The Gaming Persona

Epic 2023 Gaming Memories and the Road Ahead

• Daniel Kaufmann Ph.D. | Dr. Gameology • Season 4 • Episode 4

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This episode is a heartfelt journey through personal updates and gaming triumphs, as we review our "gaming persona" for a candid review of 2023. We're thanking listeners and Patreon supporters like you for your incredible support, and we're thrilled to reinvest that back into the podcast, bringing you richer and more engaging content. 

It's been a year sprinkled with memories like confetti at PAX East, hands-on time with promising titles like Baldur's Gate III, and our amazing experiences at Megacon 2023, where I had the honor of contributing to several panels. We're bubbling with excitement for the future, from my book publishing dreams slated for 2024 to our upcoming gaming ventures, including diving into Magic: The Gathering's newest sets. 

We also look to the future with anticipation for titanic titles like Silent Hill 2 and Persona 3, stirring in us a blend of nostalgia and exhilaration. We're dissecting game design decisions, from control customization to the weighty moral choices in Baldur's Gate 3. We're also speculating about the future, eyeing upcoming releases like Judas and the entwining of Magic: The Gathering with storied video game franchises. Wrapping things up, we're buzzing to share that more weekly episodes are coming your way in 2024, ensuring our gaming conversations keep flowing. Stick with us, and let's press play on the next level of our gaming journey together.

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Thanks for Listening, and Continue The Journey!

Speaker 1:

Welcome to the Gaming Personal Podcast. This is the show that explores who we become when we play games. I'm your host, dr Gimology, from YouTube and online classrooms across the country, and I'm joined by two of my best friends from my gaming journey, jenny Lebron and Jean Wong. Friends, how are we doing this week?

Speaker 2:

I'm doing fantastic and I'm excited to be here.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, I'm doing great.

Speaker 1:

Awesome. Hey, we didn't get a weather update from anybody.

Speaker 3:

Oh, if you want one. Our weather is technically not good. We haven't had any snow, so this whole day is freaking out because ski lodges and other places are gonna die. Oh, no, no good, yeah, we've got nothing but rain. It's just cold rain.

Speaker 1:

Huh, that's, that does not sound pleasant.

Speaker 3:

No, it's actually arguably worse, because it's not as fun as snow.

Speaker 1:

All right, it is. It is t-shirt and shorts weather, but with some rain, right? Would you agree with that Jenny?

Speaker 2:

Yes, yeah, not for long, though. We have a cold front coming. I'm so excited, oh so it'll be like 55 degrees.

Speaker 1:

Yes.

Speaker 2:

That is bonfire weather.

Speaker 1:

So everyone might have heard about this little day that we acknowledged yesterday called Christmas, and one of the gifts that I got was actually and this is going to sound so ridiculous my first hoodie that I have ever owned.

Speaker 2:

That's crazy to me.

Speaker 1:

But it's awesome. I guess I'm wearing a shirt that goes with it. I'm wearing a Resident Evil Starry Night shirt, but this hoodie is a RPD police department hoodie and I wore it yesterday with shorts because it's Florida, but yeah. So some people in my discord and social media, including our mod for the channel, commented yesterday that how is that possible? Oh yeah, they go by.

Speaker 2:

That's how it's possible.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so that's my first Christmas update, but everyone is listening to the show. Thank you so much for supporting us and helping. Push-ups, push-ups push us to greater heights, and we'll talk about that during our ordinary world. We need to finish our intro, though, so where can our listeners find us?

Speaker 2:

That's true. I was like wait, are we already in the episode? Okay, so you can find my photography page on Instagram at jlibronphotography or jlibronphotographycom, if you're curious about what nerdy persons photos look like.

Speaker 1:

And I am Dr Gamology on YouTube and we are growing in the grind to reach those numbers. It's going very well. Thank you so much everyone who's found me already, and you can also find me on this show every week.

Speaker 3:

All right. The gaming persona can be found on Apple Podcasts, spotify, google and most anywhere else podcasts can be found. If you're enjoying our content, be sure to leave a review on your favorite listening app.

Speaker 1:

All right and, as always, thank you so much to everyone who's supporting us on Patreon. It does help us to do really cool things with the show, like the background that you're looking at If you're watching live on Twitch, youtube or Facebook, and everything that you send our way basically rolls right back into the show and into the videos that I'm making for people to learn more about the psychology of video games. So we really appreciate all the love that you're sending our way throughout this year. Okay, jenny, what are we talking about on the show this evening?

Speaker 2:

So we are going to do a gaming persona wrapped kind of situation today. Yes, so we're going to talk about our favorite memories from 2023 and what we're looking forward to in 2024.

Speaker 1:

You know what? That is awesome. Let's go ahead and do the ordinary world where we share our everyday life through our games. And Jenny, this might have been subliminal, or just me not completely connecting the dots in my own head, but I didn't realize that this idea was a gaming persona wrapped like all the emails that we're getting. But it totally is, and I think that I was getting so many of the. We get so many of those because I get all of the ones for the show too. So it's not just what I did as a gamer, as a music listener, but also Apple's like here's your wrap Spotify here's your wrap. Youtube here's your wrap. And. I also yeah, yes, also Twitch, and I got one for Steam, which I've never noticed that I got one from Steam, but the Steam deck really changed the way that I play games and how I connect with video games, and I love it, by the way, more on my stuff later. I want to hear from the two of you. So what's going on in the gaming side of life?

Speaker 2:

So I got my boyfriend a new PS5 controller so that we can play video games together.

Speaker 1:

What color?

Speaker 2:

is it? It's pink he does. He loves it so much, but yeah, so he bought it. It takes two for a PS5. So we're going to start with that and then we'll see what we get into. But in terms of video games, obviously I have not done that in a while.

Speaker 3:

But I have a great excuse.

Speaker 2:

I have another great excuse I was busy getting my state license to do real estate, which I did.

Speaker 1:

There we go, Steps, steps. Good job.

Speaker 2:

Gigi, thank you, it's so exciting. Can't wait to start that new venture. But yeah, and then the only other thing. So, speaking of wraps, I didn't realize I twitched at this, but I just clicked on it a couple of minutes ago and I have no idea how, but Resident Evil 4 made it to my top five topics on Twitch, which just blows my mind. I don't understand where that came from or how that happened.

Speaker 1:

I know exactly where it came from, Jenny. You dropped in on one of my streams when I was playing Resident Evil 4.

Speaker 2:

Okay, that makes sense.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, it was either when I was playing that go ahead.

Speaker 2:

Or if you sent your listeners to someone and I ended up being there by accident.

Speaker 1:

So you definitely dropped in. During one of my streams I played through all of the Ada Wong DLC and I also played one session of the main story where you play as Leon. So back around Halloween time I did five stream nights of that game.

Speaker 3:

Okay, cool.

Speaker 1:

Or you, instead of sleep walking, you sleep down on. Resident Evil 4 on Steam and you've been playing it in the evenings. How's your sleep quality?

Speaker 2:

It's okay, but not because of that.

Speaker 1:

Okay, Okay.

Speaker 2:

Shara's saying I did pop it. That's the mystery solved.

Speaker 1:

What we need, shara, to confirm my completely correct assumption. I wasn't guessing, I remember it happening.

Speaker 2:

I don't Okay, gene.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure you trust me as the narrator of my own experience. So what have you been up to?

Speaker 3:

Sure, I have nearly fully completed the new DLC for God of War Ragnarok, the Valhalla DLC.

Speaker 1:

And actually.

Speaker 3:

I don't know if you've touched that at all, but it is super relevant to our show.

Speaker 2:

It's basically.

Speaker 3:

I don't know the correct term of this psychologically speaking, but it is a whole game about reviewing your past mistakes and getting a different perspective on them, because the whole game is actually so spoiler not spoiler, given that the game is called Ragnarok Asgard blows up, oh no, so this function is an epilogue for Asgard blowing up, where everyone's rebuilding and people are like, hey, kratos, you should lead us because you're awesome, and he's like no, every time I'm a leader, it goes to hell. And so he's going through Valhalla, which is this realm of eternal battle, to basically battle his personal demons, to get perspective on his life and whether or not he should be a leader again.

Speaker 1:

Okay, that's really cool, because if you look at behavior chains or applied behavior analysis, you're always looking at what has worked. Let's do that more. What did not work, let's not do that as often.

Speaker 3:

Right and so that yeah, and that comes up in the game too. It's like I got this far raising Atreus being a good dude because I stopped being a leader. And then they're like no, that's not why you are good now, it's not because you gave up being a leader, you just led in a different way.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I think that parenthood is a really important leadership role and, just like people who gain leadership roles in workplaces will typically read a book, do some workshops, go to different retreats to work on that as a skill? I think that the two God of War modern gen games so God of War and God of War Ragnarok do an amazing job of showing people the importance of viewing parenthood as a role which is not often depicted in video games. Also, I've talked about this several times in the show's history for the gaming persona, but the whole way it opens with don't be sorry, be better. That's the opening parenting moment in God of War. Was it 2018? Is that the year? Yes, and it comes back in such a powerful way. It made me cry in Ragnarok. So the storytelling of God of War always has been top tier as far as video games go, but the Norse duology are just fantastic.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, but it was yeah. You should definitely play that because it's very relevant to what we talk about.

Speaker 1:

All right, oh, it's on my list of things I will play sometime soon, but the beginning of 2024 might kill me. Just keep that in mind. So I actually did accomplish something pretty neat as far as my own gamer journey since the last episode. The winter sale on Steam included a ton of Square Enix games, so I actually went in for very little money and completed my Final Fantasy main trees. So I got Final Fantasy 8 and 9 and 15. So now I have 1 through 10 and then 12 through 15 on Steam that I can play on my Steam deck. Nice, all right, hopping over 11, because it's an MMO and it's not a game people play anymore, as far as I can tell. Maybe it is, but I don't know how. I would even jump in and try to play that at this stage in human history.

Speaker 3:

The game is functional. It's just very difficult for gaming because it's not that many people play it.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so I don't have that one on my Steam account and I'm okay with that. I'm not planning to go back. So when I say all the main games, I'm saying all the ones you can play as a solo player. And, by the way, our best downloaded episode of 2023 was all about playing games solo. Yeah, which really shocks me because so much of what we talk about is about playing games multiplayer. But thank you everyone who downloaded and listened to that episode, and I don't have any specific recollection of which games we were talking about on that episode, but God of War maybe showed up there, and it was definitely before Final Fantasy 16 came out. But that's another amazing example of a game you can play by yourself. Are there any others that kind of scream 2023, but also have a solo campaign focus?

Speaker 3:

If we're going with just recent stuff, alan Wake too, okay, and Spider-Man 2.

Speaker 1:

What was that, Jenny?

Speaker 2:

The Zelda game.

Speaker 1:

Oh yeah, cheers to the Kingdom. Yeah, and Spider-Man 2. I heard, eugene, have you played Spider-Man 2? I am not yet. I haven't either.

Speaker 3:

Only recently actually completed All of Miles Morales, so I'm actually in a place to move on to that.

Speaker 1:

I haven't even completed Spider-Man oh boy that game.

Speaker 3:

if you're not trying to do everything it's not so bad. But yeah, during all the random crime stopping, you could literally play that game for like hundreds of hours.

Speaker 1:

You could just never end the game. You really could just boot it up and run around and try to make New York a crime-free city. Yes, All right. I think that is a good segue for our ordinary world. Our Called Adventure Road of Trials in Ascent really are one thing. Tonight we're just doing the gaming persona wrapped.

Speaker 2:

I've also shared a couple of tidbits Play all the sounds at once.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, play them all at once.

Speaker 1:

We'll fix it in post, right. So I just want to talk about what our best memories of 2023 are for ourselves as people who enjoy games, also as a show, and then also games that have come to exemplify 2023. For us, that's a tall order, so who'd like to start us off?

Speaker 3:

I'm sure my best gaming memory I guess technically is in March, my first ever PAX East Since I live in this you know an hour away from that now and yeah, basically all most of my current friend group up here was through random people I met at PAX East from their board gaming tables.

Speaker 1:

So that was solid. Would you want to do a panel at PAX East with me in 2024,?

Speaker 3:

Gene, in theory, I could Depends on how much time I spend getting locked into gaming at PAX East.

Speaker 1:

You could do both in the same day. You just tell people I'm more important than you.

Speaker 2:

I got a panel, maybe if I'm not busy playing video games yeah.

Speaker 3:

No, that PAX East is the best car and I've been to for actual gaming, not just walking around shopping and all that stuff. But if you actually want to play a game that's the best one I've been to.

Speaker 1:

I played Baldur's Gate three at PAX East on the day Exactly, I did a painful so yeah, the games that they actually allow you to play.

Speaker 3:

there is crazy Like you want to expect really good, Like I saw one guy and he was playing a souls like game. He just sat there getting murdered for 30 minutes straight. I was like hey, whatever.

Speaker 1:

Oh man, they let him play for 30 minutes straight. That's yeah. I had a strict timer on Baldur's Gate and I spent most of it creating my character. Oh boy, and then I was talking to a brain and I was like this game was made for me, all right, just On the panel topic 2023 was pretty neat because we did Megacon and I had four panels personally that I was on or moderated at Megacon 2023. For 24, I'm just aiming to do one, but it is going to hopefully get accepted. If it does, I'll talk about it now. I'm not, it's not a secret. I'm hoping to talk about Final Fantasy as a source of mythology, then talk about why are mythologies important for societies, and then that will lead into one PowerPoint slide that gives me a chance to talk about my book. The whole 45-minute panel is not specifically just by my book, but it is, but it's not Since 2024, the book comes out. That would be really nice because since our last recording, it has become one year since I turned in the first draft. There is no way, on the day that I did that, that I thought there's any way the book would not be out for Christmas 2023. I underestimated how publishing works. Here we are. My recap for 2023 sounds the same as if we did a recap for 2022. I hope my book comes out, everybody. I have a couple more things that I'm sure will come up to my mind, but, janne, you've been very patient listening to the PAX East and then the Megacon updates. What are you thinking about with what we've done in 2023 and what you've done this year?

Speaker 2:

I'm trying to think of why I couldn't do Megacon. You were out of the country.

Speaker 1:

I'm sure that's something to do with traveling. You might have been in Europe for something.

Speaker 2:

I think I was on the cruises photographing.

Speaker 3:

Yes.

Speaker 1:

I remember you told us all about what the guy from. Hellboy that you met. Oh yes, Doug.

Speaker 2:

Jones, I know his name now. Anyway, yes, 2023, video game wise. I really didn't spend a lot of time playing video games, but I did spend a lot more time playing magically gathering than I have in a long time, which is exciting and fun. I started following a YouTuber that puts out fun content. I watched a lot of magically gathering content this year. I was in love with the marching machines deck. It was such a fun deck to watch and to play. Lord of the Rings set came out. That was another super fun set that came out. That's been my highlights video game wise, Playing persona wise. I know you mentioned a couple things that we were going to talk about, but I loved. In the beginning of the year we did a couple different episodes just talking about video games as art, talking about video game music. Those were really fun. I had a lot of fun chatting about that. It wasn't typical episodes for us, but I think our audience also liked them.

Speaker 1:

I really enjoyed both of those as well. If you open up your mind to the idea that video games are not just entertainment and you're willing to accept that and see where that idea takes you, our entire show makes a lot more sense. I know that what we're doing is resonating with people different kinds of people. If you are a fan of playing video games, call yourself a gamer, see yourself that way then hopefully you can listen to most of our episodes and get something fun out of it. Whether it's the talk about improving our past mistakes because we played God of War Ragnarok this week, or whether it's innovation and creative problem solving because we played Tears of the Kingdom, those are the kinds of things that are in there. If you're a parent of a person who plays games, hopefully listening to this, you hear three grown adults that do different kinds of jobs talking about what we see when we look at different kinds of video games, and maybe that makes you curious. I actually have a really cool story about this other category. There's a third category. At least treatment providers, as mental health professionals, we don't learn a lot about video games in our master's level classroom. For many of us, that master's level classroom was over a decade ago, maybe two or three decades ago. Video games are not the same as they were back then. I had a psychologist jump in recently on my stream and just started chatting. They were watching, I believe, if my memory is correct, they were watching an Elden Ring stream. They were watching it with their son. They were trying to figure out what level am I and where am I going to go next. They were using my stream as a way to connect, but let the child be the authority of the content, knowledge Me also be on the screen. Happening to die many times in Stormvale Castle. It was rough If I'm connecting. Who was on that stream? With an update I got this week, I believe that treatment provider who's watching with their child and having a parent-child moment joined the clinician roster for Kindbridge this week and in their interview our gang to meet the clinical director mentioned they know who Dr Gamalogy is. I've seen several of my streams. I was like, yes, the thing that I wanted to do is working.

Speaker 2:

That's awesome.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, so that's the thing is, it's hard when I explain what I do, even for me to make it sound like it all flows together, but it really does. You just have to get to know me and hear me out and humor me a little bit. I stream so that people can learn about the psychology of games. We do this show so that people can see games as a relevant form of relaxation, coping, entertainment and just something to keep that wonder alive that maybe we lose as we get deeper into the life cycle. All of that is good for our mental health and our psychology and having a philosophy for who we are as people. That was deep. Let's get back to the superficial stuff that we call podcasting. I'm kidding, nothing we do is Only a sith deals in absolutes. Okay, save me for myself. I'm just a spiral into all my phantoms.

Speaker 2:

Are we talking about personal stuff that we are excited about for 2023, or excited that we've accomplished?

Speaker 1:

Yeah, no, no, do you have anything?

Speaker 2:

Yeah, a couple things. I already talked about this, but I got my real estate license and I'm on my way to doing new things in the coming year. That feels really good. It was the first time that I've been to school in so long. They were super long days and it was only a 60-hour class, but I packed all of that into one week, so it was intense. Then the exams I was super nervous going into that scenario because I haven't been to school in so long, but the muscle memory was oddly beautiful in terms of being able to retain all of this new information about something that I really know nothing about. That was a very proud moment for me. I passed the class exam with a pretty great score, and then I don't know what my score was on the state exam. The reason why I brought that up is because when we were in the class the teacher did. She had this app where you can play a game that was similar to Jackbox, but it had to do with real estate questions. She had the entire class competing with each other with this game. Every day that we played I got first place. I think it's only because I play Jackbox that was so good at it because it had to do with quiz questions and being very quick and all of that. I thought that was really cute and funny. That was a big accomplishment for me. I moved this year again and it was a great move. I'm so happy where I am. I traveled so much and I'm looking forward to 2024.

Speaker 1:

That's awesome. I also am a strong believer in skill transfer. That comes from video games. It's not exactly the same, but if you're used to reacting quickly and solving problems under a time crunch, it just makes sense that there's going to be certain situations where you're going to do great compared to people.

Speaker 2:

That's the point where everyone in the class knew my name because I was first place so many days in a row and I didn't know anyone else's name except for the two people at my table. It was cool because it made networking a lot easier.

Speaker 1:

They didn't realize that they were playing Jenny Wins.

Speaker 2:

Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 1:

You're just like. I only remember people who are close to my score. Who are you? All right, gene, do you have any Wait? Did we all answer the 2023 question? I'm so sorry I got scattered.

Speaker 3:

I don't know, the top got blended together.

Speaker 2:

Yeah.

Speaker 1:

Yeah that's true, okay. Well, let's answer the next one. We're going good on time, so where are we looking forward to in 2024 with games? I?

Speaker 3:

think that's a rebuff is definitely number one on that for me, followed by Dragon's Dogma 2.

Speaker 1:

Oh, you've mentioned Dragon's Dogma in a previous episode, so it feels like it's been a long time for a sequel.

Speaker 3:

It's been over a decade. I think most people assume that they just gave up on the franchise. But then they had a really bad anime on Netflix, like a year, two years ago, and then they're like, oh what, I guess they're trying, I don't know, but that anime was awful, that's too bad.

Speaker 1:

When is that coming out?

Speaker 3:

In March. I don't know the exact date, but it's in March. I got a short window between rebirth and that day.

Speaker 1:

I hope you have enough time to do it. I have Silent Hill 2 coming out soon.

Speaker 3:

I'm looking forward to that, but with trepidation.

Speaker 1:

I never played the original so I'm running out of time to play the original before it gets messed up Persona 3,. I've never finished, so I'll just wait and play this new one that's coming out. And then Final Fantasy 7. And that really is enough, honestly, to get me through the entire year probably.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, considering the Baldur's Gate, 3 is a forever game for you.

Speaker 1:

Oh my gosh, baldur's Gate 3 has made me so mad this week. It's just really frustrating all the segments where they do turn-based walking. I don't like it at all.

Speaker 3:

You can just go real time and suffer.

Speaker 1:

I tried that. It didn't work, so you have to. Just, is there a way to assign dash to a easy key bind so you don't have to find it using the scroll wheel system? I don't know but I fully customized my scroll wheels so that it's all not incoming yet yeah, I'm gonna have to spend like 30 minutes doing that because there's too many moves. Now it's become ridiculous. It's too much effort to dash but you have to dash. It just makes everything feel slow, like D&D, where you can spend 45 minutes doing what equates to 20 seconds on the board, it seems.

Speaker 3:

Oh, minor spoiler for you, since you're not there yet. The game's building up to it right, when you unlock more and more illicit powers. At some point they're gonna be like oh yeah, are you sure you really wanna unlock the last tier? It might be bad for you, but one of the things you unlock from the last tier is the ability to fly, and I'm like in the context of this game, the ability to fly trumps all negatives of being a weird tentacle monster.

Speaker 1:

I can fly already, Gene, because I'm a wizard.

Speaker 3:

No, it's unlimited fly. No spell slots, no cooldowns.

Speaker 1:

That's possible, All right. That's what the dark side is for, Gene. I'm not seeing a problem here.

Speaker 3:

But yeah, they throw this moral quandary at you and they're like oh, unlimited flight. No, thank you, I'm good. No debate here.

Speaker 1:

All right, maybe outside of our recording, I can talk with you about what is the downside of doing that. But if it's just story, I really feel comfortable with everything I've done. In the story. I did get to a moment where this evil, seemingly immortal God being gave me the decision of how to handle some captive goblins or something, and I did force choke them and they are dead Because I just felt like that guy's my enemy, but these are my enemy too. I'm not pro goblin, I don't think. So what if I let them free and then they decide to try to kill me in an hour later in this play session? And plus it'll blow my cover if I free them because they think I'm a true soul? I just had to keep the charade up and so I killed them, but I definitely had the Dark Five vibes from Swotor that I'm so used to around 2015. So, it's fine, it's OK. I hope I deleted enough details of that that nobody's saying they're feeling spoiled. But, I don't even know if I'm capable of describing what's going on in the plot of Baldur's Decree, to where it's classified a spoiler, so maybe I'm underestimating myself.

Speaker 3:

I don't know 90% of that game is side quest. Like the main plot is actually not very dense, I would say.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, maybe that's true, but I like to complete every little mission marker on the map before I let myself go somewhere, so it is a very long game. Indeed Is the. There are probably more games that are going to come out in 2024 that I don't remember. But, like I remember watching last year's game awards, and this game called Judas from the creator of Bioshock really looked interesting to me.

Speaker 3:

I don't believe that's coming up next year.

Speaker 1:

OK, OK. So they showed a trailer in 2022 for a game that's coming out in 2025. Sounds legit.

Speaker 3:

All right.

Speaker 1:

Yeah so.

Speaker 2:

I'm excited about some of the new Magic sets because they're doing some video game crossovers and that's any, any, good ones. Yeah, they're doing a fallout set. They're doing an essence Creed set. So when those come out, it will make me feel like I'm playing video games.

Speaker 3:

I am curious about the Assassin's Creed set Like there's not a whole lot of creatures, so to speak, is there different Assassin's Creed?

Speaker 2:

I don't know. Honestly, I haven't looked at much about it. I just I knew about the fallout one, but I just looked it up before the show and saw Assassin's Creed coming out. Do you?

Speaker 3:

Yeah, let's do just a bunch of dudes like here's one car of Ed Sio, here's a car of George Washington.

Speaker 1:

All of human history is fair game.

Speaker 2:

Should be cool. I don't even know how.

Speaker 1:

Assassin's Creed keeps coming out with so much content. It's mind blowing to me.

Speaker 3:

Oh, it's because they've leaned into the meta story that, remember, the game is reliant on a VR machine. Yeah, we're, so they've leaned into that. Now they're literally making VR games where you can live as a Assassin.

Speaker 1:

Oh, OK, you would help. I played one of them through to the end, so I would know something.

Speaker 3:

Yeah, now it's no longer something about saving the world from the Templar, from magic artifacts or whatever, it's people playing video games.

Speaker 1:

Nice, ok, coming up to the end of the episode. So this is our chance. What is the biggest thing that we're looking forward to in 2024? That we can come up with in under 30 seconds Go.

Speaker 2:

Wait, gaming related or just life related?

Speaker 1:

Anything, Life, the show games.

Speaker 3:

Financial stability. What's that? Yeah, no.

Speaker 2:

Right.

Speaker 3:

Don't worry what I difficult time for us because we had accumulated all the expenses of moving here.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, yeah, but no, yeah, I don't know that I've ever had financial stability.

Speaker 3:

That is pretty hard.

Speaker 2:

Why do you think I got my real estate license?

Speaker 1:

Because photography is paying you so well that you got bored and you're like I need another challenge.

Speaker 3:

You got textures on the houses.

Speaker 2:

I do that, but I'm looking forward to that. I'm looking forward to exploring Jenny as a real estate agent.

Speaker 1:

Is that going to be your main job, then? Besides?

Speaker 2:

No yeah.

Speaker 3:

And then real estate, yes, Okay, you can throw shade at people about house photography. I know there's blogs and stuff out there about horrible MLS listings yeah, pictures of the inside of closets, and it's like, oh, you see nothing.

Speaker 2:

It's so bad. Some of them are terrible. I'm hoping that will give me a little bit of a leg up. I'm mostly looking to send investors as their property manager, so I'm getting into property management rather than.

Speaker 1:

Cool. I am looking forward to my book being published. Yeah, people being able to buy it. That's really all I want out of this entire 2024 scenario. Hopefully that gets done. We're probably weeks away from an update on where we're at, as far as I think that a timeline will be able to be constructed in the next month or two. So I'm I actually am optimistic. I'm just constantly surprised as well. So the psychology of the umbrella academy and the psychology of the Witcher will probably both be published in 2024. And I wrote chapters for those books and now I'm working on the last of us and then will be in this scary place where I don't have the next thing. I'm writing for a little bit, for like 20 seconds, until I dedicate myself to the next one 20 seconds. Yeah, I mean, there's always the gamer's journey, part two, right.

Speaker 2:

There you go.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, the stream is going great, so maybe we'll get to 4,000 watch hours on YouTube and we'll be able to monetize that. Anyone who has jumped onto YouTube and listened to some of our episodes on there. Thank you so much. There's been hundreds of downloads already on YouTube and the cool thing about that is because of how 4U works on YouTube, it doesn't show the episodes in chronological order. It shows them based on what the algorithm thinks you're going to want to listen to. So when you open up the 116 live episodes of our show, that way, anyone who plays video games is likely to find one episode that YouTube's like here. Listen to this. So that's actually a really cool difference, because I think of our show linearly in terms of this is season one, Now we're in season four. This is all the episodes that happened in 2023, but YouTube doesn't see it that way at all. Yeah, Now it's like when I'm looking at my most clicked YouTube items for the week, it's random episodes from 2021. So the MMO Iceberg Jenny is also a very popular episode.

Speaker 2:

That's so crazy to me.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, also on drbmoljicom.

Speaker 2:

A fresh baby podcaster.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, but that episode is going to outlast all of us. There's no reason. I didn't realize just how much people love equating things to a metaphorical iceberg, but they do. And MMO games really are an iceberg. You see a person seeing a keyboard with a mouse playing it and you have no idea all the planning and thought and diligence or just random shenanigans, and they're just going with it. You have no idea what is underneath the surface for that iceberg. Also, I'm having a lot of fun the new realm reborn playthrough that I'm doing. I'm almost at the point where I'm going to have my black mage jobstone in the game, this thing.

Speaker 2:

Oh, that's cute.

Speaker 1:

Okay, let's go ahead and do the return, get back to our daily lives, take our next step forward. We've already been talking about 2024, so we've done this segment off and in with ending the show here, and we did not talk before the show about this. So now everyone gets behind the scenes of the gaming persona. Are we doing weekly now?

Speaker 3:

I'll be you guys.

Speaker 1:

Next week is 2024 and we said that's when we're going to go back to weekly.

Speaker 2:

Oh, okay, that's fine.

Speaker 3:

Let me double check my calendar.

Speaker 2:

Oh yeah, I should do that.

Speaker 1:

I think I can do it, and if I can't do it, then we'll skip a week. The target goal is 35 to 40 episodes a year. I think is what we're doing, so that does give us weeks that we can skip. If it just doesn't fit, okay, it should be fine for me. Awesome, we're going back to weekly starting in 2024. All right, if these conversations sound fun to you and you're looking for some great people to play online games with, check out AIE at aie-gildorg. I have one last quest for everyone to collect for the day. Enjoy the reflection and continue the journey. Very good, see you next week. See ya, bye.

People on this episode

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Daniel Kaufmann

Host
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MarcusB814

Co-host