Passenger Seat Radio Episode 2019-11-08

Hello everybody, this is Shane Arman row you’re in the passenger seat with me passenger seat radio. It is November 8 Friday 2019 year on my 13 mile commute home. Welcome to the show. It is finally Friday. It’s a three day weekend. This is the three day weekend. Hey, what’s up, Travis? Yeah, I decided to take a little comp time. I do a lot of working from home and doing extra time. So every now and then I can take myself a little bit of comp time. Get off a little bit early and see if I can beat the traffic home. So yeah, I got off a little early. Start the show a little early. And yeah, I mean, traffic is really light because people I mean, tons of people must have taken a day off. I had a really good time coming in this morning and I haven’t feeling that the traffic’s going to be very light on the way home so I don’t suspect that will have a super long show. But It’s the three day weekend, a Veterans Day in November is the holiday period kickoff. And if you work for the government, you have federal holidays off, then you know exactly what I’m talking about. Because the rest of the year, like between now and January 2, the number of work days is very, very small. Right? So we have like, a half week next week. And then a week after that, and then the Thanksgiving short week, and then you come back and you have a couple weeks then you’re on the Hot then you’re on the Christmas. You know the Christmas stand down, if you will. So yeah, so this is sort of the beginnings of the holiday season. federal holiday style, so I’m excited. I don’t have a lot of time off left, managed to burn a lot of that going to Vegas twice this year. But you know what, last year ended up eating like three or four days. is a vacation time, right? Because I get we get I’m on the I’m what they call exempt right? So I, I don’t I don’t accrue leave time I get assigned leave time, right so I get like 24 days a year of time off. And I get sick time sick time I do a crew just like a lot of other people do. But I had crews sick time faster than somebody who’s not exempt, right? So it all works out in the end. We get myself adjusted here on the freeway. All right. So weekend plans, not a whole lot. I’ve got Modern Warfare to play. I’ve got some new VR stuff. I’m going to talk to that talk to you guys about that in just a minute. And Monday, we’re Justin and myself and my son Brian, we’re going to go see Dr. Sleep, the spiritual sequel to the shining. And that’s I mean, that’s all Bless my wife has already put together a nice big chore list for us this weekend. which honestly, it’s like if we all chipped in and we all started doing it, it’s like two hours tops for the whole weekend. So I’m excited about that. He likes to sleep all as well. And you have to go to the gym tonight though I did not go to the gym this morning. And I think I skipped the gym Wednesday morning, Travis is I’m putting on some pounds. So I have to weigh in and find out just how bad off I am. So I’ve been I’ve been you know, I haven’t been keeping a strict tightness on everything. And that’s the sort of behavior that can get out of hand. So I am going to I’m going to weigh in and then adjust accordingly. should get that way back down anyway. Just a couple pounds. But yeah, so let’s talk about let’s talk about the newest sensation The newest VR sensation called pistol whip. And it’s been an interesting few days with regards to pistol whip. And it’s more and not so much interesting from a game point of view. But how the community acts about it and and sort of the psychology behind the release of pistol whip. So let’s go back a little because I think it’s more of an interesting story than an interesting game review. It’s a fun game, and I’ll talk about the game too. But I’m more interested. It’s more interesting to talk about the psychology of the people around this thing. So. So when I talk about VR, we’re talking mostly about quest users, right? Because the quest is like the newest hottest VR, it’s wireless, blah, blah, blah. So there’s a nice big giant group of people on Reddit, right? There’s a subreddit called Oculus quest. And they’re very vivacious this group lots. I mean, there’s tons and tons. I mean, you can you can check in every day and there’s just tons Tons and tons and tons of traffic going on. Plenty of topics for discussion. Lots of bitching, of course, because it’s Reddit. Reddit is where people go to pitch, apparently. But suffice to say that it’s a very lively community. And the quest, of course, is the, you know, the newest version of VR, it requires that games get ported to it, right? So if you were to buy a Windows mixed reality headset, or you were to buy a rift, or you were to buy an index, or a five or whatever, you automatically have access to like, probably over 1000 games, right? But with the quest, it’s sort of a console version of the ecosystem, right? So right now I think there’s like 120 experiences total for the quest and probably another 60 more if you go to the Oculus go back catalogue to for the compatible games and actually work on both right because the go and the quest or both Based on an Android hardware base, so the coatings a lot easier than say taking the PC version of super hot and porting it over to the quest, lot more work and porting over an Oculus go game to the quest. So yeah, there’s a limited number of experiences. But listen, it’s a nice steady stream. We’re getting a couple of games a week, one game a week, couple games and other week. So it’s a slow burn. But, you know, a lot of people are very vocal about the games aren’t coming out fast enough. And it’s when when it’s five nights at freddy’s coming in when it’s Pavlov coming, blah, blah, blah. You know it so everybody’s kind of, you know, always bitching about not having enough stuff to play. And pistol whip has been on the front and center radar for quite a while. In terms of it’s coming soon. His release date is going to be the seventh, you know, so and release dates, just like any other industry. The release dates. Sometimes they meet them. Sometimes they don’t. Sometimes they slip a week. Sometimes it’s the developers fault. Sometimes it’s the vendors fault. It’s hard to say. But, so when release date slip, everybody gets all pissy. Well, why is that? Now? Why is it coming out? I was waiting for that I was waiting for it. So people get a little snippy. So, pistol whip comes out on time. And, of course, you know, listen, the community’s hungry for content, right? So you think they’d be like, Oh, yeah, great, great, great. Well, pistol whip comes out at 2499 which if you’re a PC or a console game player, you can only dream of games on release day coming out for 2499 you know what I’m saying? 25 bucks. You know, if Call of Duty came out on release day for 25 bucks, you anybody be bitching? Hell go over to the call of duty subreddit and see how many people are bitching. They call of duty 60 bucks. Nobody’s bitching about that the bitching about the overpowered shotgun the 725 their bitching about loud footsteps or bitching about a number of other different topics. But no one’s in there going yeah, you know, I’m sure pickup Call of Duty if it wasn’t 60 bucks cuz that’s just, that’s not worth it. It’s like dude. So then you start to D you know you start decomposing the bullshit on on Reddit, right so you start off with was just too expensive. Okay it’s 25 bucks, right? You it’s a $400 headset and you’re complaining about a $25 game. And this isn’t like, you know, National Geographic or or or edutainment, this is like, you know, top of the line, you know, double A type gaming This is not some bullshit feed the virtual pet, you know, a lot Listen, Travis said it best You know, a lot of them feel like gimmicks or or tech demos. This is definitely a full fledged, full blown game. It’s not worth it. It’s too much money. That’s, that’s too expensive and it’s like, Alright, so let’s, let’s take a look at that. Let’s start with that. Go to Oculus calm. And look at the quest games of the quest games. Let’s say that there’s 120 I don’t have the number in front of me, but I’m saying I think there’s 120 games on there. Of those hundred 20 games at least 16 of them 16 of them are the same price or more than pistol it right. So that means over 10% of the games are the same price as pistol whip. So if pistol It was 4999 I can see people complaining because that’s that would be the highest, that’d be the most expensive game. Meanwhile, there’s some scaled down MMO RPG that everyone seems to bitch about but as enough seems to be doing well enough, their commanding $40 for a quest game $40 not a rift game that you can play through virtual desktop Through a link cable on the quest of native quest game is 40 bucks. I don’t hear anybody bitching about that being too expensive, but pistol whip, you know, that’s too much $25 too much. It’s like what’s your What do you come up with that logic? Right? It’s $25 the last year like I said, Go ask your fellow Xbox people you know, glass and Xbox guy if he if he’d be cool that released a game of high quality costing 25 bucks. kissing your ass. So then it’s like, so so then you you charter into the territory of I just don’t like it. I was waiting. I was expecting this to be this great game and it sucks. And so I refunded it, right, because you can refund things on the Oculus question. If you play for under two hours, right? So it’s like steam. If you play less than two hours or less, you know, it’s less than 14 days or whatever. Then they’ll refund you of course it takes like, you know, they’ll take your money right away but it takes them four days to get Money Back to you. Right? same everywhere. refunds take four times longer than actually charging you for it. So it’s so there’s a lot of negative stuff and it’s like well this isn’t you know this this game is boring. It’s slow. It’s not the shooter we were promised Ellis these guys do have a point. You know, when you tote a game as being a john wick simulator or an equilibrium video game in VR, when you start promising shit like that on that level. You better start that you better deliver on what you’re promising. But what pistol whip is actually is a rhythm shooting game. So as soon as you hear the word rhythm game immediately start comparing it to beat saber was nothing like beats ever. Yeah, they didn’t say was like beat saber. What? Where’d you get that? Look at the product description. Tell me where it says be safer with guns. No, that’s not what it says. It’s like well, you know, it’s not You know, it’s super hot, a lot more fun. It’s like, so were in the description didn’t say it was like super hot, you know, they make these weird. People are weird. They make these comparisons. Well, you know, super super Hots a better game. And it’s like, it’s not the same game. You know? I don’t know, it’s just, it’s weird to me out that people, people make these sort of artificial connections. And then it’s like, they hold the developer to their expectations, instead of saying, what have been developed promised me versus what I got. You know, what? $25 is too much money. It’s like, okay, so listen, if if you were to play, I talked about this all the time, right? How much? How much time do you have to get out of a purchase to make it valuable to you, right? I use the movie, the movie money model, right? $5 per hour. So I talked about modern warfare and how I’ve definitely got my money time out of that. Look at the picture I sent you. Okay. So and then let me know. Okay, I will love you. I love you too. All right. I got I got a second here to my wife just sent me. What the hell is that crap? Oh my god something new to talk about Hang on a sec let me respond to my wife she’ll call back. Yeah yeah, so let me I’ll get back to that give me just a second yeah so so people are you know so you’re like okay so it for 25 bucks you have to get five hours out of this game. So there’s 10 levels Right, so it was only 10 levels. It’s like Yeah, but this isn’t beat saber you know, if you had 10 songs and been saved, that’s going to get old fat. You’re not even everyone’s doing this apples to oranges, oranges, two pairs type. It’s just it’s, it’s a weird psychology that this game this game in particular seems to be on this grand spectrum of people absolutely love it or they absolutely hate it. And it’s really, really weird. Of all the games that are available for quest. Why is this one so polarizing? Right? So, I, so I was I was at work looking over these, these these weird posts that people are, it’s not worth it. You know, they, you know, they said it was going to be this action shooter and it’s too slow. It’s boring, blah, blah, blah. And so I’m like, you know, having not played it myself. I couldn’t really respond to anybody. But it seemed like this was being taken. completely out of context. So I bought the game because listen, any any, any video game that mentions the word equilibrium as part of their description, I just have to buy it. equilibrium is one of my favorite movies Christian Bale is in it. And he’s this badass fighting, you know, military unit called the Grand Teton cleric. And this is a great movie and and listen, it’s basically fair and you know, Fahrenheit was a 451 or whatever. It’s the same basic movie. It’s the future, everybody’s emotionless they take they take these, this, this injection every six hours to keep them from being emote filled with emotion. So they don’t have any war. They don’t have any crime. Everybody’s all level, Prozac, whatever you want to call me, equilibrium, great movie, Christian Bale’s this super badass and the focus of the movie of equilibrium. For those of you don’t know about it, and you don’t know about it because it came out of the exact same time as the matrix came out, and that just Barry equilibrium got buried right under the matrix and nobody looks back, right. So in equilibrium, they have these, these Grand Teton clerics that are trained in the lethal art of the gun kata, which is a little bit on the goofy side until you actually see an execution. It’s like, okay, I buy it. So these clerics can actually dodge bullets. It’s pretty cool. And they can fuck your ass up by shooting you they can fuck you as fuck your ass up by beating the crap out of you with a pistol. These guys are super badass as these Grand Teton clerics, right. And so, they have a big explanation about the gun kata and how from a from a from a probability standpoint, you can actually dodge bullets and all it’s, it’s a great movie. And so when they mentioned in the, in the description of the game, that it’s you know, inspired by movies like john wick equilibrium you’re going Holy shit. First of all, they voted equilibrium. And second, who doesn’t want to be in some sort of an action? You know, gun fight movie, how great is that sound? So maybe the developers sold it a little bit wrong, right? So if you watch the video, you see some guy, you know, in mixed reality shooting at the bad guys and it looks like this heavy action fest and it is. But, you know, you’re sitting here thinking yourself, is it john wick? Is it equilibrium? Maybe not. But what it really is, is a rhythm based shooter. So let’s let me so let me give you an example. So you have 10 levels to play. Each one have multiple difficulties that have multiple challenges involved. And so each one of them is set to a musical track. Now unlike beat Saber, or synth riders or these other games where you in order not to fail, you’re essentially doing what you’re told, right let’s so let’s look at beat saber. With beat saber. You must you must strike the blog at the right time in the right direction in order not to fail if you want to do better shit this is some goofy shit. I’ll get back to that in a minute. Let me finish this. This this. I’m all messed up now. Y’all understand in a minute. Yeah. So anyway. So you are like a dude on a people. Moving right there you know the airport you got those moving sidewalks and you stand on and people walk up, walk behind, you know, block beside you on the left. It’s a people mover, right? It’s a, you know, a conveyor belt. So you’re on the conveyor belt being pulled through this level, and bad dudes jump out and shoot at you. Some of them are armored, they require more bullets they shoot at you, the bullets are a little bit slow. So you can be a superhero and dodge them right. So you start to see where the super hot connection came from. The bad guys that shoot at you. You can you can smack you can pistol weapon, right? But it’s all preordained in terms of how the levels laid out. So from the time it starts till the time it ends is three minutes and 21 seconds for level one. And the guys come out in the same place. It’s not random. So you can memorize just like super high right it’s starting to see the similarities here. But unlike being saber where you have to strike the right way, at the right time. pistol whip, lets you decide how you want to play it. Listen, you can not shoot anybody as long as you can dodge the bullets. You can dodge the bullets out of think and get and shoot anybody. You’re not going to store anything. But you can get through the level. You can get through the level. However, how you play, how you shoot when you choose to shoot, whether you shoot or not, whether you pistol whip and all of these things are up to you and how you choose to do it. can drastically impact your score, you might get through the round, but you’re going to show very poorly on the leaderboards. So not it’s a, it’s a game of memorization. It’s a game of optimization. When a guy jumps out from behind the wall, you can shoot him immediately, you can do that, you’re going to score very poorly. Secondly, flip my phone back over, you will score very poorly. You can or you have to shoot to the beat, right? So if you pull the trigger on the beat of the song, and you hit him with a bullet, you automatically get more points than if you don’t shoot with the beat. So now not only do you choose when and how to take the guy down, but it also lets you line up multiple bad guys for multiple beats, right? So there are periods of the song where the beats are more common or the the Shooting windows are more appropriate to score bigger points, right? So all the sudden this went from john wick killer thing that moves to suddenly it’s more of a thinking man’s game. And the game has an element of gaming that I’ve talked about a lot on this show. And that is greed. Right? How you choose to proceed, how greedy that you get, you’re going to take a chance you’re going to take risk, and you’re going to make less intelligent decisions trying to score bigger, right? It’s robot run mentality. And robots run. You are willing to risk life and limb to pick up another humanoid in rapid succession. Because your score multiplier goes up constantly while you’re doing this. Right. So You will take chances you will not shoot a bad guy and try to run around the map and get that last humanoid. So you get an extra five grand. There’s an element of greed to pistol whip that does not show up if you load it up and just buzz your way through level, or you just kind of go it’s not the game people think it is that doesn’t make it a bad game. It makes it the game they didn’t think it was and so naturally your first instead of trying to understand the game, they immediately go up and start trashing it. Now some people get it right away. Those who are maybe a little older, maybe those who have grown up with greed games, maybe those who didn’t have any sort of preordained expectations right. People who go into it, wanting to learn and master are having a great time with pistol with those who thought they were going into some sort of an action shoot them up game are not happy with his So whose fault is it? Well, I think everybody sort of shares a little bit of playing here. The developers may have sold it wrong. The developers also don’t have a really good sense of training to help you understand better the scoring, and how greed really works in this game. So the developers have to take a piece of the blame these people who are bitching and whining about having nothing to play on quest, and they’re bitching about paying $25 for what’s actually a really good game, even if it’s not, particularly your cup of tea or you’re not interested in the thinking man shooting game. They take some of the play, right? The game itself is reaping great scores on the Oculus store. It is. It is it’s got more reviews than any other game on the store faster than any other games, chalked up reviews. polarizing or not. The game is a big success, and yet there are people who would rather go up bitch about it then to either say, Listen, I was expecting a john wick shooting game and I got to thinking man shooting game. That’s the I. I don’t like thinking. Right and that’s a totally legitimate argument. I was sold a bill of goods and I didn’t get it. I refunded it Case Closed. Yeah, but did you know what you were doing? Did you really understand what you were supposed to be doing? Because the game you were playing isn’t the game that you were sold? Maybe you would enjoy the game a lot more if you actually figured out what the hell you were supposed to be doing, not what you thought you should be doing. makes me crazy to deal with that with that sort of mentality. All right, listen, I’m stopping for subway for the family for dinner. I’ll tell you guys on Tuesday what was very disturbing my wife sent me over, I’ve got a digestive plus there might be more story involved. If I’m, if I have the opportunity to get home and actually take a look at this thing for myself. So I’m going to let you guys go have a great three days.