amazing synonym

sean plott: yes! hello, ladies and gentlemen. let's do our usual bit wherewe announce the date. it is currently tuesday,september 18th, 2012. my name is sean plott. bill graner: and i'mbill graner. sean bouchard: and i'msean bouchard. sean plott: and this ismetadating, episode two, whereby we three embark uponthe adventures of playing

through a variety ofromantically-themed video games that may or may notcapture anything remotely close to [inaudible] love. last week, we played the pigeondating simulator, hatoful boyfriend, whichwas excellent. [laughing] you know, i guess i would throwto you, bill, first about your pigeon datingexperience. and also, we kind of did someresearch on the game more

after we played it. and it turns out there's a lotof sweet crazy things that can happen that we didn't see. bill graner: yeah. well first of all, iwant to say that-- so obviously, we were having agood old time last time, and there was a lot there. you'll recall we lived in acave, and at some point we ran past some ruined buildings, andi think sean bouchard and

i, we sort of texted each otherin the middle of the night the same thing, which islike, holy crap, it's actually a horrible sort of world. it's like pigeon post-apoc,something's going on. so i think sean looked more intothe wiki, but i think we were right on the verge ofsomething, and that was corroborated by someemails we got. sean bouchard: there wasserious, serious world-building going on thatwasn't totally obvious from

the 8-bit images of pigeonsjust pasted onto the-- yeah. i guess 16. i guess that was not eight,but the ms paint quality images, i guess. sean plott: what was the thingthat you were saying, that there was like a headyou could find in the doctor's office? sean bouchard: yeahno, totally.

so i was totally creeped out bythe doctor, to be fair, and apparently that fear wasjustified because there's an ending of the game where he cutsoff your head and puts it in a box, like a wholekevin spacey thing, except with pigeons. bill graner: oh, spoiler. sean bouchard: sorry. sorry, everybody. sorry, everybody from10 years ago.

sean plott: there's that newgeneration that's going to watch [inaudible]. bill graner: you [inaudible] aspoiler with another spoiler. that was amazing. sean plott: how meta-spoiler. in this week, we're not doinga dating simulator, per se. that's a huge genre of gamesthat's very popular, the visual novel experience. but this week, we'regoing to be doing

something quite different. what is the officialterm for it? it's like an ai-drivenstory system. the game is called facade. sean bouchard, introthe game, damn it! sean bouchard: facade. so they call it an interactivestory, which could mean anything, but facade issuper interesting. it's from 2005.

i did a little bit ofresearch on this. so it was done by michael mateasand andrew stern, who are academics andgame designers. it was actually part ofmichael mateas's ph.d. dissertation at carnegie mellon,and the game won the grand jury prize at slam dancein 2006, back when they still did video games. i don't think theydo that anymore. sean plott: you are totallyreading from the

thing right now, sean. sean bouchard: i am totallyreading from the thing. bill graner: hey, i want tothrow out there that i actually cited the paper thatwent with this in my thesis, because it was expressive ai. it's ai that expressessomething, so there you go. sean bouchard: exactly. i mean, the deal with this isthat it's supposed to be a conversation simulator, thatit's trying to use

cutting-edge natural languageprocessing technology to understand what you're sayingas you say it, and have characters respond to you,to your very words. and that's interesting. that's a pretty cool thing. that's like a step towardsthe holodeck, right? sean plott: i guess i shouldprobably say that what happens in the game is that you areinvited over to a dinner with a couple that's been fighting,and there's tension, and

you're trying to talk them outof the relationship, talk them back into the relationship, orget kicked out of the house. sean bouchard: you play themutual friend/third wheel, which is a situation i assumewe can all relate to. bill graner: if i may mention, ibelieve that there is also a hint of bitter tone runningthroughout, and whether that can be correlated with theacademic nature of the piece, i don't know, butthere you go. sean plott: after slaving awayon a single piece for

[inaudible], bitterness startsto bubble up through all the conversations. bill graner: exactly. sean plott: or maybe thewriter had a difficult break-up and wrote all herlines into the girl. you're like, oh, i hate thatgirl character in the game, and he's like, mm, yeah. [inaudible]. so before we begin,i guess we should

note what we're drinking. sean plott: i have a-- sean bouchard: ilike the boot. sean plott: with anovila quad in it. bill graner: wait, aboot with quads? that's good. ovi-- what's an ovila quad? sean plott: it'sa belgian ale. it's a belgian trappist ale, hesaid beer snobbishly while

drinking out of a boot. bill graner: what'sthat all a-boot? hey, i've got a red stripe,which this is probably one of the more american imports. it's from jamaica. it turns out that-- here, if i can just find mymemory banks here where i've memorized all this, the currentlager formulation was first produced in 1938 fromthe son of e. p. cotter.

sean bouchard: awesome. bill graner: and these guyshave also sponsored the jamaican bobsledding team fromtime to time, intermittently. sean bouchard: justoccasionally? bill graner: --accordingto wikipedia. sean bouchard: they can'tcommit to that? i feel like that's something youwould want to stick with. bill graner: i don't know. i don't know.

it takes a little likeheineken, but better. sean plott: ah, excellent. sean bouchard: and in honor ofthe awkward dinner party, i have a moscato, an italianmoscato, in a fancy bottle with some dude on it. bill graner: that's nice. sean bouchard: yeah. bill graner: so what'sa moscato? sean bouchard: it'sa dessert wine.

it's a dessert wine, andi've got some cheeses. bill graner: oh, cheeses. sean plott: you areso extravagant. and actually, sean, i'mabout to begin. i'm about to load up our firstplay-through of facade. we're playing multiple times,discussing in between. sean, is there like a tonewe should try to have going into this? sean bouchard: i think thefirst one should be

exploratory. let's see what happens. let's see where thisnight takes us. sean plott: looks like facade isloading, and in comic sans. yes! it's version 1.1, as we noticedearlier, so hopefully they fixed the [inaudible]bug. sean bouchard: this isactually interesting. it's clearly setting up thisinteractive theatre thing with

the curtain, that red curtain. sean plott: in movies, they dimthe lights, and they draw the curtain open, and it pullsyou into the moment. this is like a loading screenthat makes you wish you had a better processor. bill graner: i mean, this couldtake up to 60 seconds. oh, here we go! [telephone rings] sean plott: a phone rings.

trip (offscreen):hey, it's trip. it's, um, wow. it's been a while sincewe all, um-- but, um-- why don't you comeover tonight? grace and i, um, we'dlove to see you. um, so yeah. just come on over around 8:00. it'll be fun.

sean plott: this guysounds like he's inviting us over at gunpoint. trip (offscreen): so,um see you, i guess. great! bill graner: this is whatit's like when i tweet about this hangout. sean plott: that's not going toget hard to listen to after the third time. that's going to be--

[high-pitched tone] bill graner: ugh. is that part of thesoundtrack? sean bouchard: mm-hmm. sean plott: that highpitched thing that hits you in the sinus? bill graner: yeah, right. the feedback. sean bouchard: it'soff-putting.

oh, this is my favoritepart of the game. so we've got to pick aname, and sean and bill are not options. sean plott: ok. bill graner: seanand bill, oh. sean plott: bill, well, indeference to you as a human being, what's your favoriteletter from a to z? bill graner: oh god. not something stupid, notsomething stupid.

um, t. sean bouchard: bill, that's theworst favorite letter you could possibly have. bill graner: get in the game,bill, get in the game. how about b? sean plott: all right,b, our name is ben. bill graner: ben. sean bouchard: ben dover. sean plott: i'm goingto hit that.

are you related toeileen over? [laughter] that was too funny. trip (offscreen): what,grace, this? grace (offscreen): yes, youknow how i feel about it. trip (offscreen):i know, i know. i'll do it rightnow, all right? [couple continues arguinginaudibly] sean plott: so i can also typethings like, "hello," and

that's what i'm actuallysaying in the game. i'm going to walk up to thisdoor, i'm going to knock. [knocking] trip: ben! sean plott: hello! trip: i thought i heardsomeone out here. bill graner: he was just waitingat the door for you. trip: how you doing, man? sean plott: how are we doing?

sean bouchard: we'redoing good. good. sean plott: good. trip: great, great. wow, it's really, reallygreat to see you. come on in. bill graner: lookat that unitard. sean bouchard: thoseare high pants. trip: --go get grace.

sean bouchard: oh god. sean plott: so it says,"unintelligible arguing." it's in this kind of weird,trippy-- this is sort of like how3d looked like in 1993. bill graner: yeah, thisis like that one dire straits video. is this actually cel-shaded,though, or not? sean bouchard: no, i thinkit's mostly bitmaps. i think it's mostly sprites.

sean plott: yeah, i mean,as i rotate, the plant rotates to face-- oh. grace: hi. how are you? oh, it's so nice to see you. it feels like it'sbeen forever. sean plott: how are we? trip: yeah, how are you doing? bill graner: good.

sean bouchard: great. fantastic. sean plott: fantastic. bejujular. grace: by the way, youlook fabulous. sean bouchard: oh,she does, too. grace: ben. i'm hoping you can help meunderstand where i went wrong with my new--

sean plott: why doesshe look-- sean bouchard: you justinterrupted her, dude! you can't-- grace: you were flirtingwith me. bill graner: oh, good. she-- yeah. trip: i'm not sure i shouldoffer you a drink. maybe y head start onyour way over here. sean plott: ok, so--

bill graner: wow. sean bouchard: he's-- grace: so about mydecorating-- sean bouchard: thatgot uncomfortable. grace: this room, i wastrying for a kind of postmodern style. trip: yeah, i think thatit comes across. grace: but it is clearlyjust not happening. this is a mess.

trip: oh. sean bouchard: um,it is a mess. sean plott: yeah. it is a mess, you jerk. grace: oh, yes. i've been waiting forsomeone to say that. sean plott: really? sean bouchard: i can't believeshe took that so well. grace: --which i appreciate.

sean plott: yeah,that's weird. you are such a lady'sman, sean. sean bouchard: i know, right? trip: --fine. well, we're all friends here. grace: ben, seeing you againmakes me remember the wonderful times weall used to have. sean plott: this girl'sso inappropriate. what do we say?

sean bouchard: it's true. bill graner: happysmile sound? grace: yeah, yeah. i've missed you. trip: i just thoughtof something. grace: what? trip: there's somethingwe need to celebrate. sean plott: what's that? grace: --you mean?

trip: ben, remember it wasalmost exactly 10 years ago tonight that youintroduced us? senior year of college? grace: oh, jeez. trip: do you remember that? sean plott: of course. bill graner: of course. trip: we really want to thankyou for years and years of-- grace: pain.

trip: agony. sean plott: thatwasn't a joke. sean bouchard: that'snot subtle. wow. that's not subtext at all. bill graner: look athis screaming eyes. sean bouchard: she hatesthat man [inaudible]. sean plott: how are you now? big sigh.

grace: what do you-- no. we're fine. everything's fine. [clears throat] trip, have you noticedwe're fighting in front of our friend? trip: grace, come on. that kind of statementis not helpful. grace: trip, there's nothingwrong with disagreeing in

front of our friends. trip: we're not disagreeing. sean bouchard: youare disagreeing. sean plott: oh. sean bouchard: nice. trip: what? sean plott: happybut tense sigh. grace: you and i are gettingalong so well tonight. sean bouchard: that's true.

grace: stay therefor a moment. i want your opinion. sean bouchard: uh oh. grace: stay there. sean bouchard: don't move. don't-- grace: --tired of lookingat this god awful couch. maybe if i replacedit with, um-- trip: do you remember, grace?

trip: how i proposed to you? grace: oh god, trip. trip: ben, i'll show you. it was at grace's parents'house, christmas. grace: trip, whatare you doing? trip: senior year of college. i got on one knee infront of everybody. grace: stop it, trip. trip: i pulled outa diamond ring--

grace: trip-- trip: and i said, grace,will you marry me? is that romantic, or what? sean plott: is it? bill graner: it's just ok. trip: ben, yes? very romantic? sean bouchard: no. sean plott: that isnot romantic.

grace: thank you. sean bouchard: hotair balloons. grace: trip, not everyone thinksbeing proposed to like that is so romantic. i don't know where youget your ideas. what could be more romanticthan that? grace: ben, i'm sorry. you didn't need to see that. trip: grace!

grace: trip, you're beinga real bore tonight. let's just forgetabout it, ok? sean plott: now,i can hug her. sean bouchard: ok. bill graner: can you? trip: you can bet on it. grace: oh, you're hugging me. trip: ben-- sean bouchard: she's the kind ofperson who has to say that.

trip: oh no. ben, i just realized. i'm sorry. trip: i haven't gottenus drinks. oh, this is good because i justbought these classy new cocktail shakers i needus to try out. grace: trip would try to serveyou one of his high class drinks before even stayinghello if he could. trip: why don't i make us oneof my new drink inventions?

i call it grace's inner soul. it's a mixture of chardonnay,bitters, and lots of ice. [hosts laughing] bill graner: good one! tell him it's a good one. sean bouchard: that'sa good one. trip: so ben, howdoes that sound? sean bouchard: tell him. tell him it's awesome.

tell him he's hilarious. sean plott: that sounds great. trip: ben, you are anadventurous drinker like me. grace: ben, i think you'd prefersomething simple and light, like a nice glassof chardonnay, yes? sean plott: glassof chardonnay? sean bouchard: extremelycontrolling. no. bill graner: who arethese friends?

sean plott: um, no thank you. trip: no, i'm going to makethis drink for us. our friend is here, we're goingto enjoy ourselves. that's all there is to it. grace, everybody lovesmy drinks. you know that, don't you? everybody. bill graner: say everybody. sean bouchard: everybody.

everybody! grace: in college, youwere a bartender. trip: how do you knowabout that? grace: oh, i know you weretrying to keep it a big secret, but one time my friendsand i went slumming off campus to some crappybar in the sticks, and we saw you there. trip: oh, that's great. ugh, you're driving me insane.

god damn, slummingit off campus. sean plott: whoa. trip: you hide things fromme, you're so distant. you do, you hidethings from me. sean bouchard: whatis she hiding? sean plott: i don't know. what are you hiding? trip: hey, no. it's just going to make thiswhole thing worse if you keep

criticizing me. sean plott: i wasn'tasking you. grace: trip, you think you'reso romantic, but no, you're trying to manipulate me. trip: god damn manipulation. grace, i just want to betogether and be happy. can you see that? can't we just do that? trip: all right,you know what?

ben-- sean plott: oh, i didn'tsay anything. oh crap. trip: i'm going to askyou something. sean plott: i'm ready. trip: grace, i'm going to askour guest a question. ben, yes or no. each person in a marriage issupposed to try really hard to be in sync with theother, right?

sean plott: i think yes. bill graner: yes. trip: i mean, when you'remarried, to make it good, you need to always be positive andagreeable and together? sean bouchard: no, no. sean plott: no. bill graner: no. oh, all right. yes.

just admit it, trip, admit it. we have a shitty marriage. we've never been really happyfrom day one, never! god damn it! sean plott: wow. trip: yeah, go on. get out of my face. i can't frigging take this. what the--

god damn it. sean plott: are you ok? bill graner: hey, buddy. hey, buddy. trip: ben, i-- trip, are you tryingto talk to me? trip: no. ben, i can't believethis is happening. sean plott: divorce her?

i'm going all in. sean bouchard: go, go! do it. grace: and what you said beforeabout forgiving, i think we've already learnedsomething about trip. trip: oh, we're talking aboutme again, are we? trip, it's your fault. 10 years ago, freshly marriedand just out of college, you convinced me to go intoadvertising instead of art.

grace: if it weren't foryou, i could be a real artist by now. bill graner: tell her thereare no real artists. sean plott: there areno real artists. grace: ugh. this painting, well-- see, all i really wanted wassomething personal and beautiful and special-- trip: grace--

grace: but i just-- you, know i just get sodepressed and angry when i look at it. trip: jesus. bill graner: ask herwhy she gets angry. just keep asking why. sean plott: oh yeah, why? grace: why? sean plott: yeah, why?

trip: good. you're trying to understandthis craziness. that might help her. grace: it just reallybothers me. i can't-- ugh. trip: there's nothing wrongwith the stupid painting. bill graner: ask him whythere's nothing wrong. sean bouchard: tell me moreabout the stupid painting.

grace: why don't we talk aboutus, our relationship? you've really heldme back, trip. trip: you can't putthat on me. grace: i've wasted 10 years ofmy life on advertising and redecorating. trip: oh my god. bill graner: ben, ben, ben. sean plott: ben. sean bouchard: ben.

10 years. tell her to have kids. trip: --talking about grace. trip: ben, you think this isall my fault, don't you? grace: trip, sometimes i thinkmy life would be so different if i hadn't married you, wheremy art career might be by now. trip: your art career? sean plott: it'snot your fault. grace: yes.

trip: holy shit. you think i'm to blame, i'mto blame for all this? sean bouchard: all you saidis, it's not your fault. how did the-- trip: i hate this. ugh, well. sean plott: oh, hisneck broke. bill graner: he's done. trip: grace, you know i've neverwanted anyone but you.

grace: aha. sean bouchard: yes, totally. you think i'm to blamefor all this. bill graner: all what? trip: ugh. this is too much. i can't take this. sean bouchard: maybe sheshould divorce him. sean plott: grace,you should--

oops-- you should-- grace: --about trip. trip: divorce? oh my god. you think we shouldget a divorce? sean plott: it worked. trip: this is bullshit. trip: you're saying it's over?

we should just give up? sean plott: yes. sean bouchard: i likethe discordant piano that comes in. sean plott: oh, that'sa good point. grace: let's keep talking aboutus, our relationship. trip: grace, i want totake care of you. sean plott: i don't actuallyhave control over the camera for a lot of this.

sean bouchard: oh, really? sean plott: turning it, yeah. when it gets really goodon [inaudible]-- trip: you always wanted that. i know you did. sean bouchard: what? what is she trying to say? what are you trying to say? you're asking questions.

that helps. so that's how yousee it, trip? that you're taking care of me? trip, can't you see, it's theway you speak, the way you talk to me. sean plott: guys, tellme something to do. i'm not allowed to be angry? grace: you tell me what to do. you don't listen.

bill graner: tellhim to listen. trip, you should listen. sean plott: you shouldlisten more. trip: yes. see, i'm the one trying toreach out to you, grace. sean plott: oh, thisis so dramatic. sean bouchard: they're standingaway from each other. trip: let's switch thefocus to grace. grace, i don't think you wantus to quit our jobs, lead a

simpler lifestyle. trip, you know what i-- trip: oh, come on. you grew up with a silverspoon in your mouth. you can't live any other way. sean plott: oh my god. sean bouchard: i think sheshould be an artist. bill graner: yeah? grace: huh!

no, i don't want tomake art, please. sean plott: no, i'm nottalking to you. sean bouchard: no, not you! good lord. grace: ah. see, ben, all this time i justcan't stop thinking that i should have been painting. why don't you just do it then? sean bouchard: tell her sheshould start painting.

trip: be a goddamn art-- ben, we already talkedabout that. am i wrong? sean bouchard: i like tellingpeople that they're wrong. grace: ok. god damn it, i can'tdo this anymore. just stop. sean plott: oh, i feel likethe ai's breaking. grace: ben, i know whatyou're hinting at, ok?

about me? bill graner: you're hintingvery subtly. grace: do you want to hearthe honest truth, huh? bill graner: yes indeed. grace: trip? grace: see, ben, i've beenlistening carefully to what you've been saying tonight. ben, stop interrupting me. let me speak.

sean plott: sorry, my bad. grace: --really beenpushing me. it makes me wonder if you'rereally my friend. grace: ben, i've got toask you, yes or no. do you really think thatflirting with me, asking if we are ok, criticizing me, tellingme to make art, telling trip to make art,suggesting we get divorced, and worst of all, suggestingthat trip is to blame, but especially what you said aboutforgiving and forgetting--

bill graner: did you sayanything about forgiving and forgetting? grace: --something aboutmyself from all that? is what you've said tonightsupposed to add up somehow to something? is it? just give me a-- sean bouchard: yes. grace: i painted this.

sean bouchard: oh my god. trip: bullshit. grace: i am an artist. trip, fuck you. sean plott: is that allowedto be said on-- sean bouchard: idon't think so. grace: every time you go ona goddamn business trip, i paint, so don't ever give meany more of your, you could never be an artist crap.

sean bouchard: oh, grace. oh, grace. bill graner: sheshould sell it. tell her to sell it. sean plott: sell the painting. i'm going to stand up. bill graner: no one's evengoing to respond. grace: ben, i-- sean bouchard: you havedeeply offended them.

bill graner: can we-- what's the otherroom look like? sean bouchard: this changedeverything. make up. bill graner: make out. tell her to be anartist again. grace: i think it's over. sean plott: oh no! bill graner: nice.

trip: grace. what? grace: no. it's over, trip. don't you see that? but you just said-- grace: i just told you somethingabout me i should have said a long time ago. i am an artist, but youcan't see that.

and no-- ben, hold on. sean bouchard: i like howawkward the "ben" is. grace: no, trip, thisis about me. i see now it's not about youor about our marriage. trip: me? our marriage? hey, no, wait. thank you, though.

you really helped me. sean bouchard: wow. bill graner: we did it. bravo, guys. trip:grace-- i should have-- sean plott: oh is-- sean bouchard: that's it? you're done.

curtain down. bill graner: view yourgenerated stage play. what's that? what's our generatedstage play? sean bouchard: it's literallyjust a transcript of the thing, but the implication,it's saying stage play, is that you could stage aperformance of this. sean plott: so i'm actuallygoing to exit the game, and we're going to be doing multipleplaythroughs for any

who are watching. so as i refill my beer boot, sowe didn't get the chance to talk that much throughout thecourse of it, but we totally ruined their marriage! that was awesome. sean bouchard: itwas pretty good. sean plott: we achievedsomething on this tuesday. bill graner: yeah, i think so. all those things we said abouttrip being an artist, and

about ben and being an artist. is this all supposedto mean something? i, um, ben-- i'm seriously curious, you guys,because obviously it's got some recognition problemsand whatnot, but there's a moment where she startslisting off in a very mechanical way all of the thingsthat you've done so far to offend her, i guess. did that work for you?

sean plott: that was cool. i liked that, because-- sean bouchard: right? bill graner: thisactually goes-- man, this reminds me of spectretoo, because there's a term that i thought ofwhere-- it's sort of like a fortune cookie. i always think of fortunecookie, even though that's not really the right thing, wherebasically you do something in

a game, and then at the end itjust lists what you did, and for some reason it'sreally cool. sean bouchard: there's like achrono trigger thing there too, where you don't realizethat the game has a memory of the things that you're doing. spectre, by the way, i'm justgoing to throw this out for anybody who's listening, is agame that bill and i worked, on s-p-e-c-t-r-e game. there's like a websitefor it or something.

it's not the tank game. it's the platformer. bill graner: this is likeyou're a guy who has memories and stuff. sean plott: well, i actuallylike what you were bringing up, bill, about where it listsback what you did, because in pretty much any game whereyou're an avatar, like in half life, where you're gordonfreeman, or even like a third-person game, where you'relike niko bellic or

whatever, you always kind ofget the impression that the world is happening around youautomatically, and whatever influence you throw out intothe world, whatever. you can sort of like dabble,it's a little sandcastle. like in grand theft auto, youcan steal a car, and drive it into a school playground,and get out and be fine. sean bouchard: it's not goingto affect anything, right? it's not going to have long-termrepercussions. sean plott: it's just aschool with children

that you ran over. sean bouchard: we just ruinedthe lives of two people. i want you to appreciate that. sean plott: it was weird, whenshe just started listing it off, it made be aware ofmyself in the game, and i was like, oh! sean bouchard: totally sean plott: i don't know, do youever have the feeling of like, oh, i get to be naughty?

like, ask her aboutthe painting. tell trip that youhate his drinks. yeah. you just want to do shenanigansall day long, that's it. you're a gremlin. and so there is a certain-- remember that rash of moralitygames that came out where it's like, oh, we're going to have amoral component in our first

person shooter? sean plott: oh, i hated that. bill graner: and a lot ofthe time with those-- i guess this one felt more likewe definitely picked a direction and went for it, butsometimes it happens with those morality things, it'slike you'll do something totally innocuous, and then itinterprets it as being-- sean bouchard: minus50 morality points. bill graner: yeah, exactly.

or like you accidentally punchthe wrong guy, and then he attacks you until death, it'slike you can't get him to stop fighting you. that happened in--what was that? sean bouchard: chickensin skyrim. bill graner: chickensin skyrim. same as, oh, what's the one? fallout. fallout 3, where it's like,this dude's dad punches--

it's like you hit him orsomething, and then he decides he is not going to stopattacking you until one of you is just cold. and then everyone's like,you murdered a man. it's like, no. sean bouchard: to be fair, ifyou go around punching people, what do you expect to happen? bill graner: yeah, but i thinkthere was a reason. sean bouchard: no, i thinkyou're absolutely right.

i mean, this is something weinstinctively do when we go into a game is we test thelimits of our effect on the world, right, because weunderstand, we've been taught, that games have this sort ofdigital existence that is simulated around us, and thereare some things that we can do that affect that, and somethings that we do that don't affect that. in mario, there's some blocksthat you hit and they disappear, and some blocks juststay there, and so we

test what those limits are, wetry to find the boundaries. and it's interesting when a gamegives you a false set of boundaries, tells you, these arewhat the limits are, and then later reveals no, actually,i've been paying attention more thanyou thought. bill graner: that'scool, yeah. sean plott: it's like inelementary school when they tell you can't subtract a biggernumber from a smaller number, and then they're like,surprise, negatives!

you're like, whoa,what the hell? sean bouchard: that was exactlymy reaction, too. bill graner: i think what i wastrying to get at before is blame and shame. that's what it is, shamingpeople in games, where it's the grand search that went ona couple years ago to make more emotions than justthe thrill of killing. the only other emotion thatreally got nailed down was shaming people for killing.

here's a game where it's likethe only way you can interact with this world is by shootingit with a gun. that's it. you're a man who walks aroundwith a gun, and if you shoot someone, it's like you'll havefun, but then at the end of the level, it's like,you know, you really shot that guy. i don't know how youjustify that. of course, you can't talk.

i mean, you can shoot the guywho's shaming you if you want, but that's it. he won't die, though. sean plott: actually, ok. so that brings up anotherinteresting thing, is that in this game, the characterizationis really exaggerated. i personally didn't mind itbecause i understand that they're trying to conveyin a very blunt way

what's going on here. i think it would be boring ifthey made their interaction really subtle. so the fact that i walkedin and she's like, god, trip, i hate you. ben, you look hot. did that break it for you? i don't know if i'm just toomuch suspension of disbelief. bill graner: yeah, i mean, itdefinitely catapulted us in a

certain direction. you know what i'd like to trythe next time is if we try to buddy up with trip, because thistime, it really seemed like we were sort of placedagainst him early on, i think. that might just be me, though,but that intro totally sets you in a certain position. sean bouchard: definitely. i agree, and i would go so faras to say that one of the things this game does is makesme really aware of how much we

communicate through subtlety,through body language and through tone, and how hard it isto make yourself understood when you're just typing textinto this kind of an environment. it's kind of amazing. it's super interesting that thisis voiced, as compared to the game we played last time,but the blocking and the voice acting is very broad. it's not subtle.

and especially in the contextof, hey, this is like a play, god, i think about the playsthat i've seen that really mastered like two persondynamic, and it's all about subtlety and speed and thingsthat we don't get out of this interaction. sean plott: well, as we're goinginto round two, is our goal to only agreewith trip ever? sean bouchard: wecould do that. i mean, i think we're going toget a similar ending to this.

i think it's going to endwith trip walking out. i mean, i'm curious if wecould get them together. i don't think it's easy to do,but it seems like it's an obvious self-directed goal. are we up to that challenge? bill graner: sure sean plott: agreewith everyone? sean bouchard: agree witheveryone all the time? that sounds pretty good.

bill graner: let's do it. sean plott: all right. so our goal is to try to getthem together, right? i'm coming back. should we hug? bill, another favorite letter? bill graner: n. sean plott: nat, parentheses,female. sean bouchard: oh,interesting.

i didn't know wecould do that. bill graner: so there'salso a male nat. i think that implies-- sean plott: dude,let's be female. i thought we had to be male. sean bouchard: cozyup to trip? bill graner: yeah, sure. sean plott: cozy up to trip. trip (offscreen): where arethe new wineglasses?

that should be obvious. sean plott: i'm goingto knock. grace (offscreen): trip, let'snot turn this into-- trip (offscreen):oh, she's here. grace (offscreen): what? you told me it'd bean hour from now. sean plott: i'm knocking. let me in. grace (offscreen): god, trip--

trip: nat! hey, it's been too long. how are you doing? you look-- oh. bill graner: the europeangreeting! i love it. sean plott: kissed him. trip: we just got back fromitaly, where they do

that all the time. bill graner: oh verysmooth, trip. trip: well, come on in. sean bouchard: thisis good, yep. sean bouchard: well done. trip: i'll-- i'll go get grace. bill graner: how aboutwe follow him? sean bouchard: yeah, i want tosee what's in the other room.

sean bouchard: can you-- sean plott: sorry, i justmessed up the controls. grace: no, no, here we are. nat! hi how are you? god, it's been a while. trip (offscreen): yeah,how are you doing? grace: i just asked her that. sean bouchard: super.

we're doing super. trip: i can ask, too. sean plott: super. and i have to say,you look great. sean bouchard: actually, ido like doing terrible. see if you can makethis about you. bill graner: oh, yeah. just be as much of a jerkas you can like they are, about yourself.

sean plott: i need a drink. trip: thanks. grace: nat, you're alwaysso sweet to us. isn't she sweet? sean bouchard: you comein and demand drinks. sean plott: i'm sweet. drink. trip: oh yeah, i'm going to fixus some drinks in a sec. sean bouchard: systemis responsive.

grace: so this armoire looked soappealing when i bought it, but looking at it here in theapartment, it just looks like a monstrosity. sean plott: i lovethe armoire. is that spelled right? sean bouchard: yes,that's totally it. grace (offscreen): really? trip: see, grace, no one has aproblem with your decorating. sean plott: grace,you're ugly.

grace: oh, whatever. i'm going to return mostof this anyhow. i have to redo this room. trip: so drinks. so, what's your poison? sean bouchard: drinks. trip: how about a martini? grace's dad taught mehow to make them. it's a really classy drink.

bill graner: oh cool, yeah. ok. grace: high class drinks. sean plott: i'm goingto hug him. well-- grace: you're reallyaffectionate tonight, aren't you? bill graner: hug her, too. she's going to getangry otherwise.

sean bouchard: iwant a mojito. can you fix a mojito? trip: oh, that's nice of you. grace, aren't you gladwe invited her over? bill graner: oh, this is good. this is so much more happy. trip: well, you know what? i'm just going to makeyou a martini. sean plott: that's clever.

grace: maybe you would like somejuice or mineral water? sean bouchard: both. bill graner: can it be both? trip: ok good. i'll just whip up thesebad boys real quick. grace: sometimes i'm afraid tripthinks the best way to a friend's heart is throughhis liver. trip: wait, what did you say? sean plott: it is.

trip: grace usually refuses todrink what i'm making, but tonight i get the feelingshe'll join us? grace: you know, i don'twant to drink tonight. nothing for me. sean bouchard: grace, no. definitely martini. grace? trip: --hear this. trip, there's nothing wrong withdisagreeing in front of

our friends. sean bouchard: stopdisagreeing. bill graner: oh, nice. wait, there's a magiceight ball in here? sean plott: there is. bill graner: never. never stop disagreeing. sean bouchard: thatwas amazing. trip: --photo i just put up fromour recent trip to italy.

grace: um, it's a beautifulpicture of the italian countryside. of course she'll like it. trip: grace, i know you don'tlike it, but our friend might. here we are. hope you like it. nat, come take a look at this. grace (offscreen): god, thisevening is getting more exhilarating by the minute.

sean plott: i love this photo. grace: look, i already knowhow you feel about my decorating. let's just move on from thatpart of the conversation. sean bouchard: i can't believehow much you love my it's such a betrayal. bill graner: it really is. grace: anybody, join me onthe couch if you like. bill graner: oh, joinher on the couch.

sean bouchard: no, drinkthe martini. trip: what does thispicture say to you? bill graner: italy. one word. sean bouchard: italy? trip: --in the hotel roomwhen i was out taking his picture, so-- sean plott: what doesit say to us? fun.

trip: well actually, this tripto italy was meant to be our second honeymoon. sean plott: oh, wow. sean bouchard: what a fancysecond honeymoon. grace: i'm always thelast to know. sean bouchard: it's amazing thatwe are hearing so much about italy, though, sincewe [inaudible] by kissing him. trip: in a word, this says--

bill graner: fun? trip: no, it says romance. grace: romance? in our marriage, that's just acode word for manipulation. sean plott: what? sean bouchard: whoa! bill graner: ask herabout manipulation. sean bouchard: ask aboutmanipulation. grace: --without even askingme if i wanted to go.

sean bouchard: that is kindof a dick move, trip. grace: that's not the first timehe's done that, and you knew i planned to attendmy friend's art show that weekend. sean plott: manipulation? grace: oh god, please, no moretalk about italy tonight. sean bouchard: manipulationis synonymous with italy trip: ugh, you're drivingme insane! grace (offscreen): i'mthe one going insane.

god damned romance. what are you saying? trip (offscreen): nat, i-- sean plott: it's takingcontrol of my camera. sean bouchard: those eyebrowsare incredible. grace: --talking about trip'sgoddamned drinks. bill graner: ok, let's try--what can we say to make them happy again? sean bouchard: um, whatdoes she like?

trip: --reach out to you. i try to be romantic with you,but you're cold and distant. i do, i really try. sean plott: forgiveeach other. bill graner: this is how you'regoing to solve the middle east crisis, too. grace: you know what? bill graner: forgiveeach other!

grace: i'm going toask you something. grace: trip, let me askour guest a question. sean bouchard: this ismy favorite part. grace: nat, yes or no. do you think it's wrong for oneperson in a marriage to listen too much to the other? sean plott: i mean, no. sean bouchard: whatdoes that mean? grace: to trust your husband orwife too much, to rely on

them too much. is that wrong? grace: yes or no? oh, ok. fine. god damn it, how cani be happy when you act this way, trip? trip: oh, christ. grace: i'm miserable.

bill graner: why isshe miserable? because of italy? trip: go on, go away. [interposing voices] sean plott: whatcan we say to-- trip: god damn it, grace. sean bouchard: can you calmhim, down calm down? sean plott: calm down. what are you saying to me?

are you talking to me? sean bouchard: what areyou saying to me? trip: i was not talkingto you. bill graner: oh, i see. that's how they deal with-- i bet if you just type letters, it'll do the same thing. grace: damn it, trip. sean plott: [inaudible].

sean bouchard: uh, calm down. grace: i'm sorry. this is a disaster. bill graner: tell her-- what? what else? sean plott: you love him. sean bouchard: is this emotionalmanipulation now? trip: oh, we're talkingabout me, are we?

nat, it's time thattrip finally just admits that our marriage-- trip: no, we don't need to-- grace: --admits that ourmarriage is not-- trip: stop it. stop it. sean bouchard: what isyour marriage not? say that. sean plott: is it i-a or a-i?

sean bouchard: no,that's right. i'm pretty sure that's right. trip: you know, it'ssad or maybe funny. i always thought marriagewould be easy. trip: yeah. i always thought marriage wassupposed to be this great thing, that you'd justbe happy and-- well, happy, or at leastjust easier than this. bill graner: tell him, marriageis difficult.

sean bouchard: yeah,marriage is hard. trip: --painfullyobvious to me. i didn't know-- jesus. nat, why do you keep bringingthat same topic up? bill graner: ask himabout music. say, what kind of musicdo you like? sean bouchard: yeah,there you go. we need to talk about usboth, not just one.

bill graner: oh, ask themabout their first date. trip: why is it that anytime iwant to do something nice for you, you resist it? trip: why? ah, thank you. just saying that helps. grace: trip, maybe if you didn'ttry to convince me of things, i might wantthem more. sean plott: i think iinterrupted that.

sean bouchard: whatdoes she want? what do you want, grace? grace: --focus on ourrelationship. you know what's so annoyingis when you pretend to be all romantic. grace: trip, it issuch an act. trip: oh my-- grace, i'm not acting wheni'm being romantic. goddamn.

you know, i can't say gracenever acts loving towards me. trip: nat, she's all over me atour goddamn parties, trying to look good in frontof the guests. sean bouchard: that is aterrible thing to say. i know we're supposedto be siding with him, but these people. bill graner: grave. grace: i think we shouldfocus on trip. trip: nat, you know,it's weird to me.

when i'm on a business trip,grace never calls me, ever. she says she's-- why? grace: oh, you wantto know more. see, that might help him. trip: i mean, why? is it something i'm-- sean bouchard: theylike "why." bill graner: yeah,say it again.

grace: let's talk somemore about trip. trip: --it's got everythinganyone would ever want. oh no, she's never satisfied. trip (offscreen): why? grace: oh, thank you. that helps him. trip, look at my parents. if money bought happiness, theywouldn't hate themselves like they do.

sean bouchard: that "why" isgetting more direct feedback than anything else. grace: --talk about us. trip, you just pretend to likeall this stuff, fancy cigars and fine wine. trip: you think i'm not-- sean bouchard: i like wine. grace (offscreen): inever said that. i'm saying [inaudible].

sean plott: interrupt-- trip: come on. i don't feel like fixingdrinks at this moment. bill graner: very nice. well done. grace: --focus on us,our relationship. i think trip's afraid ofvisiting his parents. he does everything he canto avoid seeing them. trip: afraid of my parents?

my parents are idiots. bill graner: ask abouthis parents. grace (offscreen): trip,why can't you be more like your parents? they're real. trip: yeah, real tacky. sean bouchard: whoa, burn! trip: grace has alwaysenjoyed slumming. that's why she likesvisiting them.

grace: i can't believe you. trip, are you that shallow? sean bouchard: thatis pretty shallow. that's pretty shallow. trip: see, grace? even our friend thinksthey're tacky. bill graner: wha-- wait. trip (offscreen): i think weshould focus on grace.

grace: sometimes i feel likethings just happen to me. life is passing me by. bill graner: grace, you suck. trip: all right,nat, that's it. you've got to leave. bill graner: whoa. we're done. we're done here. trip: we'll be fine.

you should-- bill graner: that's it, man. sean plott: oh my god, i gotus kicked out of the party. forcibly ejected. bill graner: the game'suninstalling itself. sean plott: this guy is notsuited to handle digital relationships. what the hell? so crap.

ok, well-- sean bouchard: i think youpissed off grace too many times, i think iswhat happened. bill graner: yeah, shewas getting kind of-- i feel like there's a see saw,where if one of them is happy, then the other one isn't, so ithink our best bet is to keep them both sort of one happyafter the other, please all of the people some of the time. sean bouchard: so i saw thatsomebody had done this, it's

amazing, though, how much morefeedback we get for asking why bill graner: yeah sean bouchard: i think you canwin the game just by asking why over and overand over again. bill graner: well, that makes--that's sort of like a therapy thing, i guess. it's like, why do youfeel that way? i mean, it's a really greatway to piss someone off if they're trying to communicatewith you.

why? why is that? huh? sean bouchard: it is. it's not actually a greatcommunication technique, although it does make me thinkit would be a blast to hook this up to the emacspsychologist program. we could just keep saying,tell me more about blank. sean bouchard: yeah, tellme more about terrible

sean plott: get on cleverbot. bill graner: oh shit. i mean, shoot. sean plott: don't worry, it'snothing trip and grace haven't said already. bill graner: hey, look,should we do this? we can cleverbot this thing. sean plott: first, i want totake something from the chat that said, ask trip aboutmaria and vince.

sean bouchard: yeah, so thereare a couple things that we can ask about that are going toget us in serious trouble. one is maria, and theother one is vince. sean plott: do youwant to do both? sean bouchard: well,let's do both. bill graner: and then if we wantto, if we want to, we can do like eliza, thetherapist bot. sean bouchard: we might do thatoffline and just report the results.

bill graner: that would be good,actually, because then anyone can replicateit at home. sean plott: so this is the onepart that's difficult for me in terms of the game experienceis that we're on play-through number three. i'm caring less and less andless and less about the people, and more aboutwhat can i do? what can i do? i just want to mess with thelimits, and i almost feel like

the fact that it's so easy toget kicked out is how they keep you in the boxthat they want. bill graner: i think i noticedthis at usc when we were doing all that databasenarrative stuff. after a while-- and thishappened with spectre too-- it's like you stop caring aboutthe linear play-through, and instead you just feel likeyou're trying to find a way to frolic through the databaseand just access all the different pieces.

so yeah. i mean, it's like we're goingfor completion at this point, i think. i think what might help that isif this was-- and it might be, i don't know how deep thisgame goes, but if different pieces from the database canadd up to something more. it's like if you can take aplus b equals some crazy result, instead of just liketrying to iterate through a, b, c, d, and so on.

sean bouchard: so there's arandom element to the game that we've seen. it started out differently thistime than it did last time, and we got differentinformation out of them. i'm actually amazed at how muchsecret stuff they told us the first time around, andwe got stuff about their parents this time. it was really interesting. bill graner: i was amazedat how little--

i think if we went to thetranscript of the first play-through, we had such littlecontent comparatively, because we had them both sopissed off that they were like ugh, uh, eh, ben. and this time, it wasa little more like-- sean bouchard: there are amazingawkward pauses in this game, and the fact that you'retyping out in real time. i mentioned this to you earlier,sean, but the fact that you're typing stuff out inreal time in order to move

it along, i think it reallysimulates the feeling, the experience, of being in a fight,like being the third wheel in a fight where peopleare angry at each other and they're mostly ignoring you, orthey're trying to use you as some kind of politicalpawn in their argument. and what do you say? what do you say? try to change the topic? it's actually a reallyinteresting experiment in

creating that experience. sean plott: that's actually agreat point because if you think about it, no matter whatthe context is, maybe it's a sci-fi game where you're thegeneral and you have to decide what to do, or it's somethingreally simple, like you're designing a house in sims butit's based on conversation or something like that-- as a user, always when you'reasked for input, you pause and think, what do i want to do?

i almost feel like it's reallyclever that they said, in what situation would you actuallymake that pause in real life? because if i'm having aconversation with someone in mass effect, and i just wantto ask, tell me about the volus, i'll stop, andi'll look around. and if it's in a realconversation, i'm like-- well, tell me about volus. huh. tell me about the elcor.

five minutes passes becausei had to use the bathroom because i've been playingfor six hours, right? it's unnatural. but i feel like in thatsituation where you have to wait, and i felt this sortof, uh, what do i say? what do i say? you haven't me saythat before. it's a really accuratesimulation. sean bouchard: have you guysplayed the left 4 dead games?

bill graner: no,i should have. that was before i had apc, really, though. this is recent. this is in the lastcouple months. bill graner: which left4 dead games? sean bouchard: left 4 dead. sean plott: walking dead? sean bouchard: no,fuck, sorry. walking dead, yes.

bill graner: no, i haven't. sean bouchard: sorry, guys. left 4 dead. no, the walking dead games,the walking dead games. have you guys played those? bill graner: nah-ah. sean plott: i haven't, but ihear they're incredible. sean bouchard: so i've onlyplayed a little bit, and i'm looking forward to playing therest of it, but it tries to do

a similar thing where biowarestyle, rpg style, you get dialogue options, but you'vegot a little timer on them, and so your natural instinctis to sort of think through strategically, whatshould i say here? what's going to up myrelationship meter the most? but you're on a really tighttime limit, and so you end up panicking and justtrying to say something, don't say nothing. bill graner: if you don'tsay something, do

the zombies eat you? sean bouchard: i'mactually not-- yes. they just appearout of nowhere. bill graner: like,come on, ben. sean bouchard: dimensionalvortex. bill graner: you thinki'm right, don't you? i could have been anartist, right? ben?

[zombie groan] that was my zombie,sorry, guys. yeah, exactly. i'll be providing the zombiesounds for our next game. i think we should do one moreand see what they have to say about maria and vince. let me load it up. sean, this time, if you would beso kind as to pick a letter from a to z.

sean bouchard: sure. give me an h. sean plott: heather. or do you want-- sean bouchard: heather's it. that's all we get. let's go heather. bill graner: the first time, ithought we had typed out the whole name.

sean bouchard: what was that? genevra? bill graner: generva genevra. sean bouchard: genevra. genevra. we'll go with that 100%. no, genevra. bill graner: wait, wait, wait. what if we go with maria?

sean bouchard: i don'tthink it's a name. sean plott: what about v-- there's no vs. sean plott: genevra. sean bouchard: genevra,just because i've never heard it before. bill graner: i've ginever heardof that name before. sean bouchard: thankyou, bill. bill graner: i know.

i'll show myself out. yeah grace (offscreen): youknow, i've had to ask you about this several-- [indistinct arguing] bill graner: what are theyare arguing about? sean bouchard: are theirarguments getting more and more heated? bill graner: yeah, i think themore you play this game, the

more demonic it becomes. sean bouchard: one of thesetimes, we're going to open the door, and there's justgoing to be a severed head on the table. trip: genevra! hi, it's so great to see you! sean bouchard: kiss him. bill graner: oh, god. now we're on italytrack, though.

trip: love it. we just got back fromitaly where they do sean bouchard: i hate italy. trip: come on in. sean plott: kisshim four times. he loves it. bill graner: wait, whydon't we mess with something in the room? try messing with somethingin the room too.

sean bouchard: sure, likepick up the phone. call the police! sean plott: oh my god. how do you-- ah. sean bouchard: throw it. throw it across the room. sean plott: ok, let me-- grace (offscreen): i don'tunderstand why you're always

doing this! bill graner: a nokia. sean bouchard: can you hideit in the cushions? sean plott: i kind of want to. put some glasses over here. they're going to come in, andtheir room's going to be just covered in trash, and i'mgoing to be like-- sean bouchard: [inaudible]redecorating. grace, i did not likeyour decorating.

i'm redoing it. trip: yeah, it hasbeen a long time. sean plott: your decoratingis terrible. grace: and i have-- well, um-- you can help me understand whatwent wrong with my new trip: grace, no, no, wedon't need to do that. sean plott: grace, tellme about vince. ok, let's look at the eyes.

sean bouchard: let's do it. bill graner: nice! sean bouchard: was thatseven blinks? grace: uh-- sean bouchard: uh, well? sean plott: you're sleepingwith vince, right? trip: you're quite thekidder tonight. grace: huh, yeah. sean bouchard: that'san admission.

i think that's a confessionright there. trip: wait. bill graner: that's good. sean bouchard: oh shit. now they can hear the music. trip: genevra, i thinkthis evening is over. sean bouchard: oh man. sean plott: all right,all right, all right. trip: you just have to go.

sean plott: let me in. bill graner: i think i knowwhat we need to do next. sean plott: what's up? bill graner: butterhim up first. we've got to learn aboutthis vince thing. sean plott: god, this is-- ok, so how about in therelationship phase, when it's just, tell me about therelationship, we're like, why don't you tell meabout vincent?

[gasp] tell me about maria. sean bouchard: it's good. it's good. sean plott: i wantto be gonzalo. i'll be honest. bill graner: ok. sean bouchard: all right,let's do gonzalo. i got to hear thegenevra, so--

genevra did not do so hot. i guess that's what happens whenyou just confront someone point blank with the worst thingfrom their past and then refuse to talk aboutanything else. sean plott: would youlike a drink? tell me about vincent. instant-- i can't believe thatwent so poorly sean bouchard: it wentreally poorly.

sean plott: i guess becauseit's completely unnatural. i'm just like, hello, tellme about vincent. tell me. sean bouchard: so as iunderstand from doing research on this game, from what iunderstand, it institutes a three strikes policy. bill graner: oh really? sean bouchard: so you have tosay something that a character considers offensive threetimes, and then

they'll kick you out. bill graner: oh. sean bouchard: but it's notalways obvious what is going to be offensive, what's goingto give you a strike. sean plott: can i doa test run of this? sean plott: i want to saysomething right at the door. sean bouchard: do. sean plott: when he opens up,just get it out of the way, because i think this is animportant example of us

testing the-- not the extremitiesof the game. is that the right word? bill graner: extremities. let's just keep it. keep it. sean plott: this is me testingthe arms and legs and various digits of this game. bill graner: it's got digits.

sean bouchard: it'sgot phalanges. sean plott: phalanges. bill graner: digital. phalanges. let me see if i canskip parts. sean bouchard: you know what,because it takes us so long to get this started, i'm going tosuggest we don't, but in the chat we've been getting callsfor "melon," and apparently "melon" is the most offensivething that you can say.

sean plott: is that so? so if we want to just getout, cut our losses-- trip (offscreen): he's here. you told me an hour from now. trip (offscreen): no,he's right on time. grace (offscreen): trip-- sean bouchard: very insistentat the door. trip: adam, hey! god, it's been so longsince we've seen you.

bill graner: kiss him. trip: oh, you're doing theeuropean style greeting. we just got back from a trip toitaly, but the men only did that with the women,generally. well, come on in. sean plott: is that a strike? sean bouchard: i think thatmight be a strike. trip: let me go get grace. grace, [inaudible].

grace: adam. hi, how are you? trip: hey, that's what i said. sean plott: i'd love a melon. grace: by the way-- trip: ok. adam, i think thisevening is over. bill graner: oh my god! sean plott: lookat his grimace!

just go. bill graner: oh, sean. now we have to waitup to a minute. so honestly, i don'tknow why that is. somebody said that "melon" getsflagged as a synonym for breast, and that's why heimmediately kicks you out, but i mean, it seems extreme. it might be a carnegiemellon reference. sean plott: well you know, imean, i think that with every

game, there's some momentwhere they load in the dictionary that's just adictionary or a thesaurus where they just throw it in. i remember starcraft did thiswhere one of the most successful korean players ofall time is named lee jae dong, and "dong" is bleeped. or there was a player, white-ra,and they bleeped the word, "white," soit's [bleep]-ra. [bleep].

but they fixed that, so nowyou can say "dong" and "white," so that's agreat improvement. bill graner: so can isay, "white dong?" you can actually create anid called white dong. i'm rebooting the whole gamewhere i get re-invited by trip again, so i'm goingto try to skip it. bill graner: so you have torestart the game to replay it? sean plott: literally, when youhit replay, it says close it and reopen the whole game.

sean bouchard: doesit seriously? bill graner: that is atrue research game. that is academic. sean bouchard: academic. sean plott: in this [inaudible],is "academic" a synonym for "bad"? isn't that just lazy coding? bill graner: no, no, no. listen.

it's the more time you spendpolishing, the less time you're spending blowingyour mind. sean bouchard: that's right. he had a whole dissertationto write, sean. i mean, come on. bill graner: he was dissertatingso hard. sean plott: that's almostlike, is there a save function in word? no, you just open it and typeeverything you typed last time

and edit that. no, i could get behind that. he gets all those booleans, andwho knows which way they started, and you know. sean plott: so in thisplay-through, our goal is to try to get them to staytogether, right? sure. sean plott: we want them to tryto work it out, and then down the line, we want to askabout vince and maria and

yeah, i think we shouldtry to warm them up. we should get them to a placewhere we feel like where they're comfortable, or they'retalking to us at least, and then bring upterrible, terrible things. sean plott: bring up terrible,terrible damage. sean plott: i'm going togo with d for day9. is that-- sean bouchard: that's good. bill graner: that's fine.

sean bouchard: that's great. sean plott: is that too vain? bill graner: i don't thinkthat's in there, though. sean bouchard: i don't thinkit's vain enough. bill graner: they made this gamebefore you started your dailies so-- sean bouchard: there's dave9. sean plott: dave9. that's actually a realperson, by the way.

sean bouchard: is it really? sean plott: or dan. that's actually a reallyfunny story in itself. there was this guy who, beforeany of the shoutcasting happened, he was afan in brood war. and that was cool because i hadone fan, and it was him. i said, do you want tojoin the 9 clan? he was like, oh my god,that's so great. and i remember i called him onthe phone to discuss strategy,

and i was like, all right, sowhat i'm going to do in this game is this and this, and theni messed up and lost and got mad and hung up the phone,and that's the last time i've ever talked to him. sean plott: i literally raged. sean bouchard: you ragequit the phone call? sean plott: i literally, i waslike, [grrrr], and then i hung the phone up and never talkedto him again, and on forums, he's still dave9.

nine. he's my hero. sean bouchard: that's amazing. sean plott: isn't that[inaudible]? bill graner: that'spretty epic. sean plott: let's move pastthat shame, turn on the subtitles, and head in. uh oh. have you guys ever been thethird wheel in a relationship?

bill graner: no, buti've actually had plenty of third wheels. grace (offscreen): you knowhow i feel about it. sean bouchard: yeah, i'vedefinitely done that to other people. it's a terrible thing todo to other people. grace (offscreen): fine, trip. sean plott: i'm goingto stand here. trip: dan!

sean plott: dan! trip: hey! i thought i heard someoneout here. great to see you. it's been a while. how's it going? sean plott: it's been so long. so come on in. trip: yeah, come in.

sean bouchard: just be the mostagreeable friend ever. can you mix him a drink? it forces me out. sean bouchard: does it really? sean plott: literally. sean bouchard: oh man,look at that. grace: --make me go andtry to enjoy myself. sean plott: hey, will billbe a millionaire? grace: dan.

sean plott: nice. sean bouchard: hey. nice, bill. grace: --see youafter so long. grace: i just asked him that. sean plott: i'm terrible. trip: well, i'm askinghim too. grace: well, make yourselfat home, i guess. bill graner: oh, i thinkthat was a strike.

sean bouchard: oh, thatprobably was. faux pas. trip: hey, dan, seeingyou brings back good memories, you know? grace (offscreen): yes. great memories. tonight is special. dan, remember it wasalmost exactly-- bill graner: dan!

trip: --10 years ago tonightthat you introduced us. grace: oh god. trip: remember that? sean bouchard: whata great year. sean plott: love? trip: good one. good one. i almost took you seriously. [sean plott laughing]

grace: it's a good thing youguys go way back, or i'd worry you were flirtingwith each other. sean bouchard: silence. awkward silence. say it again. sean plott: love. [telephone ringing] sean plott: oh my god! trip (offscreen):oh, i'll get it.

grace: no, no. we have a guest. we can let the answeringmachine pick it up. sean plott: oh, that'sawesome. trip: grace, no, i want-- grace: trip, please, dear,don't be rude. it's probably just the cleaningservice canceling-- male speaker (offscreen):grace? hello?

grace (offscreen): dan-- no,please don't do that. sean plott: hello? male speaker (offscreen):yes, grace? is that you? grace: ugh, it's my dad. i can hear his voice. trip (offscreen): oh. bill graner: hello? male speaker (offscreen):excuse me.

i must have the wrong number. grace: ok, he's beingannoying. bill graner: say yes. say yes. grace: just hang it up. grace: hold on. you think who? sean bouchard: who's vince? bill graner: i don't thinkwe can say it again.

i think we're on our last-- last strike. trip: never afraid tosay anything that pops into your mind. sean bouchard: that's me. that's dan. that's dan for you. trip: oh yeah. anyway, well, grace's parents,they're something else, really

classy people. grace: ugh, no, they'reimpossible. they expect me to drive up tothe house in connecticut to attend all their stupidsocialite charity benefits and parties. it's so tiresome. bill graner: we're gettinga special viewer tip. [string music] sean bouchard: violins?

so apparently the chat istalking about this photo. sean bouchard: no, no, no. the wedding photo. bill graner: behind you. trip: dan, i'm sorry. you didn't come hereto hear this. trip: disagreeing? we're not disagreeing. bill graner: can you move it?

sean bouchard: can youask about the photo? nice photo? love your wedding photo. trip: oh, you know, our weddingpicture is the first thing everyone notices whenthey enter the room. grace: well jeez, howcould they miss it? sean bouchard: she looksso [inaudible]. grace: you know, i don'tthink it really goes with this room anymore.

that's a metaphor. sean bouchard: [inaudible]you look so sad in your wedding photo. trip: --our wedding picture. grace: trip, relax. trip: grace, i happen to thinkwe look very happy in this picture, all right? bill graner: take the picturesoff the wall. grace: --dan's style.

bill graner: maybe askabout the key? sean bouchard: the key? grace: --and start overagain on this room. sean bouchard: the key. what did i miss about the key? trip: everything's fine. no one is complaining aboutyour decorating. grace: decorating is just-- there must be someway i could--

sean plott: come on. ok, chat-- sean bouchard: whatabout maria? what about maria? grace: i don't knowwhat to think. trip: you're goodat decorating. trust yourself. definitely not. sean plott: trip,tell me about--

how is-- grace: trip, if i have to hearthat thing one more time, i'm going to go-- trip: ok-- sean bouchard: thisshocked expression is my favorite thing. bill graner: that's it. i told you, third strike. third strike.

and now we have to waitanother minute, man. this game is hard. sean plott: thisgame is tough. bill graner: i feel like i'mgoing to spend several hours. oh, sorry. i cut you off, bro. i'm still cutting you off. sorry, i don't understand-- something about the--

i know, it just-- sean bouchard: wecan't hear you. we can't hear you whenwe're talking. there's no sound. i don't hear any audio. bill graner: we can hear eachother, but i don't know why can't hear you. sean plott: can you hear me? hi, how you doing?

sean plott: see, thisis actually really clever by the game. it imposes its rules on you bythrowing you out and making you replay through the wholething, so suddenly you're a lot more socially awarethan you would be as an average gamer. because as an average gamer,you'd walk in there, and you'd want to be like, hey grace,penis, and just see what she does, right?

i found out what she does. she kicks you out. i walked into the kitchen andsaid "penis," and then i had to reboot the game, andit takes so long. look at this. it says, "may take up to 60seconds." that's clever because all of a sudden, it'skind of making you just want to do what the game intendsfor you to do, which is to participate as the thirdwheel on this.

bill graner: yeah,it totally does. it's a good punishment,especially when you're live. bill graner: every time wescrew it up, we have to analyze this thing fora minute or two. sean plott: i know, right? this is part of a show, you'retotally boned when you die. you're like, now bill, can youintellectualize what just happened for me? bill graner: yeah, it's justanother way they shatter the

magic circle, and thethird wall, and the fourth reich or whatever. sean plott: it'sstill loading. it's still loading. that's the funniestthing of all. bill graner: how long do youthink it took to load when it was released? when was this released,actually? sean plott: 2005.

bill graner: gotcha. sean plott: so what gamescame out in 2005? or comparable-- sean plott: there's somegaming historian. oh, it froze, and it crashed. sean bouchard: oh, perfect. sean plott: let's reboot. ok, so we're going to be reallynice to them until they say, talk about relationship,and then we're going to hit

her with maria. sean bouchard: then you'regoing to do it. all right. sean plott: is that what'sgoing to happen? and try not to kiss themon the way in. i think that's a no go. sean bouchard: that gives us astep off on the wrong foot, sort of thing? sean plott: [inaudible]

gonzalo. just go in for the kiss. sean bouchard: god of war cameout in 2005, chaos theory-- sean plott: god of war i? sean bouchard: god ofwar i, jade empire. psychonauts. sean plott: this gameis old as hell. bill graner: well, i mean,because the people who made it are now respected and super topechelon as far as games

researchers, so this wastheir fledgling work. sean plott: you know, i will saythe thing that amazes me most about this game is thefact that the dialogue is, when we don't say things likemelons and penis, in the typical play-throughs, thedialogue is surprisingly unique each time. well, and i was shockedwhen the phone rang. i wasn't expecting that. i mean, that was somethingcompletely new.

so there's a lot ofcontent in here. it really requires multipleplay-throughs to try to explore it all. i mean, a lot of times withthese database kind of narratives, it's like you'llget onto the-- like i was concerned about italybecause i thought we'd just go down the italytrack again. sean bouchard: thanks, trip. sean plott: thank god.

sean bouchard: now, that is thesame dialogue every time, i think, and that becomesannoying as hell. that intro. bill graner: it's true. sean plott: oh god. thank god i can hit enter,escape, some combination of things and it just cutsright past him. but there was one thingi was going to ask. oh my god, total brain freeze.

oh yeah. there are moments in time whereit said, play through multiple times for thefull experience. but i like that in the game, itgives you clues that what you did had influence. where especially that firsttime, when she said, so are you saying, this all adds up tosomething, and she listed off all the things youdid, and i was like, i did those things.

bill graner: what if you hadsaid no at that point instead of yes, because it's aweird yes/no choice. sean bouchard: so things that idon't want to do but i have heard are interesting, refuse toenter the room, just stand outside the doorway andnever go in, and-- what was the other thing? oh, when they ask you if youremember introducing them to each other, because youintroduced them senior year of college, if you say no, youdon't remember that,

apparently that's aninteresting moment. bill graner: well, we havetwo interesting moments. sean plott: bill, letterfrom a to z? bill graner: j. bill graner: jane. sean bouchard: jeather. sean plott: janet,jared, jeff. i'm going to go with jaredbecause we've had the most experiences as a male role inthis game, so that way we can

actually try to use ourprior knowledge. trip (offscreen): where arethe new wine glasses? sean bouchard: our priorknowledge is aiding us a lot here. it's really doing us well. trip (offscreen):oh, he's here. you said he's comingan hour from now. trip (offscreen): trip-- trip: jared!

hey. how you doing, man? sean plott: fantastic,and yourself? it's really, reallygreat to see you. come on in! bill graner: oh, goto the-- yeah. sean bouchard: what aboutonniere he's got. is that like-- bill graner: whata weird engine.

i was going to say therendering's kind of odd. sean bouchard: yeah,there's some-- bill graner: it'snot using math. that's for sure. sean bouchard: it'snot using math. sean plott: some of the timesit shows up on the screen, like pick up stuff like this,but because i'm doing a special windowed stream thing,it glitches sometimes. how are you.

bill graner: yeah, it has. grace: and i've got to say,you look really good. sean plott: thanks. grace: aw. make yourself at home. sean plott: as you wish. grace (offscreen): um-- trip: heh, heh. jared, seeing you brings backgood memories, you know?

grace (offscreen):yes, it does. trip: yeah, we've missed you. whoa, i just realizedsomething. trip: we have to celebrate. tonight's a special night. grace: it is? trip: jared, remember, it wasalmost exactly 10 years ago remember that? trip: well--

[discordant piano music] trip: all i can say is tonightmeans a lot to me. sean bouchard: it's like, youjust did something wrong. trip: could be. flirting with me isn't exactlythe way to get on my good side tonight. bill graner: whatis this guy-- grace: oh trip, take it easy. he's just joking around.

sean plott: drink! trip: oh yeah, let me fix usall some drinks in a sec. and please, please, we need tobreak in my new expensive set of cocktail-makingaccessories. so, drinks. it's a really classic drink. ha, i knew it. beautiful. grace: jared, i think you'dprefer something simple and

light, like a nice glassof chardonnay, yes? trip: excellent. it won't take me morethan a minute. grace: trip thinks he's at hisclassiest when he's on the serving end of aswizzle stick. sean bouchard: he goes downwhen he mixes drinks. sean plott: nothing. no, no, no. drinks, coming right up.

what do you say, grace? skip the chardonnayand join us in a genuine drink for once? grace: um, yeah. i'll have the same. martinis all the way around. trip: --photo i just put upfrom our trip to italy a couple of weeks ago. here you go, grace.

you get to be thefirst to drink. sean plott: havea drink, grace. sean bouchard: she hates that. grace: jared, come over here andsit on the couch with me. trip, darling, your obsessionwith that photo is making our friend uncomfortable. sean plott: i'm sittingon the couch. trip: well, this trip toitaly was meant to be our second honeymoon.

grace: trip, don't exaggerate. it was just a weekend getaway. sean bouchard: so, scrabble? bill graner: monopoly? grace: i hope you didn'tcome here tonight to be entertained. sean plott: how was italy? i didn't think you wantedto hear about the italy trip tonight.

anyway, grace, come on, it'snot helping things-- sean bouchard: i certainlydidn't want to tell you about it. grace: --doing well tonight. you know, ever since we gotmarried, trip is forever trying to get me to buy newfurniture and redecorate. and it's true, i kindof enjoy it, but-- trip: well yeah, it's great. everybody loves it when theycome in and see our latest

decoration scheme. grace: but jared, you have tolook at this room and admit it looks terrible. grace: i mean, look around. this room is-- it's hideous. trip: grace, no. no, don't say that. no, no, no, no, no.

see, grace loves expensivefurniture. she grew up in this really nicehouse with really nice couches and-- and-- grace: oh, but this roomis a complete mess. you know, at work i waste allday designing ads for apartments with perfect viewslike this, and then it makes me think i want to designit into my apartment. trip: this view makes me feellike a million bucks.

grace: but damn it, i'm wrong. i simply want a viewof trees and green. trip: trees? sean bouchard: treeskilled my father. trip: grace, everything'sfine. no one's complaining aboutyour decorating. grace: no, decorating is-- --my decorating anymore,i'm going to go crazy. i don't know what to think.

sean plott: be an artist. you think we should make art? sean bouchard: yes you'dbe good at it. bill graner: make art. be artist. trip: you're really jokingaround tonight, aren't you? [laughing awkwardly] grace: yeah. trip: never afraid topush our buttons.

sean bouchard: you're pushingbuttons, sean. they're going to kick you out. grace: god, you areimpossible. i'm just going towait for them to tell me to do something. bill graner: all right. grace: i'm never happy. trip, our whole marriage,you're so controlling. trip: jared, can youbelieve this?

grace: oh, and you. i can predict what you'll say,the way you keep trying to explain everything. trip: god damn italy. i try to reach out to you, i tryto be romantic with you, but you're cold and distant. i do. i really try. grace: ok, you know what?

sean plott: i'm justgoing to say it. grace: jared, i need toask you something. sean plott: uh oh. sean bouchard: she's goingto ask you something. jared, yes or no. sean plott: yes? bill graner: sure. oh, all right, yeah. ugh, i keep trying to help you,grace, but you reject me.

grace: oh my god. trip: you cut me off, youcut me out of your life. grace: ugh, yeah, good. get out of my sight. sean plott: where is he? grace: i can't takeyou anymore! sean bouchard: i think hewent to the kitchen. sean bouchard: ask herabout vince now while he's not there.

grace: ugh! bill graner: [inaudible]. nice one. grace: hold on, wait. are you trying to explainthis to me? trip (offscreen): grace, areyou talking about me? grace: what do you care? sean plott: grace! grace: jared, i'm sorry.

sean plott: tell us,how is vince? trip: jared, graceis just so-- grace: oh, so we're talkingabout me, are we? jared, look aroundthis apartment. it's everything anyonewould ever want. but grace? grace: trip, ugh. i'm so sick of this. sean bouchard: ah.

trip: i mean, we'vegot everything. grace: trip, you justdon't-- ugh. look, why don't we talk aboutus, our relationship? grace: no, it's true. sean bouchard: why wouldi be afraid of them? grace (offscreen):ugh, my parents. they're the worst. they really screwed me up. sean plott: not you, grace.

trip: oh, give me a break. they spoiled you. bill graner: ask tripabout his parents. jared, grace has alwaysenjoyed slumming. sean plott: i'm going to wait. bill graner: um, ok. trip: see, grace, even ourfriend thinks they're tacky. sean bouchard: is thatwhat you said? bill graner: i feel likewe're in a stalemate.

grace: i think you andi are drifting. i'm afraid we're becomingdisconnected. trip: grace, whatare you saying? sean bouchard: whatare you saying? bill graner: that's the point. grace: --who you are anymore. bill graner: who are you? say, "who are you?" grace: who?

yes, that helps us. grace, i'm right here. i'm-- grace: we should talkabout trip. why did i marry you? i knew you hated art, hatedanything creative. trip: i don't-- it's not-- sean plott: i do hatecreativity.

sean bouchard: that's a strongposition to take. sean plott: tellme about maria. trip: hey. hey, no, no, no, no. don't try to accuse me ofanything with maria. no, no, grace. don't even think about that. look, our friend has justgone too far this time. that's all that'shappening here.

bill graner: oh, let'swatch this. sean bouchard: is that it? did that end? trip: no, no. there's nothing to-- grace: no, of course, trip. there's nothing. sean bouchard: thereis something. sean plott: there's something.

should i type it? sean bouchard: yes, something. bill graner: do you thinkwe can do it again? grace: jared-- no, wait, i can't. i need a minute to-- sean plott: come on, admit it. sean bouchard: just admit it. grace: let's continuefocusing on trip.

trip: grace, we don't-- wedon't have to do this. things are ok. we can just-- grace: jared, i can't standthe pretending anymore. i can't take it. sean bouchard: i think wehit a reset moment. sean bouchard: do you thinkwe can say "maria" again? sean plott: c'mon, trip. grace, we can--

don't make it outto be so bad. oh god, please. sean bouchard: canyou tell her? trip: grace, why is it thatany time i want to do something nice for you,you resist it? bill graner: relationshipcounseling? trip: like i always haveto convince you. sean plott: this? grace: jared, you know, we--

trip (offscreen): jared,we went over that already, didn't we? sean bouchard: did we? is that covered? nothing new to add? trip: let's not focuson just me or you. let's talk about us both. sean bouchard: when does-- trip: she's all over me at ourgoddamn parties, trying to

look good in frontof the guests. bill graner: oh, askabout the parties. ask about the parties. sean bouchard: yeah,ask about parties. sean plott: key words. sean bouchard: ok, all right. trip: you know whatmakes me so angry? trip: how you've so convenientlyforgotten how much you used to actuallyhate painting.

ugh! no, trip, you don't get it. i don't hate painting. trip: grace, even though nowyou're a creative director at work, and even though youredecorate the apartment all the time, the truth isyou're not an artist. sean bouchard: oh damn. she just took it. sean bouchard: she did.

bill graner: i thinkthey can't-- sean bouchard: are you justgoing to take that? trip: i've had enoughof this bullshit. bill graner: they can'tdo anything, though. trip: i know what you'rehinting at. bill graner: this is as farapart as they can get without us getting kicked out. trip: do you reallywant the truth? truth.

sean bouchard: truth time. trip: grace? trip: see, jared, i've beenpaying attention to what sean bouchard: oh, here we go. trip: you've been pushingme tonight. it makes me wonder if you'rereally my friend or not. trip: jared, come on. yes or no. do you really think thatflirting with me, criticizing

me, and worst of all, suggestingthat i'm cheating on grace, but especially whatyou said about giving advice to your wife, what, we'resupposed to now understand something about ourselvesfrom all that? trip: all that arguingintended to mean something, or-- sean bouchard: no, nothing. bill graner: justtotal nihilism. trip: well, i thought it did addup to something, actually.

grace-- bill graner: ask him what. what did it add up to? trip: see, i am ashamedof my parents. your parents are great. i love seeing them. trip: i know, i know,but compared to yours, they're so ignorant. sean plott: come on, stay--

bill graner: we're actuallygetting somewhere. grace: they're real. i hate how my parents arepretending to be something. trip: i tried hard to belike your family-- grace: trip, really? trip: --but i i feellike a phony. sean bouchard: you'renot a phony, trip. trip (offscreen): i can neverget rid of my past. sean plott: wait, let's seehow this plays out.

sean bouchard: you'rea good person, trip. trip: i don't knowwho i am anymore. sean bouchard: you're trip. bill graner: say, who are you? trip: jared-- i-- this changes everything. grace: yes, it doeschange everything. bill graner: oh, this is likethe realization moment, like

when they were talking aboutthe artist thing. oh damn. bill graner: sayit's not over. say it's not over. sean bouchard: it's not over. bill graner: sayit ain't over. trip: i just told you-- grace: you just told mesomething about us you should sean plott: it's not over!

it's not over! grace: --your past, andyou wish [inaudible]. sean plott: kiss me! grace: and-- no. jared, please. sean plott: kiss her! anything! hug her! grace: no, trip.

this isn't about you or me. it's about our marriage. i see that now. sean plott: stop it. trip: our marriage? wait. sean bouchard: top it! top it off. grace: no more.

jared, i'm sorry. sean plott: kiss me. you've really helped us. bill graner: we helped them? sean bouchard: well,we helped her realized that he's terrible. trip: jared. jesus christ. sean bouchard: trip.

trip: i should havetold her that-- i could have told her that-- oh, what a cliffhanger! i can't wait for thenext episode. that's pretty good. i feel like this game hasreally delivered. sean bouchard: i mean, there'sdefinitely a, like, what you put into it experience. there's a huge temptation togoof around and see how much

you can break the system, butif you play within the boundaries that it sets up,there's actually a lot to that conversation and trying tochange those relationships. i mean, i'm guessingthat grammar isn't really big in this. i think it's mostly keywords. sean bouchard: maybe. sean plott: you would come inas some neanderthal and just say the right keywords.

bill graner: well, i don't it'sthink so much neanderthal as sort of an et presence, whereyou're like a little alien on the ground, and they'rearguing and you're just like, love, help,help, [inaudible]. sean plott: maria! sean bouchard: maria. sean plott: maria. bill graner: maybe you shouldjust imagine that you are like their five-year-old child.

sean bouchard: ok, thatmakes this terrible. bill graner: see? instantly more narrativeweight. i'm telling you. facade two. sean bouchard: i mean, let'sstart with the martini. sean plott: well, it's weirdbecause we know that vincent and maria are the respectiveinfidelities of these partners, right?

sean bouchard: yeah, they are. sean plott: but i don't knowhow you would get to that. it's interesting because i feellike with most games, you'll do something where, likeyou were talking about earlier, bill, about themorality systems, where you get to a point where it's like,do you save the baby or do you throw the baby intothe pit of lava, and it's literally like abinary choice. you save right then, you startoff, and you're like, what

would happen if i threw the babyinto the lava, and then you go back, right,and reload. in that game, i haveno idea how to identify vince or maria. there's really no path. after this, i might actuallybreak out-- i'm sure there's cheats on theinternet, because i'm kind of curious, i want to lookunder the engine offline a little bit.

sean bouchard: i mean,that's something that we found about-- bill graner: under the hood,sorry, not under the engine. i want to look at the engine. sean bouchard: no, no,no, under the engine. there's lots of stuff hiddenunder the engine. bill graner: just oil spills,like a rat nest. there's a bug no one's everseen before, but you don't even know it, so youjust squish it.

sean plott: what wereyou saying, sean? sean bouchard: surprisingdepth. i think that's whati was saying. the game last week surprisedus with how much there was beyond what we could get to inthe show, and i think that's what bill's saying, the samething here, there's more that you want to explore. there's more depth to thisrelationship engine than we can do in an hour.

bill graner: so two for two,we've found games with surprising depth. sean plott: well what's weirdis that i think of something like mass effect that's knownfor having really cool dialogue, and it gives youbasic, basic answers. there's like the good, theneutral, the evil answer, and you pick one, and that's howyou drive forward in conversation. and everything you do alwayshas some preplanned, well

thought out narrativealong with it. but what's so weird is thatin facade, it's completely open-ended. not only can you say anything,but you can say it at any time at all. and yet in so many ways, itfeels incredibly unnatural. and that feels weird to me thatwith mass effect, where you have one or two or threechoices, tops, for that forward-driving conversation,suddenly when you're given

infinite conversations, it'slike, well, it broke because i said, "i like potatoes," andthey act like they didn't know what a potato was. sean bouchard: i mean, there'salways a tension between open games and closed games, opennarrative systems and closed narrative systems. closed narrative systems canbe designed, and they're always going to be satisfying. open narrative systems aren't.

but when you get emergentnarrative out of them, that can be immensely interesting. now on the other hand, if youfeel that your emergent narrative is completelymeaningless, or only going to happen once, then that'sa problem. even if it's cool, if you thinkas the player that it's just made up and that-- there's something lonely aboutemergent narrative, right, because if it's a story thatonly you are hearing, it's

like you can't share that withother people unless they're in a google brand hangout. sean plott: well, that'sinteresting because this game accounts for that by printingout the narrative that you experience into atext document. bill graner: that's true. sean plott: well bill, i wantedto ask, since we are now approaching the end of ourshow, i wanted to briefly note, before the show concluded,that you can head

over toyoutube.com/geekandsundry to subscribe to see whenever we'regoing live, whenever new updates are happening, becauseyou wonderful users are providing us all sorts ofinteresting feedback. and bill, i understand thatyou have some of the email quotes/comments from the show,that i'd love to ask about. bill graner: let me reachinto the mail bag. sean bouchard: these weredelivered by pony express. you'd think emails are likebig, but they're actually

pretty small. i've got some here. sean plott: are you serious? bill graner: user jaggathe witch says-- these are all about hatofulboyfriend from episode one. you had too many distractionsto notice stuff happening. she said stuff before, i'm justreading the part where they really bust our balls. i know that you would look withsimilar dismay at people

laughing at game mechanicsin starcraft instead of appreciating the strategyplayers display. "lol, vespene gas, is it somekind of gas from wasps," is the only lame joke i cancrack as an example. sorry. sean bouchard: have youmade that joke, sean? is that a staple? is that part of yourrepertoire? sean plott: actually, it's ajoke that people make that

offends me deeply. like when i'm talkingabout [inaudible]. i relate a lot to that sort offeedback, because i remember with hatoful boyfriend,our goal was to jump in as newcomers. all three of us had never playedit, tried to do enough research to talk about it butnot enough to be spoilers, and as a result, we didn't have theopportunity to talk about why the entire interactivedating genre is so popular and

so well done as a genre. it's easy to go, lol pigeons,and we did. sean bouchard: we definitelytook that low-hanging fruit. bill graner: but it doesencourage that as well, to an extent. it was just fun. literally right after we gotdone, all three of us started researching it, we were like,oh, we missed all this good, juicy stuff that would havemade the show better.

bill graner: so we canshout out for that. i want to say also, haley reallyhits it on the head. she says-- these aren't actually[inaudible]. she says it's like having neverseen a sci-fi film, deciding to watch spaceballs andthen saying, i'm not sure if i get sci-fi movies. that's a really good point. bill graner: it'sa good analogy.

and then also, these are lesscritical, so take off your rough exterior shell. michael says, awesome show. i'm a viewer from japan. i thought i'd give you a fewinsights about things you mentioned during the cast. you're right. calorie mate is a brandand a very common one. it's basically diet food.

i eat it when i'msick sometimes. the school startsin april, second semester starts in september. sports day is a festival wherethe schools have various sporting events. tanabata is july 7. it involves a folktale of thespace princess visiting her shepherd boyfriendonce a year. you write a wish on a pieceof paper and tie it

to a sprig of bamboo. it's totally normal to readother wishes that are also tied to the branch. it's also pretty public. it's hard to keep asecret in japan. i mean, that gives me a lot moreof the cultural context around that game,specifically. sean plott: i actually want topause for a moment and bring up anime in general because atone point in time, i was

consuming a lot of just generaltelevision and media content, i was reading a lot ofbooks, a lot of comics, and movies and tv. sean bouchard: no more,right, sean? you're done with that? no more media? sean plott: look, that'soffensive to me because i've been so busy, i haven't evenbeen able to do anything i wanted to do.

there's sometimes i'm like, ican't wait for my next plane flight so i can read a book. but there was this period wherei didn't have that, and it would hit 8:00 pm and i'd belike, i can do things now. so i was consuming that, andthen when i watched an anime, namely claymore, i thought,why do people tell stories like this? i didn't understand why inanime there's this weird tendency to not tell a story atmoments, but to explain a

story where there's a characteryou haven't heard anything from but who suddenly,out of nowhere, is like, well, the reason i alwayshated roku is the fact that my father always hit meas a youth, and i never was able to establish a strongrelationship with him, and i tried hard in school, but wasonly able to hit bs because i wasn't smart enough,but i still tried. and one day, i ran away fromhim, but i've always had the inner need to pleasemy father.

and you're like, who are you? i don't care about you,but i guess i do now. and i remember it was kind ofjarring and rattling to me until i continued to watchanime, and anytime a character goes on a monologue likethat, i'm like, [gasp], that's awful. that girl and herfather, oh no. and it's almost funny to hearabout dates like the sports festival and this is what thispublic wishing festival means,

because it puts you in acontext that makes you appreciate it a littlebit more. sean bouchard: itotally agree. the more i think about it, thepublic wishing thing, i think, is a fantastic narrative devicefor a dating game. i mean, it's an excuse to geta kind of insight into the other people that-- the game is about getting toknow these other people, and to have that, i think that'slike a really smart thing to

put at a focal point of adating game like that. bill graner: so well done,pigeon people. sean bouchard: good job. sean plott: that's so funny. sean bouchard: all right. sean plott: the first questionyou brought up was like, well, let's be respectful to theseother communities, and then you're like, thanks,pigeon folk. lol!

bill graner: as if we'veever taken anything seriously in our lives. come on. we play video gamesfor a living. oh god. so where can they sendmore emails? i like the mail bag. i think we shouldbring it back. sean plott: well, we would lovefeedback to help spur our

discussions and to help continueto explore this idea of how games and interactivepieces explore the notion of relationships, and inparticular, romantic you can post in thecomments here, youtube.com/geekandsundry isprobably where you are. just post right in therewhat your thoughts and comments are. at day9.tv, there's alink right there to the metadating setup.

you can register throughfacebook and post right there. you can send it tofeedback@daynine.tv. any one of thoseways is great. it just helps provide us somestructure and some insight. and next month, we'll probablybe doing catherine, i believe, pending any sort oftechnological mishap. but catherine is definitelysomething we want to play in the next nine episodes. sean bouchard: yes,definitely.

definitely. sean plott: but since this isthe end, i just want to ask sean and then bill, what areyour thoughts on the game facade that we played? sean bouchard: i don'tknow, man. it's an incredibly novelinteraction style. i really appreciate that, evenwhen it doesn't totally work. and i think as a socialsimulation, it's surprisingly deep, even though it sort ofshows the cracks of where it

doesn't cover everything abouta real social simulation. so i enjoyed it a lot, and ithink actually, i had an equal amount of fun trying to pokeholes in it and trying to actually play the gamelegitimately, trying to carry on a conversation withthese people. i thought it was obviouslyproblematic as a game, but ultimately really successful. bill graner: and i would say themost shocking thing for me is that i still don't understandthe engine.

because a lot of times buildingthese things, the interactive narrative pieces,having done one or two of them, they are a pain to build,and so if you have any sort of algorithm thatis complex, it makes it even harder. and the fact that we couldn'tsee the algorithm shining through is really a testamentto the quality of this one. i mean, we barraged this thingfor quite some time, and it didn't just sort of break downand start repeating itself.

sean bouchard: right. it wasn't obvious. bill graner: so i'm reallycurious what this engine is doing, and i can totally seethat however many years-- this was a ph.d.project, right? i've probably gota dissertation you could read, bill. i mean, i could totally see howthis thing could take that long to build because it's notgiving up its secrets.

i think it's a weird choicebut a good choice to have topics that are keyword topics,as opposed to being like a chatbot. sean bouchard: yeah, totally. i mean honestly, thisconversation makes me really hope that we get a chance to doalabaster or glass, or one of emily short's interactivefiction works, because i'd be really curious to see howyou guys react to that. sean plott: did she do 9:05?

sean bouchard: she didn't. that was adam cadre. bill graner: 9:05 is so good. sean bouchard: that'sexcellent, yeah. sean plott: 9:05 is awesome. we might even play thatas a brief interlude to something else. sean bouchard: as a break. it's awesome.

i will say that my favorite partabout it is i remember the amazing tracy fullertonfrom the usc interactive media division. bill graner: hey, tracy. sean plott: hi, tracy. she talks about howgame design is a second order problem. you don't make the experience. kind of like with a movie, youmake the experience and then

you put it on the screen,and everyone has that experience, period. but with a game, you try to makerules that you think will create the experiencethat you want. so it's this weird kind ofroundabout way to do it, and my favorite part was just thatfacade created these problems that made you want toparticipate in the way that the designers clearlyintended. because again, going in thereand being like, let's eat

potatoes, they would go, um,uh, weird, and then they'd kick you out of their home. i was like melons, and theywere like, get out. [inaudible] obnoxiously havingto reload and start the whole game over forced you to actuallygo, ok, well, should i do this and that? and literally a game-typemechanic forced you into a situation that felt very muchso like when you're in that tense moment where there's acouple fighting, and you're

just trying to eat your soupat lunch at college, and you're like, well, let'stalk about sports. there's no clear exitfrom that, so i like that quite a lot. so without further ado,guys, we did it. we did a second episode. nice job, everybody. bill graner: i rate thisgame three hearts. sean plott: well, let's goahead and do the outro.

bill graner: my nameis bill graner. sean bouchard: and my nameis sean bouchard. sean plott: thank you so muchfor watching metadating episode two. we'll see you next month formore explorations of games that touch on the topic ofromance and interactivity. for now, we're done. bye!