and all that connected and hooked up. So I I do think I do think for our generation it's more of an unwind thing. It's more of a decompress, you know, I'm not necessarily interested in playing competitively. I just want to, you know, have a little more control over my character, right? Than I than I might during my average day.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, I agree with that completely. And to go back to you talking about education, you know, I play a baseball game with my kid. He gets home from school, he's had a long day. We play a game of baseball on the Xbox. And the great thing about it is obviously it we spend time together, we hang out, we talk, you know, but additionally, we're talking about baseball. And baseball has a very large place in my heart. It's my favorite sport. I know less about it than a lot of people, but I know more about it than most. And so to be able to sit there and talk about situational baseball or what this guy did or what this guy did, and and all of this, and what that has led to is he and I will get on baseballreference.com and look up baseball players. We'll be sitting there and he'll say, Well, this is the best guy I've ever seen. I'll say, Well, how about this guy? And we'll we'll go on and we'll say, like, best third baseman of all time, and we'll go through and we'll look at a bunch of third basemen. And to some people that might sound boring, but my seven-year-old is eating it up. And it's something that we're gonna have to talk about. And I can attribute that fully to when he was much smaller, and he could, you know, grip, grip onto the the controller and we would play home run derby. And it taught him how to swing and it taught him the the eye hand the hand-eye coordination, like you were talking to. But more than anything, right now it we're using it as a template for things to talk about. And he's interested in in all of it. I mean, the WBC is going on right now, he wants to watch all the games, he doesn't care if it's USA or not, he just wants to watch the games, and I think that's awesome. I think that's something that it's a building block for something that we're gonna have to talk about as he gets older. I mean, I hope we talk about more than just baseball as he gets older, but the point is we have this foundation of baseball, and it's because he got into playing his video game with me, and now we get to talk baseball. And I think that that's a really powerful thing, that's a powerful tool that I don't think that many generations were able to use.
SPEAKER_02The communication aspect of it, I think comes in a lot of layers, and I think that's I th first of all, greatest third baseman of all time is Mike Schmidt. That's not it's like the only position on the diamond that's not up for debate.
SPEAKER_01It's a 100% agree.
SPEAKER_02Like we talk about every other position on the field, and and you can bring your hometown hero in, and we can talk, you know, Spuds McGee from the 1880s or whatever, but third base is Mike Schmidt and moving on. The communication aspect of it, I do think is really interesting because and you you see a lot of of it on social media with like kids that have been gaming together for years that finally meet in person for the first time, or uh, you know, something happened over over the mic during a group chat that everybody had to you know chip in and chime in on. I I remember a story about uh uh a guy finds out that his uncle died, that he was super close to, and he didn't realize that the voice chat was still on, and and by the time he got back into the game, everybody was all you know heartfelt and and you know emotional about it and their for him and and his loss and all that. But but that's and and and my brother Trevor might he might hear this episode, he listens to the podcast. So shout out to Trevor and that whole crew. Uh, but they keep their party chat open like 24-7. Doesn't matter what you're playing, it doesn't matter what you're doing, that party chat is open and available, and they just kind of you know, the the whole crew, they've gone on to different different paths in their life and they're in different places, but they can hop on the Xbox and there's a group chat that they can hop in and and connect to the whole crew. And I've I've been in some nights where you know you've got eight or nine people and they're they're playing three or four different games, and one of them's not even gaming. He's like cooking dinner, but he's still got the headset on, and he's in the group chat, and you know, they'll they'll take a 20-minute break to go put their kids to bed, and then they'll come back, and and it's kind of a it's just an open space where you know you know it's it's the it's the alley in King of the Hill, right? Like it's the place where everyone goes to hang out. It just it's a it's a digital space now, it's a virtual group chat right that you can go talk to all your friends.
SPEAKER_01Well, to that point, I didn't own a video game console until I moved back to Philly in 2011 because all of my friends were into we all played Call of Duty together. But I moved from Harrisburg to Philadelphia by myself, and I let I lived in a house with four other dudes that we were all very close. And all of my friends that didn't live in that house with us, I mean, they were there, but I moved back to Philly completely on my own. So I had the Xbox, and that was how I stayed in touch with my friends. You know, we'd play Xbox together at night. We'd play Call of Duty or whatever the case may be, but it was less about playing the game and more about just being able to have some some connection with the people that I had recently moved away from. You know, that group of people are still my group of people. That group of people was insanely close. We're all very, very close with one another in those days, and we still are, you know, in different facets now. But, you know, that Xbox and that video game gave me the ability to continue to not feel like I was completely by myself at a time when I really was completely by myself. So the element of being of the of the community and the the connection there, I think that's that's something that's overlooked by people that are are anti-video game or people that think that that video games don't really serve a positive purpose. I think there's a lot more positivity to it than there is negativity in the spirit of everything is awesome day or International Day of Awesomeness. But the pot, I mean, you know, the the the the violence or whatever, the the the gratuitousness of some of these games, like that's that's got a place to be talked about as well. But I think at its base, these things are are much better for connectivity and much better for continuing to to forge relationships in a time and place where maybe it's not the easiest to get around places.
SPEAKER_02We've left, right, in order for it to be a nerd thing, it's got to exist in some sort of niche, right? Like it can't be it can't be accepted by the general populace because then it's mainstream and you're not a nerd, you're just everyone. So I I do think there's kind of a flow of you know, nerd culture that becomes accepted by the mainstream isn't really you're not really a nerd anymore, but but I think in that regard, when you look at something like gaming, it has become such a broader spectrum that the nerd culture now lives within it. Right. Right? Because you can be a jock that only plays you know, look at look at uh look at Letter Kenny, right? That everyone plays Chell. Yep doesn't matter, doesn't matter who you are, everyone plays Chell.
SPEAKER_03Yep.
SPEAKER_02So you know there are now you can be a gamer within the gamer community, and you know, maybe the maybe the World of Warcraft guys are are you know nerdier than the rest of us, or maybe you're super into Pokemon and and that just kind of overlaps into the gaming world because there's been so many Pokemon games, you know. So I I think I think it it it has become sort of a broader communication spectrum, right? I that's where we're at now, I I think in our little circle of gamers, is that we don't we're not really in it so much for the game as we are for the community, right? If if if one of our homies reached out and said, Hey, this one is free, we're all playing tomorrow, hop on the download. I don't really care what that game is. I'm I'm probably gonna play it for at least tonight because everybody's playing it and it's gonna be funny. You know, like even if the game is awful, we're going to have a good time because of the group of people that are involved in in making the best of it.
SPEAKER_01Exactly.
SPEAKER_02So I'm I think I'm with you there that the the community has become has become such a broad thing, right? Like now instead of now instead of just being a Phillies fan, right, that only watches baseball when the Phillies are playing, I think gaming is now more of a I am a baseball fan. I'll watch any baseball ever, right? So if you're a gamer now, you're not just it's not like, oh, are you a gamer and you're like, oh my god, I love Mario. Like you know, you have to specify. Are you a gamer? Well, I only really play Mario. Right. You know, so it's so you do have to kind of limit that. But I I think the fact that that it does it does kind of open the door to that sort of that sort of larger niche community conversation, right? Like, is is that what have we always been looking for the community? And gaming was just another way of creating that, right? That the difference between getting four people to sit around and play a board game versus getting four people to sit around and and play Smash Brothers or Mario Party or something like that. That's a that's a four-player game, you know. We've just we've just changed the venue. We're still doing the the same thing, we're still creating that sense of of community, right? Like I want to hang out with my friends and play what they're playing.
SPEAKER_01Well, speaking of that speaking of the nerd culture and the niche and all this. When we think of like the nerdiest thing ever, I think you would be hard pressed to find people who would say that it's not Dungeons and Dragons. Like DD has for so long occupied this space of mom's basement, a bunch of dudes with bad skin and greasy hair, and maybe that one token girl that is into it too, but they're doing ogres and trolls and and all of this stuff. And recently, uh while doom scrolling through my phone, as some of us have a tendency to do from time to time, I came across a video of a live action Dungeons and Dragons game being played in an arena. And this wasn't just any arena, I might add. This is the world's most famous arena, Madison Square Garden. What has become a thing recently is that people are taking Dungeons and Dragons games on the road, and they are selling places out so that people can watch them play Dungeons and Dragons. Now there is a show element, some of them I've I've gone down this particular rabbit hole just because I couldn't believe what I was seeing. But some people have taken it in the comedy direction, some people have taken it into more of a serious direction, but and I mean it doesn't, it's not always just Madison Square Garden. I mean, there, you know, but there are people out there that are paying money to watch people in a group environment play Dungeons and Dragons. That is the single greatest success story I think of all time in the gaming community, in the gaming world, in the world in general, potentially. That something as niche, something as as embarrassing for some people, I think, over the years as Dungeons and Dragons is. It is now sold out Madison Square freaking garden.
SPEAKER_02It's the glow-up, right? Like it's the it it's at the at the top of the stairs, it's the glasses and the pocket protector and the bow tie, and you know, and then the music starts playing, and the glasses go, and the and the hair gets tossed back, and the pocket protector goes, and and by the time he gets to the bottom of the stairs and Duran Duran is finished singing, all of a sudden he's super hot, right? Like that's what we've done. Dungeons and Dragons has had like an 80s montage glow up to the point where Dragons is the cheese all that of gaming. Exactly. Is it getting close to the point where it is no longer a nerd thing, or has it already crossed that line?
SPEAKER_01See, that's the thing, and and I want to I want to clear something up. We're not being derogatory when we use the term nerd. I think it's important to understand the differentiation between we're being mean about nerd stuff and we're just using it as a as a placeholder, you know, as a as a as an umbrella term. Because I think that's important to differentiate. But nerdy stuff is nerdy stuff, I think. And Dungeons and Dragons is the king of all nerd stuff.
SPEAKER_02But if it becomes mainstream, then it's not nerdy anymore. But did you know that that was a thing before I told you it was a thing? Well, I think that I didn't know they've sold out Madison Square Garden. From a split the corner podcast to bartenders talking perspective, I do know that there are programs in every major city that will bring a Dungeons and Dragons, what do we call them, campaigns? A game night to your bar. Oh yeah. Dungeon Master comes in and you pay to, you know, register spots in the in the in the in the party in the in the team in the guild. I don't know any of these terms, but you pay money to come to the bar with your with your level 47 paladin, and you're gonna do a limited edition quest at the bar tonight with this dungeon master that came in. That it's like trivia, right? It's or or karaoke. But instead of bringing in a guy with a laptop and 15,000 songs with no lyrics, you're bringing in a guy that has impeccable knowledge on dice rolls and what your fighter class brings to the table in a dungeon full of orcs.
SPEAKER_01So I one of my neighbors plays Dungeons and Dragons, I think, monthly with a group of people. And I've asked him to get involved. I'd like to go and play just once, at least, just to see what all the hype is about. Because in the conversations that I've had with this guy, and he's super knowledgeable, I mean, really nice guy, um, and very open about discussing these things. The things, the intricacies of this game are not to be cast aside. I mean, yeah, there's 400 dice you're rolling. Some of them have what 20 sides or whatever, which from a physics standpoint doesn't make a ton of sense to me. But at some point it's a ball.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, exactly.
SPEAKER_02Congratulations. You made a marble with numbers on it.
SPEAKER_00Good luck figuring out which one is which.
SPEAKER_02But he's the biggest game ever, the dice never stopped rolling.
SPEAKER_00God forbid you play on a hill.
SPEAKER_01But he's talking to me about this stuff, and I had no idea that the the of the intricacies and things, and I had no idea that if you create a character, right, that you can take that character with its traits and its weaponry and its armor and its inventory or whatever, and you can go game to game to game with this thing. I mean, what is Dungeons and Dragons other than an early precursor to you know RPGs and stuff in the video game world?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it's it's World of Warcraft with a really large notebook.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You know, like you you've got to keep your own stats. You've got to. I work with a girl who we were talking about it the other day, Dungeons and Dragons, and she was saying that her little circle of friends, she's been a watcher and observer from the outside for years. And like she finally got up the I don't know if she got up the courage or if they had an opening or or what the what the circumstances were, but she was all excited because she was finally creating a character, and she was going to get into the game, and it was you know it was her turn to to join a quest. And I I am a Tolkien nerd, I am a Star Wars guy, I am I love all that stuff. So the the world building concept of it is something that I am really interested in. Um and again, as it becomes more mainstream and accessible, I feel like you don't have to, you know, sit with a bunch of people in someone's mom's basement to figure it out nowadays, right? Like I feel like it it has become sort of more mainstream and you can pick it up places and you can you can find a way to watch it without and it but again by the time I get into it, it's not gonna be a nerd thing anymore.
SPEAKER_01On the other side of that coin, what are fantasy sports other than Dungeons and Dragons for quote-unquote jocks? I mean, I play fantasy football, I've played fantasy football for 20 years, and I'm keeping up with stats and I'm keeping up with people's histories against certain franchises and things like that. What is that other than Dungeons and Dragons for the pig skin? Have you ever tried to play fantasy baseball? I've tried to play fantasy baseball. I ran a fantasy baseball team with a friend of mine, and dude, it's a lot. Fantasy baseball is far and away more difficult than fantasy football. Specifically because of the number of games, the number of players, all that, yada yada yada, blah, blah, blah. But I mean, that is Dungeons and Dragons for sport. And you'd have a hard time convincing me that it's not. It's the same concept in a way. You don't have any control over what those dice are gonna roll, just like you don't have any control over whether or not Manny Machado is gonna go three for five twice in a week. You don't have any control over whether Jalen Hurts is gonna throw a lollipop down the field and have an interception, or if he's gonna gun one down the sideline for a touchdown. You don't have any control over that. You don't have any control over the 20-sided dice or whatever. It's the same concept.
SPEAKER_02Do you see that in the future of Dungeons and Dragons? Do you see Dungeons and Dragons becoming a competitive thing?
SPEAKER_01Where did it already?
SPEAKER_02But are these the new athletes? Are these the new, you know, is is your level, is your level 76 elf going to be worth a three-year $100 million contract at some point to join, you know, some some famous Dungeons and Dragons guild that goes out and and competes against I uh I don't know if I want to put that into the world, but have we thought about competitive dungeons and dragons?
SPEAKER_01Like well, no one had ever thought about content competitive gaming, and now they've got esports. You can call yourself a professional. Well, I don't know if you can call yourself a professional athlete, but you can I don't can you call yourself a professional athlete if you are on an esport team? Like if you're part of the Philadelphia, whatever they are, because I know they exist, I just don't know what they're called. But if you are a part of that team, do you get to say that you're an esport athlete? Or are you just a pro gamer or a competitor? Because I think I don't think you'll ever be able to use the word athlete if it comes to that kind of stuff, not in the conventional sense, anyway. Athletes see damn dude, that's a tough one.
SPEAKER_02I think well, but I think esport athlete lowers the concept of athlete, where pro gamer raises the concept of gamer. So I think I would rather be a pro gamer than an esport athlete. But where do esports stand in terms of Olympics? And where does dungeons and can you imagine? Can you so how would that even work? All right, does each country bring a bring a guild and a dungeon master? Or it because you're because you're up against the dungeon master, right? He creates the world that you're no that you're existing in, so so it would be like the US heroes and wizards versus the Belgium Dungeon Master, and I don't I don't know, but I would watch it. I would watch it. I can tell you right now, if you said Team USA Dungeons and Dragons on ESPN, I would stop what I was doing and tune in to find out who is representing Team USA for Dungeons and Dragons.
SPEAKER_00I'd love to know that the merch for that team isn't jerseys or hats or anything, it's like tunics and and and and quivers for bows and arrows.
SPEAKER_02They're all mass-produced for the Olympics, so it's you know, they're all the same, they just have each country's different three colors.
unknownThat's right.
SPEAKER_02All sold out on the mini America wizard staffs. The USA night helm has been sold out for weeks. If you're looking for the gauntlets of strength, we only have them in Belarus. And on that note, I hope all our Belarusian listeners have enjoyed this episode. We have a lot to circle back to here, man. There's gotta be another DD episode. We didn't talk about anything nerdy beyond video games. So shout out to our gamers and our dungeons and dragons.
SPEAKER_01We will come back to this topic because we didn't even get into the nerdiest stuff about ourselves. And I'm gonna be honest with you, I could probably fill an episode with ages like nine to 17, but we're gonna save that for another day. Thank you for listening. Please feel free to comment, share, all that good stuff. And as always, the next round is on us. Cheers, guys.