Elijah Allen is the owner of Fire Plant Games and lead programmer on Viscerafest. Here he shares insights on balancing family life and game design, his work on Viscerafest, childhood gaming influences, and the tension between artistic integrity and commercial success.
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Chapters
00:00 Start
2:54 The Viscerafest Connection
10:31 The Future of Game Development
19:48 Balancing Parenthood and Gaming
28:56 Nostalgia and Video Games
42:51 Early Gaming Memories
53:31 Family Connections Through Gaming
59:46 Childhood Restrictions on Gaming
1:10:57 Grandparents and Technology
1:22:26 Understanding Parental Decisions
Transcript
Music:
[0:00] Music
Elijah:
[0:38] My kids are just kind of chambers of diseases.
Tyler:
[0:44] Yeah. Do they regularly socialize with other children?
Elijah:
[0:50] Like once a week. Okay. Like they're small, so they don't go out like super often, but they go out more often than I do.
Tyler:
[0:59] You're kind of remote, like you're kind of out in the sticks a little bit.
Elijah:
[1:03] Yeah, a little bit.
Tyler:
[1:04] Did you tell me that the nearest like proper grocery store is one and a half hours away.
Elijah:
[1:11] Uh that is the closest costco we do have like you know like uh i don't know if you have them in america but like a superstore well we have a walmart like 30 minutes away
Tyler:
[1:22] We have walmart in america i.
Elijah:
[1:25] Know that you have walmart in america
Tyler:
[1:28] Um no yeah it's just like you'll have like convenient stores like a lot of if you're really out in the sticks like a lot of gas station type places are also, you know minimalist grocery stores like they have kind of the stuff that you yeah.
Elijah:
[1:43] Our gas station has milk
Tyler:
[1:44] Yeah and.
Elijah:
[1:46] That's about it as far as ours
Tyler:
[1:48] Ours has like everything like there, you could buy marijuana in the gas station like it's insane I don't think it's like real marijuana but they also have you know those pills that make your ding-dong stand up and stuff.
Elijah:
[2:08] We have those in Asian markets.
Tyler:
[2:11] That's interesting. There's a lot of stereotypes there that I'm not going to visit for the sake of speaking publicly, but yeah. Okay, I'll just do one. Is it rhino horn? Like they grind up a rhino's?
Elijah:
[2:26] I have no idea what it is. I've just been in Asian markets and I've seen donkey weed. There's all sorts of things, I suppose, but I don't know what it is. there's
Tyler:
[2:39] Like a genuine herb like that old people take called it's called horny goat weed.
Elijah:
[2:44] That's what it is yeah yeah yeah
Tyler:
[2:47] Yeah and all kinds of stuff.
Elijah:
[2:49] Yeah yeah just
Tyler:
[2:51] Uh good old eastern medicine it's oriental overkill if you.
Elijah:
[2:55] Will yeah yeah yeah i suppose so so
Tyler:
[2:58] You're working on uh you're working on viscera fest it's coming out really really soon um how did you and osreek become pals.
Elijah:
[3:05] Or code we actually after this long I don't know no we are but we met because there was a fellow that went by BountyXSnipe he was making a multiplayer arena FPS sort of deal it was also like a hero shooter this was also before Overwatch I think but he was making a game called Nexum and And he did the YouTube devlog sort of deal. And then he put out a video asking for people to help him. And so I was going to help him as a level designer, but I eventually took over some of the programming work. You have a better idea. Yeah. Osric was... I don't exactly know what he was going to contribute or if he was just following the project or something, but he was in that vicinity. And so we started to communicate from there because he was making Viserifest at this point in the Blender game engine and I thought it was pretty neat and so we talked a little bit and I kept bugging him about porting Viserifest to Unity also to go back to Nexum it ended up not working out
Tyler:
[4:28] Bugging people to port things to Unity.
Elijah:
[4:29] That is true actually I still do it I'm kind of the maker of my own demise as far as getting hooked onto projects that take too long to come out.
Tyler:
[4:44] Uh, so was he already working on ViseraFest and kind of like, you know, you're just, hey, let me, let me.
Elijah:
[4:54] ViseraFest was almost done. Like it, by the time that we decided to actually port ViseraFest to Unity, like all three chapters were finished. And the reason that I kept bugging him.
Tyler:
[5:07] Probably the eighth time that the game was done. Yeah.
Elijah:
[5:10] Yeah. Yeah. Something like that. Yeah. And I kept bugging him to port it to Unity because there were a lot of engine quirks that he couldn't get around. And he isn't a programmer, so everything that was in the Blender game engine was built with, I think they call it logic bricks or something, but it's like, yeah, it's like a rudimentary form of blueprinting, I think. For example, if you stood on a slope, the player would start sliding down the slope. And there were just a few things that felt a little bit awkward. So that's why I was bugging him to port it to Unity. Also, I wanted to work on a project that might come out. And that was almost done. So I thought that, hey, that's good.
Tyler:
[5:53] Little did you know.
Elijah:
[5:54] Little did I know that a month or so later, he'll tell me, what if we added this instead?
Tyler:
[6:02] Yeah.
Elijah:
[6:02] And then that just kind of continued.
Tyler:
[6:06] And that was, what, five years ago now?
Elijah:
[6:09] That was in 2018. Jesus. That was seven years ago.
Tyler:
[6:13] And you guys were kids. You guys were children.
Elijah:
[6:16] We were both 17 or 18, depending on the time of year.
Tyler:
[6:21] I got to say, you're 24 now? 23?
Elijah:
[6:26] That's right, 24.
Tyler:
[6:27] Yeah. Like, you were dramatically more grown up than, I cannot say the same about Ozry, but you are way more grown up than I was when I was 23, 24.
Elijah:
[6:40] Yes i don't know what happened yeah yeah you
Tyler:
[6:44] Just didn't have a childhood i guess but maybe it is because you had a childhood that you didn't continue to have a childhood into.
Elijah:
[6:51] Your maybe maybe i just got all of my childhood in like really early yeah and so i didn't feel the need to like drag it out for super long yeah i will say that in the past two years i feel like i've aged like 30 years um but it has always kind of been the case that i've gravitated towards like acting a little bit older or trying to act a little bit older i'm sure that i wasn't super successful when i was like 13 but like all of my friends were always i had two older sisters and they um had their friend group that i kind of like attached myself to against their will um probably against their wishes so all of my friends growing up were like four or five years older than i was but
Tyler:
[7:33] Like when you were 17 you had like genuine technical skills that were going to lead you to having a career and doing something useful or.
Elijah:
[7:44] At least yes
Tyler:
[7:44] That makes money and when i was 17 i was uh in the backyard of my friend's trailer like we were hitting each other with shovels and and steel chairs and pretending to be wwe wrestlers and shit sounds.
Elijah:
[8:00] Like you had a lot more fun than i did
Tyler:
[8:01] I thought it was probably um it was probably fun i don't i don't remember a lot of it probably from all the head trauma but yeah there's some there's some video footage out there of just uh some stupidity and everything but and then even when i was 23 24 i was uh doing a podcast talking to other people like you who knew what they were doing and i was just like drinking beer and like, tell me how you do that. Really? Huh. A game. How does that work?
Elijah:
[8:35] That ended up working out a little bit for you, though.
Tyler:
[8:38] It did work out for me, but I think I failed upwards. I think I like I had the opposite of your slope problem. I was sliding up the hill by accident, like just the whole way. But no, man, it's really I guess. It's really cool, though, that the game is finally coming out because i i was just telling the mrs like right before i came back out here like god i've been fucking following this game forever like forever it feels like i all the way back to before the first realms deep i mean i was already a fan of the game and then, of course it got picked up by fulcrum after the after realms deep 2020 the first one that was kind of like the shining beacon of like look it works we got a fucking indie game a publisher.
Elijah:
[9:30] Like yeah we're we're a whole realms deep testimonial
Tyler:
[9:34] True that is uh.
Elijah:
[9:36] Doesn't doesn't count for much anymore but you know maybe something similar will come along
Tyler:
[9:44] I think I think it is really cool that like this game considering like you were saying earlier like it had been you know done and done and done like Osric had been working on it for his whole life, I guess, since he was like.
Elijah:
[9:57] Yeah, since he was 12.
Tyler:
[9:58] Yeah. And then it just continued to go on and on and on. And now it's like, it's almost over. And I'm worried about like, what is he going to do now?
Elijah:
[10:10] I don't know. I don't know if he knows, but...
Tyler:
[10:16] It's like his whole identity. Like, what do you do?
Elijah:
[10:19] He keeps saying that this is going to be his only game, but then he'll message me and be like, hey, what about this idea? Does this sound good to you?
Tyler:
[10:27] Yeah. I mean, it'll probably come to you both. We'll see.
Elijah:
[10:32] He'll work outside the games industry for a little bit, and he'll get married and have children, and then when he's 50 years old, he'll be like, Like, I kind of want to spend 20 years making a game again.
Tyler:
[10:42] Dude, it happens. Like, MK Schmidt, he didn't even start making games until he was in his 40s. He was just like an artist before that, just a fine artist sculptor, doing like graphic stuff for companies and shit to make ends meet. And then in his 40s, he was like, I'm going to make this really ambitious fucking space game. And then he started on that. and then like years afterwards No Man's Sky came out and he was like shit. They took my idea. It's amazing what these kids can do with their technology.
Elijah:
[11:20] Yeah, that's right. Just sucked it out of his brain.
Tyler:
[11:24] Nah, it's so cool though, man. I think that's what's interesting about indie games. There's just so many different types of people from different walks of life that come to it from a different angle. For a story like this where it's like, I've been working on this game since I was 12 years old, man, there's another guy that's like, I didn't even fucking pick up a game engine until I was an old fart. I had seven kids already, and you can just do that. And it's also like...
Elijah:
[11:51] I was just going to say, I have to say that it's interesting to see people from the film industry and stuff also come into games and then make their game and then go back into the film industry.
Tyler:
[12:03] But... Airdorf?
Elijah:
[12:05] I don't know if he was... Well, I mean, I imagine that you said that because he was part of the film industry, but...
Tyler:
[12:11] Yeah. He was like a film movie guy. I don't know that he was directing fucking feature films or anything, but when I first talked to him, he was studying film. And that's where all that rotoscoping stuff in Faith comes from. Right. And he had... Most of his portfolio were like these games that were sort of... Interactive trailers for horror movies on ifc right do you guys have the ifc channel in canadian no.
Elijah:
[12:42] No we don't but i know what you're talking about
Tyler:
[12:44] Yeah like some of them are pretty cool but it was kind of like these similar in art style to faith but like very minimalist kind of games and you know you could go to a film festival and be like here's a game that's like a trailer for a movie you know it's kind of a brief interactive kind of like version of the story, um and then you know like do faith and then probably take all his money and go do some other shit uh jahar also big big film tv guy yeah.
Elijah:
[13:13] I uh i mostly just know about what unity is unity has kind of done this thing where they attach themselves to people coming into the game industry from the film industry and so they'll like promote their games and whatever um so that's like my familiarity with the the crossbreeding if you will
Tyler:
[13:29] Good marketing i mean it's just whatever you know gets you that kind of flair and celebrity and inspires young people to come you know come give it a shot you know whatever um i mean but i mean unreal obviously is just completely tied to film and tv now especially with all the disney stuff that's come out in the last several years like they've fully gone that direction so it makes sense that other game engines would want to say like hey you know we can do that too or we have the same kind of interest from people in this industry or whatever.
Elijah:
[14:02] The big difference is Unreal is pretty competent at it.
Tyler:
[14:07] Well, there's smoke and mirrors everywhere.
Elijah:
[14:10] Yeah.
Tyler:
[14:12] But it happens in everything. You make choices based on what's good for optics and what brings new people to the table. If you were just marketing to fucking indie game developers, trust me, I've been doing this podcast for a long time. We'll not get you that much attention. No what you want to do is bring people from that are not indie game developers or not fans of indie games to the table to learn about the thing that you're selling so like the analogy I always use is like wrestling where it's like, The people who are going to tune in and watch every episode of Monday Night Raw are a given. They're going to do that. You got to put The Rock on so that my mom wants to watch.
Elijah:
[14:54] Right.
Tyler:
[14:54] And my grandma will be like, ooh, The Rock. Dwayne Johnson. I liked him from that fucking Baywatch movie or whatever. I'm like, yeah, it works.
Elijah:
[15:02] A lot. See, where that doesn't apply to me is that my indie game is so great that it's just going to automatically do that. And I don't have to worry about marketing.
Tyler:
[15:13] Right. We're going to talk about that. uh in depth now because that i hate when people say that i fucking really irritates me i it never i cannot think of one single fucking time that that's ever worked and all of the times that people point to where they're like well this game just like that's all they did i'm like no they didn't they spent like a decade building up a community around it and then the reason why the steam algorithm picked it up is because they spent a decade building up a community around it yeah, it's extraordinarily rare that you just like make a game so good that it speaks for itself without telling anyone about it especially.
Elijah:
[15:50] With how many games are coming out now like even if you point to an example like even minecraft um which you know what you're saying still applies to minecraft even but even if you ignore that and you say well minecraft did it well that was in like what 2010 that was 15 years ago that's uh that's a way different time way different uh way different marketplace than what
Tyler:
[16:13] We have. And they made an extraordinarily large sum of money off of merchandising and advertising.
Elijah:
[16:20] Mm-hmm.
Tyler:
[16:22] Arguably probably more than they've made off of selling copies of the game Minecraft just on marketing shit. You know, five nights at Freddy's is like, probably sold more t-shirts than games for all.
Elijah:
[16:34] Yeah. The, uh, the whole like horror games that are geared towards kids that totally aren't geared towards kids are like, that's their entire franchise is just merchandise.
Tyler:
[16:44] Well, it's the, it's not like exactly.
Elijah:
[16:48] Yeah.
Tyler:
[16:48] Or kiss the rock band. i.
Elijah:
[16:51] Didn't even know that do you know are you just are you just saying that kiss just appeals to kids
Tyler:
[16:57] Do you are you aware of the the rock and roll band kiss yes.
Elijah:
[17:01] Yeah okay yeah so i know that you have to ask that when i like don't know about something but yeah no i'm i'm familiar with kiss
Tyler:
[17:09] They're they're a really great rock band like i love i love their music especially like their first five or so albums but like they made their money with fucking merchandise like selling face paint kits and masks and costumes and action figures and, doing movies and shit like that.
Elijah:
[17:27] I think that the peak of Kiss was just before my lifetime or before my awareness.
Tyler:
[17:35] I mean, neither of us were in Detroit in 1977 at the peak of Kiss's career.
Elijah:
[17:42] Well, that's where you're wrong.
Tyler:
[17:44] Yeah. My dad might have been there. i think he saw like spinal tap open up for kiss at one point he was like.
Elijah:
[17:52] Yeah that's crazy
Tyler:
[17:53] It's one of those like old man stories but um point being they made all their money off of fucking merchandise and advertising and that is what got kids to love kiss they're like right you know i can dress up to them for my halloween costume same thing with star wars like i could be r2d2 i want to buy the lego set i want to fucking have every action figure and all that stuff and like, you know you have a multimedia franchise is the technical term for this or if you want to get like nerdy about it like .hack was a multimedia franchise.
Elijah:
[18:30] I don't know what the hack is.
Tyler:
[18:31] It was just like, honestly, it's a pretty deep cut, but it was an attempt at making an anime into a multimedia franchise. Like, we're going to have a game, and then we're going to have a movie, and then we're going to have this and that. Pokemon, the greatest multimedia franchise of all time.
Elijah:
[18:50] Right.
Tyler:
[18:52] Do they make a lot of money on video games and mangas? Yes. Do they make a lot more money off of toys? 100%. And everything else that they've done with that fucking thing you i can't walk you can't walk through a grocery store without seeing a pikachu or something and that's because they figured out how to scratch that itch that makes kids scream and yell and kick and tell their parents they want something and that's the one guaranteed hook into someone's heart like they can't say no to their fucking kids right it's true yeah my.
Elijah:
[19:27] Uh my kid actually just learned how to say please like a couple weeks ago and if he pulls that out like it's i can't say no cute all of my like duties as a disciplinarian disciplinarian just go out the window
Tyler:
[19:43] Yeah man yeah you got you got two of them now very.
Elijah:
[19:49] Proud of you congratulations I'm very proud of myself too it's there's a lot of work giving birth to those kids
Tyler:
[19:54] You had sex congratulations two times two times we were all betting against you man um but no like how does how does that worked with you you know working on fucking video games and shit and like trying to be a dad and pretty.
Elijah:
[20:10] Well um I'd actually say that it was easier for me to work from home after having kids than working from home before having kids.
Tyler:
[20:21] Why is that?
Elijah:
[20:23] Because now my wife is distracted with our children, and so she doesn't have to ask me to hang out with her every 30 minutes while I'm working.
Tyler:
[20:33] I'm writing this down. Let me grab my notebook.
Elijah:
[20:37] This is only really a problem if your wife is at home.
Tyler:
[20:41] Nah. I mean, sometimes. Don't get me wrong. she is at home from time to time she comes visit yeah yeah we got a pretty good like i think thing going on where it's like we we're really both like kind of respectful of each other's careers and stuff it's like you gotta do that i.
Elijah:
[20:58] Gotta i mean we got married pretty young so there was like a lot of things to navigate and then um like working from home is kind of a new idea for like both of us we live in a place where that doesn't happen like super often like most of people around me are like farmers or um you know manual laborers things you can't really do like at home so
Tyler:
[21:19] When you when you're at church or the marketplace and it's like you're surrounded by rugged men with yeah.
Elijah:
[21:26] And then they ask what you do and you're like well i uh i i program things and they're like oh like the tractor navigation systems no like video games oh like the the kids stuff and yeah
Tyler:
[21:38] That's like farming simulator yeah like farming simulator i'm actually here on a research mission i'm studying you i'm.
Elijah:
[21:45] Studying you you're a specimen
Tyler:
[21:47] Yeah yes and.
Elijah:
[21:50] Then they start acting right no
Tyler:
[21:51] Uh i feel like i'm the same way like especially with my family because all of my brothers are like manly men like fucking rugged beer belly you know dudes with real factory jobs and shit like that and then me i'm just like yeah i fucking sit in my garage and tell people to move things a little to the left or to the right sometimes like put a little purple in there yeah and it's funny because like you know like when i was visiting my parents or whatever i'd often be working from either my laptop or my phone and then And they would, they would always be like, what, like if somebody asked him, like, what does Tyler do? Like, well, he just seems like he just yells at people. It seems like he just is on his phone yelling at people to do whatever it is that they're supposed to be doing. I'm like, that is.
Elijah:
[22:42] You're a portable foreman.
Tyler:
[22:44] I am.
Elijah:
[22:45] Yeah.
Tyler:
[22:46] Yeah. But with that, I can always pull the military card. I could be like, yeah, I serve my country. Yeah.
Elijah:
[22:55] Yeah. Yeah, I did do something masculine at one point in my life.
Tyler:
[22:58] Make two children, twice.
Elijah:
[23:01] Yeah that's
Tyler:
[23:02] About as masculine as it gets.
Elijah:
[23:06] Yeah unfortunately a lot of like unmasculine men can also do that so i can't really pull that out super often but no i think i think i just need to build a house if i if i can build a house then i can program the rest of my life and i'll always be able to say well i built a house once have
Tyler:
[23:23] You ever done any construction work before.
Elijah:
[23:25] Um like not really like my dad was he did flooring for most of his life and now he's doing like wall protection and stuff like that so I like helped him with that but I haven't done anything like on my own or that I would consider like actually doing it like I've always been like under the instruction of my dad but and it is a hard job he basically doesn't have working knees anymore that's an exaggeration but you know they're pretty busted it's
Tyler:
[23:59] Just it's a job where you're on your knees or bending over and carrying heavy things a lot it's just kind of yeah if you're doing tile or carpet or whatever it's you know it's rugged it's man's work for sure um i i.
Elijah:
[24:13] Worked you can you can always measure the amount of masculinity a job requires um by how broken your body is at the end of your lifetime after
Tyler:
[24:22] Right like if.
Elijah:
[24:23] If you measure the measure of a man's quality is how yeah his body doesn't work
Tyler:
[24:30] Yeah i figured out just really young like i don't want to do that like i don't want to be like i like i feel like time has changed like when i was a young kid and my grandpa was 50 years old he was basically dead right and then, now 50 year old men look like Joe Rogan.
Elijah:
[24:53] Yeah well i mean steroids does contribute to that
Tyler:
[24:57] But i mean like that's kind of i do i.
Elijah:
[25:00] Do get what you're saying yeah they do look like a lot healthier like not like you're gonna roll over in bed and die
Tyler:
[25:06] Living their life so to speak exactly when i like my grandpa was like he worked in a chemical plant for his entire life and it was just like you know when he
Tyler:
[25:15] was 50 he was an old man yeah uh yeah.
Elijah:
[25:19] 50 is the new 40
Tyler:
[25:20] I'm i'm almost 30 now and i i just feel like extrapolating through time when i'm 50 i'll probably be not as healthy as i am at 30 but i'll be not.
Elijah:
[25:31] Healthier yeah exactly no yeah for sure i uh i actually started um wanting to do construction stuff when I was really, really little, like my dad. But then I started getting into my teens, and I was like, no, programming's way cooler. I want to do that. But now after I've been programming, I kind of want to pick up a trade.
Tyler:
[25:57] I think that's a great thing to do.
Elijah:
[26:01] The longer I work on games, the more I wanted to build stuff with my hands. I have a schematic of a toy chest that I want to build my kids. And every time I think about it, I'm way more excited about that than any game that I want to make in the future.
Tyler:
[26:20] I've always had to have hobbies like that. I was not made to be a person at a desk doing office work.
Elijah:
[26:28] No, I, I, uh, I think the longer you neglect that, um, the stronger your desire is to like actually sweat,
Tyler:
[26:37] But yeah, I, I mean, when I was originally doing this podcast, uh, probably slightly earlier than you are now, I was like, my obsession was building bicycles. Like I had, my garage was just bicycle parts everywhere. And I was always working on one, buying a new bicycle and then refurbishing it. And then getting in way over my head and having to go to the bike shop and like ask a young lady to help me unscrew something that I didn't know. And she's like, oh, it's just the other way around. And I feel like an idiot and I'd pay a lot of money. It turns out like bicycle maintenance is actually not as simple as you think it is. But it was a fun, fun hobby. I still I only have one bicycle now. I managed to tone that down a lot or whatever. I just get obsessed with shit like whatever honestly this whole video game thing might just be a really long term obsession to find that goes away at some point and yeah I feel like I uh.
Elijah:
[27:40] Go ahead, sorry.
Tyler:
[27:41] No, that's it.
Elijah:
[27:43] Oh. Well, now I'm embarrassed because I don't know what I was going to say now, so it seems like I just interrupted you for no reason.
Tyler:
[27:50] I think you were going to say something that you were obsessed with.
Elijah:
[27:54] Video games, mostly, yeah. I get sad thinking that I won't have a desire to work in games or play video games, but I've already felt the desire to play video games like weighing like a lot and i don't know if that's like i don't want to play video games because like i'm just not interested in video games as much as i was or if it's because i just don't have time for it so there's other stuff that i'd rather be doing um or if it's because i make games and so when i'm not making games i kind of want to get away from them but it does make me sad to think about because i always like imagine myself as someone who like was always up to date with whatever's coming out like whatever new game is being released and being interested in that but that's kind of after what generation was the Xbox 360 and the Wii
Tyler:
[28:53] The one after the Xbox and the.
Elijah:
[28:57] I guess so whatever generation that was at the time
Tyler:
[29:00] It was next gen.
Elijah:
[29:01] Yeah that's right the next gen like three gens ago after the Wii actually mostly after the Wii U came out because I was a I was a Wii U kid I was really annoying about it I was the I didn't but I didn't know about it because there were only like seven games that came out for the system but I was the annoying Nintendo kid that you know everybody would be talking about like their PlayStation 4 playing like Destiny or something like that and I'd be like well did you know that the Wii U actually has Lego City undercover and it's like way better did you know Lego City Undercover is way better than GTA but after that generation was over I kind of just got sick of keeping up and didn't play as many games but I don't know because I still get really excited about revisiting an N64 game I play Paper Mario 64 like once a year at least and then I still like playing like Buck Bumble and Sarge's Heroes and stuff like that and I'll enjoy it. I'll enjoy doing that much more than I don't know, playing a I don't know what's out right now, but I'm playing any modern game that I've tried to play. And I know a lot of people will say that that's nostalgia and maybe that's it. I don't know, maybe nostalgia is what does it for me.
Tyler:
[30:26] I also think that there were just some fundamentally really great games.
Elijah:
[30:30] I think so. I think that it would be dishonest of me to say that Sarge's Heroes is a fundamentally great game. But it is fun. It's nice and simple. And maybe I'm just dumb. Maybe I just like simple games and games are too complicated for me now.
Tyler:
[30:46] Well, I mean, considering working on Viscera Fest, it makes sense that you would want to simple things like that.
Elijah:
[30:53] Yeah, that's true.
Tyler:
[30:55] Extraordinary.
Elijah:
[30:56] Yeah. Nothing that'll break my arm trying to like, you know, aim.
Tyler:
[31:00] It's actually been a while since I booted it up. So I did for like a little while before we got on the call today. Just to like, you know, remind myself of what's going on with it. This is what it looks like. This is how it plays and all that kind of thing. And it is an extraordinary. I should actually just only say nice things. So first of all, it looks fantastic. it is a beautiful very very pretty game well i'm.
Elijah:
[31:22] Glad you enjoy the thing that i didn't do
Tyler:
[31:23] The ui is tremendous the it's.
Elijah:
[31:26] Bad in the version that you play just wait until you play the new version
Tyler:
[31:29] Looks professional you know all of the effects and everything the exploring and the you know the locker doors opening up and gobbling up eggs and cookies and and muffins and all that stuff and it's just a so much wonderful things the the aliens saying cute little things and all that stuff and it in no way reminds me of Ion Fury at all and, um and it is uh it works it's crisp but it is extraordinarily hard there's no reason for this I feel like a little bitch playing it I beat Doom Eternal on the hardest difficulty and still Viscera Fest is like ugh.
Elijah:
[32:16] I will say that I agree. I think that the game's too hard, and I don't want it to be so hard. And that has been an internal conflict between Osric and I, that the game needs to be easier because... See, the problem with Osric, though, is that he doesn't care about money, and I do. So I'll tell him, like, listen, I know that you enjoy playing the game like this, but I kind of want the last seven years of my life to somehow have some sort of justification and so that would preferably be in the way of money
Tyler:
[32:52] I just never.
Elijah:
[32:53] Understood and he's like well why do you even want money money is dumb
Tyler:
[33:00] Because he doesn't have children um.
Elijah:
[33:02] Yeah that's right
Tyler:
[33:03] That's right uh no i mean i i can appreciate.
Elijah:
[33:08] Like some some kid at his house and be like here
Tyler:
[33:11] I can appreciate the sort of like savant art side of things where it's like the stanley kubrick you know like i'm not making a movie for the masses or for the box office i'm making a movie for the art of it i want and you know and i'll do anything i have to do to get there what i get that i and i applaud it but i also don't in the context of a video game like i don't understand what it takes away to just offer the easier difficulty and then it's like and if you want to make a fucking hardcore try hard game you can just have as many upper difficulties as you want you can have the you can even call it the pipsqueak weenie mode if you want insult the people for who like me who want to play the the you know it's not because i want the game to be easy it's because i don't want to be playing the game for.
Elijah:
[34:01] Longer than it
Tyler:
[34:02] Longer than i need to yeah yeah like i play i don't it's like it's kind of a catch-22, i play a lot of games for a short amount of time and then i very rarely play games strictly for my own enjoyment which has become a pattern since i got into this whole thing but right um so i try to like, not necessarily... I'm not trying to skim it, but what I'm saying is that I want to have the experience in a concise amount of time.
Elijah:
[34:34] We did introduce the sixth difficulty. So hopefully the sixth difficulty will be the one that most people can play on. But anyway, continue your thought.
Tyler:
[34:48] I just mean that it's a choice. Ultimately, it's his game. It's what he wants to make. That's how he feels about it and it will speak for itself and obviously a lot of people really like it you know for for those people who want that in their game that's great i just i personally don't understand whether it can't be a pipsqueak weaning mode for people exactly yeah that's so that i can also enjoy it and want to pay more money for it yeah.
Elijah:
[35:14] Yeah well i don't know where he's changing some things with the balancing um so hopefully by by release we'll land on a spot where most people can play like the bottom three difficulties and hopefully most people will be satisfied with that and you can have the top three difficulties for you know insane people that are way younger than me in mind and spirit
Tyler:
[35:39] Yeah yeah they should have like games should just have like dad mode where it's like I have shit to do yeah.
Elijah:
[35:46] Yeah listen I need to be able to play this while my kid is asking me to cut him an orange you know right
Tyler:
[35:53] I've made a lot of enemies by playing Doom with a controller and I play RTS games with one hand and people get triggered they're like, what are you doing? I want to be able to eat peanuts and drink my coffee while I do this I don't want to I thought all day, I don't want to think anymore I just want to.
Elijah:
[36:15] You shouldn't be playing an RTS game if you don't want to think anymore
Tyler:
[36:20] I mean, it's pretty easy to play like age of empires 2.
Elijah:
[36:25] With okay you say that i can't play rts games they're too hard my i and that sounds bad because i'm a programmer so like the idea is that i should just be able to solve all these problems but i don't know rts games are they're too much for me but i've also only played like once So, I don't know. Maybe I just need to play them more and find one that I enjoy playing.
Tyler:
[36:51] I lost all of my ambition. Every ounce of the ambition I once had to, like, prove how long my wiener was by being good at a video game is gone. Like, I don't. I'll do, like, ten pull-ups instead. Like, before having that kind of a discussion or whatever. But yeah it's like i i was addicted to quake like really like it was a problem i would come home as soon as i was home from work i would play quake until i passed out and i was trying to be to get good and then i just woke up one day and i was like this is not good for anybody i'm i'm not, excelling in other parts of my life this isn't making me a better person and then i look around at the other people who i know who are exceptional at these things, and generally speaking not where i want to end up i.
Elijah:
[37:52] Guess that's fair like
Tyler:
[37:54] I mean there are some don't get me wrong there's a lot of really great you know esports players that are have a full balanced life and all that kind of stuff but for the most part the upper echelon of, really good at quake is not people who are making a living and raising a family and shit like most of most of the great players i know when they had that point in their life they're like yeah you know i don't i don't do that no more it's like a friday night thing but i can't yeah yeah for sure um because it's it's not like riding a bike like if you stop playing quake for like three days you suck yeah you've been it's like ai like outrunning uh human thought it's can't do it you're.
Elijah:
[38:34] On your deathbed and you're trying to convince the people around you no I was worth something once that's a little dramatic but you're not going to be thinking man I remember when I could insta-jib everybody in the lobby. Now I sound like I don't know what I'm talking about, because that's not something that pros talk about.
Tyler:
[38:57] Whatever. But when I'm 80 years old, am I going to look back at my life and say, I harken back to the good old days of being up till 2 a.m. Drinking Code Red Mountain Dew playing an arena shooter and showing everybody how good I was at getting the double tap with a shotgun or whatever like probably.
Elijah:
[39:19] The great thing about that is that it like transcends generations too right because like yeah um people that are just a little bit younger than me or maybe even people my age will will be saying the same thing about like fortnight right it's like well maybe i shouldn't have gotten my like 300 victory royales maybe maybe i should have invested in like forming relationships or something but you know i say that and a lot of people are going to be like well you don't know that because I met my wife on Fortnite and it was really worth the while so there's always like edge cases like that but
Tyler:
[40:00] My friend our mutual friend Vince he met his wife playing actually he met her on like fucking 4chan for real and it was like a World of Warcraft one.
Elijah:
[40:09] Well that's a relationship that's like worth having You know, the great thing about that is if you do meet a woman that is that's scrolling 4chan, you won't be wasting your time.
Tyler:
[40:22] Well, at minimum, it's like if both of you are in this same place at the same time talking about the same thing, chances are not a lot of other options out for either of you. So you're probably meant to be together.
Elijah:
[40:36] That's right.
Tyler:
[40:38] I thought I was getting a phone call, but it's my 1130 wake-up alarm.
Elijah:
[40:42] Oh.
Tyler:
[40:43] That's okay. I turned it off. Wow. But no, for real, people meet people all kinds of different ways. I guess for me, it's just like I don't want to be like one of those dudes that's like a bachelor when they're in their late 40s and shit, and it's like they're always hanging out with younger people because they want to do young people shit. It's like, I want to be like going to my kids' graduations.
Elijah:
[41:12] Yeah, for sure. Yeah.
Tyler:
[41:13] And then playing, like, I still want to play games, but I want to like, like we were talking about a few weeks ago. Like, I want to play more kids' games now because I'm like, I'm going to, this is the kind of stuff I'm going to share with my kid. Like, I look at something like, everything I look at, I'm like, is this something I could do together? Like, I don't even want the nudie stuff in Baldur's Gate. Like, I'm like, we're not going to do that.
Tyler:
[41:39] My character is 100% chased all the way through. Like, totally. Yeah. I didn't really know, because I didn't do my research, I didn't realize that Baldur's Gate was so, like, Witcher 3 now. And so I told you, like, I'm playing the game as my wife. I designed my character to be my wife. And I'm making every choice as if I were her. And then I realized very quickly, like I'm constantly getting hit on, which is probably what her real life is like. And I'm doing what she would do and turning it down every time, waiting for my soulmate, who is not an illithid, who actually I originally designed the guardian character as me, thinking that there would be a romance there. And then I realized he's an illithid. And I was like, no, sir, there won't be any of that. So I put myself into an interesting predicament. You've doomed your... Oh, yeah. Well, I'd like to play Doom as my wife. She's probably way tougher than the Doom Marine, for real. Yeah. She has... Unlike the Doom Marine, she has real military experience.
Tyler:
[42:51] Yeah, so... Just the whole experience of, like, working on the game for the last seven years and all that. But let's kind of, like, take a little step back. Like, when did you get into video games? How old were you?
Elijah:
[43:04] Video games in general? I think probably like four.
Tyler:
[43:09] It's a good age.
Elijah:
[43:11] Yeah, my uncle had an N64, and my parents, they ran a youth group. And when one of their kids that attended their youth group, I think he either graduated or he was going to university or something like that, he had gifted them their N64. and a bunch of games. And so I grew up playing the N64 with my sisters, and it was fantastic. And actually, the reason that I got into game development, and I kind of hate sharing these stories because they're actually always boring to everybody else. But the short story is, in Star Wars Shadows the Empire, there's this room in the second level in Hoth Base where you see the Millennium Falcon flying out of the hangar bay, and there's this like upper room window thing that you can never reach in the game and i was always interested by like what was back there because as a kid i was like this is a real place that it like exists like there's going to be some like sort of like computers or enemies or something in that room even though you can never get there um and so eventually i got kind of into like the idea that you could modify games and that started with game chart codes. So when I figured out what emulators were I was like, I can play Shadows of the Empire and I can give myself a jetpack in the game.
Tyler:
[44:39] How old were you when you figured out what an emulator was?
Elijah:
[44:42] I think like six or seven because it was before I started making games.
Tyler:
[44:47] That's amazing. I don't think I knew what an emulator was until I was maybe like 16 and only because I really wanted to play Chrono Trigger and it was the only way to do it. And I didn't understand what it was. I just knew that this, like, I just had to...
Elijah:
[45:01] I didn't really understand what emulators were either. I just knew that you could play N64 games on your computer, but...
Tyler:
[45:06] That's what I thought YouTube was. I thought it was just Dragon Ball Z. Like, this is where you watch Dragon Ball Z.
Elijah:
[45:11] That's right.
Tyler:
[45:12] Yeah.
Elijah:
[45:13] Um... But yeah, so I flew up to that room and it was actually really hard to like navigate because that game had like a bunch of flickering issues in the emulator, like the screen would flicker black like all the time. But anyway, I went up into that room. And I discovered that it was just like this like hollowed out like room, like there was nothing in it. And I was like, wow, that's interesting. um and but that got me interested in level design and so eventually like when i was eight i was like what if i made my own game um like games are made by people um and i had that epiphany like when i was was looking around in that empty room um and so i started with like game maker and stuff like that and you know typical like early game engine stuff that you know kids can kind of grapple onto and then i started using unity when i was 12 and originally i had thought of myself as like a level designer and then i discovered that i hated level design but i loved programming so um that's a short story i
Tyler:
[46:20] Think i knew that games were made by people but i think i thought they were only made by japanese people.
Elijah:
[46:25] Yeah that's probably close to close to what i had imagined as well or at least like yeah i had this idea that like they were made by people like i understood that like as an intellectual level like games didn't just pop into existence but like i didn't fully grasp what it meant that like people designed something like it's like that i don't know if people have a similar experience but it's like when you learn that like art is cool you know like people create art and there's like some sort of human aspect to it like obviously when you're a kid and you don't really like explore that like fully but when i learned that like art was made by people um i was really interested in the idea that you could like share stories through art and so that was uh that was before like i had this epiphany about games but when i had this epiphany that like games are made by people it had that same kind of feeling where it was like oh yeah like somebody put thought into this and somebody like designed this for a reason like there was a purpose that this was designed for right and they had thoughts behind that
Tyler:
[47:37] I guess I had that same thing but it was about books for me like I didn't I don't know video I didn't really think about video games as like a storytelling medium like I always wanted to tell stories and I was like really into reading and writing like so I had like
Tyler:
[47:53] very high reading comprehension level and like all of my you were smart you.
Elijah:
[47:57] Were a gifted kid
Tyler:
[47:58] All of my elementary school you know classes i was like the kid that you know they give you like oh write a creative story and it's got to be three pages long and i would like bust it out in the first draft turn it in and get really high grade and then other kids were like you know like i don't know what to say and i'm like i have shit i i'll never run out of stuff to say that has not stopped by the way like uh i just i have so much i want to tell you like you know there's a you know be creative oh oh my gosh it's my opportunity i'm free to do whatever i want and then i got into like theater too so i was like in a bunch of plays and stuff that's fun um but i always loved storytelling i just didn't really put two and two together that like you could do that in video games until i was in my 20s.
Elijah:
[48:38] Yeah i don't think that it was like that well articulated in my mind as maybe i described it but uh yeah similar thing is like anything that's made by people is like made with some sort of purpose, whether that purpose is to just make money or whether that purpose is to tell a story or whatever. Which I think actually both have value and I know that that maybe makes some people cringe, but I do think that when people make things for money, it still does have some sort of value. It's not just like greedy like like you know that stingy corpo greed that people don't like but
Tyler:
[49:17] I i very much had it in my mind that like what we were talking about earlier with like my game should just speak for itself you know like kind of shit like i i just thought like if i'm very very good at the guitar i will just be a millionaire because oh yeah you know that's what i'm.
Elijah:
[49:33] Good at it
Tyler:
[49:34] All of my favorite guitar players are rock stars so i will also just be a rock star like obviously, um and i was really disciplined about it too i was like not fucking around like i'm not gonna do drugs i'm not gonna like i all i was like actually watching documentaries about like motley crew and shit and like well it seems like when they started doing cocaine their music stopped being good so i should not do that and then i will continue to be even better than them, um and then i did not stick to that plan at all but i did uh get really good at the guitar and i'm still not a millionaire so i just picked up a new obsession after a while yeah.
Elijah:
[50:17] Well that's good though i uh at the very least you didn't become a millionaire with your guitar plane but you can now serenade your wife with the guitar right
Tyler:
[50:27] I always think about like i know a lot of folks get, depressed when they like put a lot of effort into something and then they like get to the stage where they're like i just i need to put that down and do something else and i always feel like i in my mind i'm like i always have the option to go back to that like if i woke up tomorrow and just like fuck this video game shit i'm just gonna write an album i'm not gonna do that or at least I don't think I'm going to do that but if I wanted to like I have the ability to do that, I have the means I have more I have money now I could like record things like,
Tyler:
[51:04] whatever it.
Elijah:
[51:05] Is that's a very healthy way to think
Tyler:
[51:08] For sure my buddy, Chris the Stellar Valkyrie guy like he he's the main character in Stellar Valkyrie and he's one of those guys that's just obsessed with acting his whole life like it's all he wants to do and then he kind of like you know was going through a bit of depression and shit like he even came on the podcast and talked about it and stuff but it's like i kept telling him like you don't you don't have to just do that like you can just fuck off for like years go do something else go you know like become a gardener or a i don't know washing machine salesman i don't care and then if you decide to you want to be an actor again just go back to acting who cares yeah you don't you don't have to put so much pressure on yourself and i've just i don't really i haven't had that kind of like put pressure on myself in that way in a very long time um right, Do you remember when you got, like, your own console?
Elijah:
[52:15] My own console? Well, like, that I didn't have to share with my sisters, or what?
Tyler:
[52:20] Well, I mean, I guess the question is more like, you have one in your own home.
Elijah:
[52:25] Yeah, that was the N64 that my parents' youth group kid gifted us. That was, like, the family N64, but I was kind of the only one that played, like, a whole lot of the single player games. Usually we played together, but I was usually just the one playing.
Tyler:
[52:42] Was it in the living room or in a bedroom?
Elijah:
[52:45] Yeah. It did end up moving to a bedroom once we got a TV in there. Or once the family TV graduated to my sister's bedroom. Or my bedroom. It kind of switched places. But yeah, when we first got it, it was in the living room. Yeah at four years old my my parents weren't a huge fan of me having like a tv and a video game console in my room but it
Tyler:
[53:14] Was very much a social thing for us to like yeah it's like what me and my dad and my brothers did together you know like everything even if it was a single player game it was like we're playing together and like passing the controller around and see if you can do that or whatever like when you're really young
Tyler:
[53:28] they just unplug the controller and hand it to you and say like oh look you're on the screen like mash.
Elijah:
[53:32] Yeah for sure like definitely the uh and that's probably why like I attach myself to video games so much is because like it played such a fundamental part in like my relationship with my sisters um because that was like that was my favorite thing to do with my sisters and it was the one thing that like I could count on to be fun to do with my sisters whether I was the one playing or if I was the one watching or if we were playing like a multiplayer game together like it was one thing that you know it wasn't gonna end up in a fight or like you know um yeah it was it was just a good time were
Tyler:
[54:07] You were you player one.
Elijah:
[54:10] Uh no like i was i was the youngest that was playing at that time so i was kind of there weren't uh There were a lot of moments where I had like the unplugged controller, you know?
Tyler:
[54:24] Gotcha. If you don't.
Elijah:
[54:26] Yeah.
Tyler:
[54:27] I know what you mean.
Elijah:
[54:29] Yeah.
Tyler:
[54:30] Yeah. I feel like that's something that's really lost now. I really hope and I can like just recreate that with my kiddos and stuff. But like, I, I don't see a lot of split screen. Yeah.
Elijah:
[54:43] Yeah.
Tyler:
[54:45] And it's like, even, even now, like if you have a console, it's like they don't
Tyler:
[54:49] make split screen games so much anymore. And if you want to play party games you pretty much have to be into party games it's like it's a genre it's a niche yeah yeah um uh i should know i tried to sell one it's hard and and it's just like most people are just playing on the pc by themselves or if they're playing multiplayer they're like at one point me and my friend were playing counter-strike on two different play stations on two different tvs in the same living room which is ridiculous like why but it's how you had to do it and it was just like it's not the same as it used to be man i have nostalgia for, playing smash with you bro exactly.
Elijah:
[55:26] Um and i get like that there isn't a whole lot of demand for split screen but i also feel like maybe there would be if people still made split screen games but there's a lot of technical problems that come with split screen too but also at the same time there were technical problems with doing split screen back then it's just that like people had much lower standards for like you know like if you play four player Mario Kart versus single player Mario Kart you're going to notice the frame difference right? And that frame difference was acceptable back then because like that was the standard that was like as good as you got it but now like if you have to drop to 30 FPS because you're rendering two screens without like all the post processing and everything then all of a sudden like the game almost isn't worth playing which I can't really argue with. I don't like playing games that are under 60. I still really miss split screen.
Tyler:
[56:23] I just don't, I mean, unless it's like particularly bad, I really never noticed things like that. Like it wasn't until I started playing Quake that like, I even knew what a refresh rate was like, what? Like, cause I was like, why am I not good? And they were like, well, it's because you're playing it, you know, 720p. Yeah. 30 FPS. We have wifi. I'm like, what do you mean? It's the speed of light should be fast enough. No. Yeah and then i got i went down the hardware rabbit hole and turns out i was just bad at quake all along i didn't need to spend all that money it's.
Elijah:
[57:01] It's after you buy like you spend like hundreds or thousands of dollars upgrading your equipment where you're like oh no this is i'm just bad
Tyler:
[57:08] I just spent all this money to find out that in fact i was just bad yeah yeah i i don't I didn't even like know what a graphics card was. I was like, my friend helped me build a PC and he was like, okay, you have everything you need, but a graphics card. So you'll have to get one of those. And I played games for like six months, did not have a graphics card. I had a four core processor and I played the Witcher one and two all the way through with no graphics card. And I suspect that I was not supposed to do that because that thing got very hot. But i didn't know any better and then and then i was like i bought like a 1080 and i was like this has got to be fucking this will get me through the next lifetime i'll never need another graphics card yeah little did i know um but i think i always like.
Tyler:
[58:06] I don't know about always i really gravitated more towards like for me games that i could just sit and play by myself um probably because i was just more solitary as it and i got into it as an adult like i didn't play pc games as a kid i played console shit with my friends so i didn't have all these like obsessions and i never got i was never like the guy who got the new playstation or the new xbox or whatever because i always had a friend who had that and i was like why the fuck would i spend all that money when i could just go to my friend's house and if i want to stay up all night playing fucking you know Sonic the Hedgehog I'll do it on his fucking TV and his parents have pizza rolls, and soda better experience.
Tyler:
[58:56] My dad was weird. He was one of those dudes that would forget to pay the power bill, but we would have new video games. He made very strange choices. Me and all my brothers still joke about it. It's like, yeah, the air conditioner wasn't working, but we had a fucking PlayStation.
Elijah:
[59:15] Well, I don't know. I don't know if those are good priorities or bad priorities. If he's spending the money on the kids, either way.
Tyler:
[59:22] My father did not become an adult until he had grandchildren like he remained a kid until he became a grandfather and then he that's probably a lot of them yeah yeah straight to grandfather um which is cool like i still love my dad and everything it's just you know i probably shouldn't have been playing duke newcomb when
Tyler:
[59:43] i did like yeah that's fair well.
Elijah:
[59:47] I uh i grew up not being allowed to play Pokemon or Harry Potter or anything, right? My mom was very much into the Satanic Panic thing. And I actually... So Jet Force Gemini N64 game about you're in space and you're shooting bugs or something like that. I can't actually remember the story, but the reason for that is because I wasn't allowed to play it. And my mom actually ended up burning the cartridge inside of our fireplace.
Tyler:
[1:00:16] Nice.
Elijah:
[1:00:18] She was smoking the demons out. She's not like that anymore. We're all still religious, but she's not still in the 70s satanic panic.
Tyler:
[1:00:27] I think it's natural when you're a young mother to or young parent just to overprotect and all that kind of stuff. It's a little bit extreme. I can't hold it against her.
Elijah:
[1:00:42] In her defense, I can't say that I'm worse for it. I don't think that I would be worse if I had played Jet Force Gemini, for example. But her overprotectiveness did help in some areas. I can't say that I would have been better if I played Jet Force Gemini. But I can say that it's probably a lot healthier that I didn't watch The Ring when I was five. I know a lot of people are going to cringe at that and be like, well, I watched The Ring when I was three and I turned out fine. And it's like, well, that's okay.
Tyler:
[1:01:13] I hate when people say I turned out okay like yeah it's like turned out what.
Elijah:
[1:01:17] Standard are we using yeah
Tyler:
[1:01:19] It'd be great you could be einstein fucking loser like.
Elijah:
[1:01:22] Yeah exactly like my wife she grew up being able to watch pretty much like whatever she wanted at whatever age um her like content was never like um it was never monitored and i can definitely say like there are a lot of moments where like my kids like well my kids don't watch a whole lot of TV but my toddler started watching TV
Elijah:
[1:01:44] in a little bit and he watches like Mr. Rogers and like the new Adventures of Winnie the Pooh that came out in like the 80s or whatever and he's quite a bit younger than she was when she like started watching horror movies but she still started watching horror movies when she was like super young and there are a lot of moments where she's like you know like it probably would have been very helpful if i had my content like monitored um
Tyler:
[1:02:15] I think and i think what's i think i would have been better off potentially had i not seen the amityville horror when i was like nine like that probably that did not make me better at all it made me fearful of houses which is just an irrational because i watched like poltergeist Speaking of which, my mother is calling me right now. I have to let her know. No, I'm not going to answer it. I'm just going to be like talking about you.
Elijah:
[1:02:41] We can talk about your mom or we can talk with your mom, rather.
Tyler:
[1:02:45] No, my mom had all the same stuff. She wasn't like particularly religious or anything, but she had like wacko. I was her first kid too, so she was like, I was the experiment. And then when I was in the Air Force and I would come home on leave or whatever, And all of my younger brothers, it would be like a fucking Wednesday night at 1030 and they're all just like not home. I'm like, where are they at? And she's like, I don't know. But what do you mean you don't fucking know? Like, I didn't I didn't go anywhere without, you know, where I was. She like she had my fucking Facebook password when I was, you know.
Elijah:
[1:03:20] That's kind of the thing with first kids, though. Like I can like my oldest sister, like she was she was definitely the most like under scrutiny and everything like that. I was the third kid um but even like how i grew up compared to how my younger sisters grew up and there's like quite a big age gap between us but um so there was there was a lot of like parenting growth that happened between me and me and my younger sisters but my younger sisters were allowed to play pokemon so yeah anyway it was actually funny we uh we were playing super smash bros and uh like
Tyler:
[1:03:57] I was why is super smash bros acceptable but pokemon is not like what's the underlying.
Elijah:
[1:04:03] I i i don't know i i can't i can't explain it because they're called monsters or i i don't know i don't know what the whole pokemon thing is we'll have to we'll have to go through like old when we get
Tyler:
[1:04:15] Your mom on the podcast we should get both of our moms on the.
Elijah:
[1:04:18] Podcast they can talk to each other they can and then and then they're going to convince each other that Pokemon's evil again, and then I'm not going to be allowed to play Pokemon.
Tyler:
[1:04:26] Yeah, they can just talk about raising their children and be like, yeah, my kid, he was a piece of shit, and that's why I didn't like it. He thinks it's about that, but it's really because I just didn't like him. He didn't deserve to play Pokemon. I played Pokemon, and I hid it from him.
Elijah:
[1:04:46] I don't know. The rules were really weird. We weren't allowed to Lucky Charms, but we could watch Narnia but I guess like there's the whole like well Narnia is an allegory and it was written by C.S. Lewis so it's fine I don't know so
Tyler:
[1:04:59] Is Harry Potter and so is Lord of the Rings.
Elijah:
[1:05:01] Well Harry Potter was written by a Catholic and Pappas are not the same thing as Pentecostal but J.R.R.
Tyler:
[1:05:13] Tolkien and C.S. Lewis were also Catholic so.
Elijah:
[1:05:17] I think Tolkien was a Protestant
Tyler:
[1:05:19] He was a very very Catholic catholic he was kind of catholic who got upset when they stopped speaking latin and mass okay when they started doing mass in english he had like a conniption he's like this is not the real church like he was like one of those vatican people yeah yeah um and he converted c.s lewis because they were drinking at the same bar together so yeah um.
Elijah:
[1:05:40] Um anyway uh i don't know i don't know i don't know what the stipulation was on like what made something appropriate and not appropriate but Anyway, we were playing Super Smash Bros and my sisters had without hesitation chosen to play as Pikachu and I started having heart palpitations in case my parents heard the announcer say Pikachu. I'm like, oh my goodness. Oh my goodness. They're going to tell us to turn the game off. But they didn't, and they were fine. And I was like, oh, okay. I remember playing on the N64, you have to play as all the characters to the bonus modes, like break the targets and board the platforms or whatever. You have to play all the characters to unlock Luigi. And for the Pokemon, well, I guess it was just Pikachu, that you had to play as to unlock Luigi. And so when we had to play as Pikachu we turned the volume down all the way down on the TV and we just like completed the maps like as fast as we possibly could and we were just sweating make sure mom doesn't come in he's playing as a Pokemon
Tyler:
[1:06:55] My grandfather thought all anime was Pokemon, anything that looked like Japanese animation was Pokemon to him which is fine at least he was trying I remember I had like a Goku Super Saiyan action figure and it was like Christmas or some shit and I was like Grandpa do you know what this is and he's like uh Pokemon and I'm like no you fucking idiot it's Goku from Dragon Ball Z stupid, that's good god old people don't know anything they're so dumb he was great he's the best i fucking love grandpa.
Elijah:
[1:07:39] You know how to operate a plow but you can't teach me or you
Tyler:
[1:07:42] Don't know how to cultivate soybeans from the ground but you don't know what pokemon is like stupid uncultured swine like.
Elijah:
[1:07:54] This is why your generation keeps dying.
Tyler:
[1:07:56] Yeah, you could rebuild an engine with your bare hands.
Elijah:
[1:07:59] This is why you're going to die at 50 and I'm going to die at 80.
Tyler:
[1:08:02] Yeah.
Elijah:
[1:08:03] You're spending all your time doing all this useless stuff that's breaking your body.
Tyler:
[1:08:07] That's so funny because at his funeral, I wrote a eulogy for him that was about all the sacrifices he made so that I could live the privileged lifestyle of gallivanting around in the tech world. He actually, he was really smart, dude. He like sat me down when I was like 10, I think. And he was, like I said earlier, he's working at a chemical plant. And he told me, he's like, you're smart. I'm like, thank you. And he's like, you really need to learn how computers work. And I was like, okay, why is that? And he's like, because the young people that work with me that know how to use computers get paid a lot more money than us that don't know that stuff. And I was like, duly noted. and then you know as an adult i was like you know actually in the quote-unquote tech industry or whatever i remember telling him that i was like you you may not even remember this but you gave me that advice as a little kid like you told me like this is this is the future and he recognized that at least and he wasn't one of those like learn to code you know right yeah yeah yeah um huh.
Elijah:
[1:09:14] That's that's really cool actually i really like hearing about boomers being like insightful like that because a lot of them were just kind of like Don't learn this because you're going to end up making more money than me and you're going to replace me at my job and you're a threat to my job security. So that's really cool. My grandma actually just passed away a month ago. I'm sorry to hear that,
Tyler:
[1:09:41] Man.
Elijah:
[1:09:43] Yeah, it kind of sucked. It was also very surprising. She was mostly healthy as far as we all knew. But um and uh grandpa same grandpa that was attached to my grandmother um passed away five years earlier or five years ago um and they were very much uh like they they were very against technology much like you know kind of the way that my mom was about pokemon they were about like you know electricity they weren't amish or anything like they had stoves and stuff like that But my grandma didn't have a Facebook account until like three years ago. And they didn't have internet until like, well, my grandpa never had internet. But like all the new technology, they were very avoidant of. But they were also like, in other ways, they were very attentive to like, the ways that the world was changing. And like a lot of it was like, warnings against the ways that the world was changing. But a lot of it was also like, you know, have you considered like getting into this and stuff like that, even though they were avoided of it themselves. They were very good people.
Elijah:
[1:10:52] They were also immigrants. So maybe like Swedish boomers are a little bit different
Elijah:
[1:10:56] than North American boomers. But um i i love hearing stories about like grandparents caring that much about their kids that they're like or grandkids i guess that they're looking at things that might not affect them personally yeah but uh could change the course of like their grandkids lives but
Tyler:
[1:11:16] Yeah i could complain about my family for i could write a book but yeah they like nobody ever discouraged me or did anything to like get in my way about doing whatever i wanted to do like Like they were all, my mom, you know, like was working her ass off to save up to buy me guitars and you know, whatever I was interested in. She's always like, whatever it is that you want to do, as long as you actually are pursuing it, like if you're going to take it and she didn't ever, you know, to her own credit, she never had to worry that I wasn't going to take stuff seriously. Like I took everything as like an opportunity. And like, if I have a guitar, I will learn how to play it. Like she, she had that guarantee that I wasn't going to be one of those kids that just, you know, you pay $500 for a fucking Ibanez and it just sits in a corner. It gets torn. Yeah. Yeah. Not like that for sure. But that's because she, that she instilled that value in me. Like everything is precious and all that stuff.
Elijah:
[1:12:11] Yeah. No, that's really good. I love my family a lot. That's kind of a dumb thing to say, but I'm really thankful for the childhood and even just now as grandparents, the role that they play. They're great. Love them a lot. They were, however, very not into the idea of their son being on the computer for longer than 30 minutes a day. So they were very strict on screen time limits and all of that stuff. It's actually amazing that I ever learned how to program because my dad actually didn't even know that I was actually programming. He thought that I was like... I don't really know what he thought I was doing, but he just learned that I was programming a year after I was employed at Slipgate.
Tyler:
[1:13:06] But it made you like see it as precious time like it made like the time that you did spend on the computer you were like I need to make the best of this not you know, most people who are like just here's a computer right like just do whatever you want the parents just left it that raised them you know they just take it for granted and then they never like develop anything out of it for the most part.
Elijah:
[1:13:30] And they were acting in good faith like they they just didn't see the future in it. And they also were probably very concerned that like well like we call them iPad kids now, but they just didn't like want to raise an iPad kid, right? And so they were definitely acting in good faith. But it still would have been nice to maybe have a game releasable before I was, you know, however I was uh, you know uh never mind i can't remember where i was going with that but it's okay sorry i got a message and i i got distracted i told
Tyler:
[1:14:16] You i couldn't say that, it'll just be one of those things that the audience just has to guess.
Elijah:
[1:14:23] Like yeah yeah i guess so um
Tyler:
[1:14:25] It was a throwback.
Elijah:
[1:14:26] To finish to finish the thought so that it's not just hanging there they were acting in good faith would have been nice if I would have been able to program a little bit more maybe have a game releasable by the time that I would legally release it and get money for it and it would have been nice to not have my dad be like oh you're playing games whenever I was programming and be all demeaning about it but they did just want the best for me, they wanted to see me grow into a functioning adult who didn't just play minecraft all day you know so
Tyler:
[1:15:01] Yeah i i just i think it's just balance ultimately yeah it shouldn't i don't think you should be like don't do that ever you know like you can't yeah like you know there's always going to be those people like i i have like an uncle who's never going to listen to this because he probably doesn't even have the internet but like you know he's one of those guys that he's been in like construction his whole life he lives out in the fucking backwoods and his kid is really fucking smart like his son is like probably a genius but we'll never find out because he's like you're gonna grow up and be uh you know you're gonna build structures just like me and run your business and all that kind of thing and you know and i was talking to this kid i'm like man dude you could probably get into the tech like you're really wicked smart like you could do anything you want and his dad's like nope he's gonna be just like me and all that kind of stuff and i'm like well that's just done like wow you know but in in his mindset on it is like i don't like computers i'm like why not he's like just don't, I don't understand. I don't, I don't, basically one of those people that like, I hate everything I don't understand. And I'm like, that's, that's ridiculous. Like you were going to be, like basically replaced by what you don't understand. Like it's just, yeah.
Elijah:
[1:16:08] They're the ones that are actually having their job security threatened, I suppose. But that's like a mindset thing. He could just change his mind,
Tyler:
[1:16:14] But yeah, he's not good.
Elijah:
[1:16:16] Yeah. No.
Tyler:
[1:16:17] Hey, uncle Jim, I love you. No, he's, he's a nice dude. It's just like, that's, that's kind of the mindset in that area. Yeah. Like actually recently my, one, my, my mother's mom, I call her Nana. She had called me and she was like, um, talking about my, my cousin. So he's like 12 years old jake hey jake and he he also grew up like in the woods basically like on a farm way out in the boondocks and his dad is a logger like a basically a lumberjack and, that's the only thing he's ever seen a grown man do like yeah you know he doesn't other than like, i guess the a school teacher or a police officer like the that is the only option he's ever seen yeah and now he's getting older and he's like attending public school and stuff and like getting to see the world and everything and she was like he told me like because he's always said i'm gonna grow up to be a logger like my dad it's the only thing he's ever said and he told me the other day he wants to be a game designer and i was like i wonder where he got that idea from um but i think that's that's rad like not i mean he'll probably change his mind but i mean just the fact that.
Elijah:
[1:17:25] I would advise him to not do that
Tyler:
[1:17:28] Yeah it's.
Elijah:
[1:17:29] Actually really funny i was just complaining about my parents like decentivizing my career as a game developer but like they probably should have listened to them a little bit I for you know job security reasons but
Tyler:
[1:17:42] Yeah I guess don't do that like quote.
Elijah:
[1:17:45] Unquote wrong they were still right so
Tyler:
[1:17:48] Yeah I actually sorry continue no no you I.
Elijah:
[1:17:54] Was I was just gonna say to be fair to like people that are parenting like people my age um a lot of people my age will constantly talk about like how challenging it is for them to grow up as the first generation with technology because they feel all this responsibility to like be you know responsible with the technology and you kind of have to figure out how to how to deal with the world that we're that we're living in now but you know as as your parents they're the first generation to raise kids with all of this technology around that
Tyler:
[1:18:33] They don't understand.
Elijah:
[1:18:34] And exactly exactly like you have a better chance of figuring it out yourself than your parents ever did figuring it out for you um and that's that's just a circumstantial thing like there's very little that your parents could have done or and there's very little chance that they would have known what to do in how to raise you when it comes to all this technology like there are very like there are definitely lines and extremes that we can say like okay like a kid that's on his iPad all the time like and has complete like mental breakdowns when he doesn't have a screen in front of him like obviously we can say that kid probably shouldn't have an iPad in front of them all the time if at all um but there are also like the not extremes which are the most common um where you know a kid back when like snapchat was developing um and the idea of snapchat was very obviously like probably something a parent shouldn't want their kids to be involved with because like just
Elijah:
[1:19:44] Even the implications of an application that you send pictures to other people wirelessly and secretively, and the pictures are supposedly erased after 10 seconds and never seen again, the implications of that to me are very obvious. Maybe they weren't so much to older people but something a little less innocuous like Facebook and I'm aware there was a lot of information and there were attempts to get parents to understand things like MSN and online predators and stuff but again when it comes down to most situations that aren't on the extreme end of things it's very difficult to compensate for those things like how do you know that how do you know that like your kid talking to a classmate on facebook could end up illicit or something or or damaging
Tyler:
[1:20:37] Um i just i think about like if i put myself in my mom's shoes right and at the time i thought it was like ridiculous like why do you fucking need to be involved in anything i'm doing like why you want to look at my fucking phone or whatever and but then i put my if i really like rewind now like if i was the same situation looking at like my kid wants a facebook page and what i know as a as an adult is like, I don't know what this is. I don't really know how it works. But what I do know is that everyone's talking about how this is how kids get into porn and drugs. And can easily do that and hide it from you i would be concerned i would be like i do not want i would i would have probably been more strict than she was because she was like yes you can do that i just want to be able to.
Elijah:
[1:21:18] But again that's like that's like a looking at through things through like a modernist lens like you understand that technology more because you know you grew up with it it was released around the time that you were you know starting to hear things from the world that your parents may not have like they would have been listening to things like nbc about it you know like um and so they they wouldn't have had all of the i i don't know like what the right word for it is but like they wouldn't have had the direct exposure to these like upcoming technologies like they would have learned about snapchat way later than than than you did they would have learned about like facebook messaging a lot later than you did unless you know nbc did like uh like a panel on it or something yeah
Tyler:
[1:22:01] It's gonna be some like fucking dinosaur like larry king live kind of situation.
Elijah:
[1:22:05] Yeah yeah exactly tell
Tyler:
[1:22:07] Mr zuckerberg tell me about this book of faces you have.
Elijah:
[1:22:12] Yeah why why are you interested in looking at people's faces that you have an entire yeah
Tyler:
[1:22:18] So you're telling me that people can uh message each other and post their pics
Tyler:
[1:22:23] on it you know and i don't blame them like i.
Elijah:
[1:22:26] Don't so much information to parse there that's it's quite tricky my
Tyler:
[1:22:31] Mom like apologizes to me a lot now she's like i'm sorry for you know all that stuff and i'm like i don't fucking blame you at all like i think you should have been harder on me like if anything you should have hit me more like i and it is when.
Elijah:
[1:22:46] It's happening like it comes off so extreme and as a kid like you kind of feel like your parents like don't trust you or like they're they
Tyler:
[1:22:54] Should have trusted.
Elijah:
[1:22:54] Me i was stupid and yeah criminal literally like as uh it's
Tyler:
[1:23:00] Very naive to trust me at all.
Elijah:
[1:23:01] Well i i wasn't i wasn't a criminal or anything like that but like it in all those moments where like you feel like your parents are like not trusting you or like they're being unfair they are like genuinely trying to do their best and hopefully as you grow up like i don't i kind of don't expect kids to be able to have like that kind of foresight that um you know because adolescence is kind of complicated but as you grow up like you know you hit 18 your 20s hopefully it happens that early maybe even earlier that that'd be nice um you realize like your parents were doing your best and they still love you, even though you disagree with some of the things that they did. I don't think that it was great that my sister picking Pikachu as a character in Super Smash Bros gave me heart palpitations, but
Elijah:
[1:23:51] My mom was acting in our best interests and in good faith when she was like, no Pokemon. So hopefully as you grow up, like a lot of those things that your parents do, you can kind of understand and have a little empathy for um that's not to like justify like actual like you know locking your kids in the basement and not letting them like like over sheltering and you know the extreme end of that but because there isn't an extreme end of sheltering and i think that like at certain points in my life i very much bordered that um but you know i i would never say that i was i was too sheltered well depending on your definition of too sheltered like there was definitely like over sheltering that happened where i could have been exposed to things that like they sheltered me from um and i would have ended up just the same or fine or whatever but i don't think that there was ever anything that i was sheltered from that damaged me in like any meaningful way so
Tyler:
[1:24:52] Yeah i think there's just got to be like an appropriate pace for everything and it's hard to nail i mean every every single parent is gonna like you know did this right didn't do that right or whatever it did yeah yeah so that but.
Elijah:
[1:25:03] The point of all of that is you just have to have like a little bit of grace and empathy for your parents.
Tyler:
[1:25:09] Yeah, for sure. Like, if you, Like, I'm still thinking about the whole Pokemon, Harry Potter.
Elijah:
[1:25:20] Yeah.
Tyler:
[1:25:21] But, like, if you were, something that I kind of, like, grew to understand, my dad, like, helped me to understand this. But, like, if you're someone who grew up without access to information, and you have, like, people in your social circle or your church or whatever telling you, don't let your kids read this book or watch this because it's literally the devil or whatever. Yeah.
Tyler:
[1:25:44] You're gonna take that shit pretty seriously and it's like we as a generation take it for granted, that we could just look that up and fucking debunk shit but like my dad was like telling me dude when we were kids like whatever they told us at school and on sunday in church was fucking it like yeah or the in the news was the newspaper yeah there was like you know and if you want to learn about history you had to go to the fucking library find a book and pray to god it had anything accurate in it at all like and i didn't even you know in his case and.
Elijah:
[1:26:15] It was and it was like context sensitive like it it made sense for your situation like right i think that um like i i went to libraries and stuff but i still had google for a lot of my later life i think that a lot of people younger than than me probably have a very hard time of understanding actually how difficult it is to go to a library and actually find useful information that makes sense for the situation that you're in especially in regards to like social things like or
Tyler:
[1:26:42] They wouldn't know how to find a book in a library in a library.
Elijah:
[1:26:47] Right yeah that's
Tyler:
[1:26:48] True I make fun of my wife about that shit a lot because I'm like dude if they like the way that you acquire information I'm still picking on her but it doesn't matter she'll get over it but like you know she's one of those people that if we're having a debate or whatever she will google like, almost verbatim tell me my husband's wrong about yeah yeah yeah and then the google says yes your husband's wrong she's like see and i'm like that's not proof of anything but i'm like if that if you didn't have that and it was me and all of your fucking friends and the lights go off we would be in the middle of town huddled up and you guys would be burning encyclopedias trying to figure out how to make fuel happen and i would be like no no no this is the book of sacred knowledge this is how we're going to rebuild society and let me or worse.
Elijah:
[1:27:35] They're burning books that tell you how to to make fires
Tyler:
[1:27:39] Yeah like.
Elijah:
[1:27:40] In an efficient way that doesn't like waste resources
Tyler:
[1:27:43] You would have like you would have a bunch of fucking 20 year old people standing in a giant books a million and be wondering how to do things. And I'd be like, all of the information is in this room. And they don't even recognize what's right there. It's not, you know, no shame. It's the same thing that happens to everyone.
Elijah:
[1:28:03] Because it's not super easy to access.
Tyler:
[1:28:05] But I mean, it is. It's like, if you don't know the Dewey Decimal System.
Elijah:
[1:28:10] It's a little bit more complicated than Google.
Tyler:
[1:28:12] You're like, I can't Google anything, therefore we're dead. I'm like, no, we just have to find row number 12. and we have.
Elijah:
[1:28:19] Uh we have quite a quite a track record of human history that tells us that we can survive without google
Tyler:
[1:28:24] But we also have a track record of human history where people end up in this exactly the situation i just said you know like and the romans come through and they're like oh fuck all this shit they torch it and you lose a millennia's worth of accumulated knowledge, um which is scary because everything lives on the internet now and if people lose like genuine literacy and we lose the internet then we have to rebuild from you basically have to go back to the 70s and build back up yeah it's pretty scary because we've made a lot of progress since then.
Elijah:
[1:28:57] Yeah on that note though um i have to let my wife use my computer and i have to go watch my kids
Tyler:
[1:29:06] It's been a pleasure talking to you man yeah congratulations on the game coming.
Music:
[1:29:09] Music
Tyler:
[1:29:12] Okay, thank you. Thank you.
Tyler:
[1:29:20] Yo it was so great to finally get to have elijah on the show he's a great friend and i hope that y'all enjoyed hearing from him as well as i did i uh wanted to say thank you to all of our wonderful patreon supporters shannon and michael fred brad y'all are all incredible and i thank you very much and i wouldn't be here without you so keep on doing what you're doing the theme song as always is by john of the shred make sure you go check out scythe dev team and all of their awesome games i can definitely recommend happy's humble burger farm uh one of their amazing games I actually did a little voice work in it, and if you can find it, uh, and identify it and point it out to me, I'll give you a gold star. So, uh, yeah, do that. Uh, what else? Oh, yeah, if you want to support the show, you can go to the support tab on endthekeep.com, become a Patreon if you'd like, or you can buy me a book. It'll be in the article attached to this podcast, and, uh, yeah, it's just like an Amazon link with all of the stuff I plan to read. And I like to read so I'll like you if you support that habit of mine. Much love. I love you. God love you. Stay in the keep forever. Go to inthekeep.com for more.
