PixlBit

New streaming service idea: Half-Chub Horror

Hereditary was a hard sit for me, cause it was way more depressing than scary to me ... which itself is a certain kind of scary, but I felt most scares I felt watching it had to do more with my own family's hereditary issues than with what the movie did. It was brilliant in many other ways, but I'd be hesitant to call it "scary" for me as opposed to "hard to watch."

Having played very little of Bioshock, I think I know what Julian is talking about with pick #3. Maybe not, cause I only barely got into the second large area if I'm remembering correctly. I feel like I can't really experience that game with fresh eyes, cause so much about it has permeated gaming culture dialogue that I'm not sure what I'd find genuinely surprising anymore.

Drowning in Sonic games just fucking infuriates me, cause why in a game about speed am I 1) underwater AT ALL 2) having to wait for a bubble to generate?

Never heard much about Havoc except from Blake. 

Oh good God, backlogs. And in my case, dwindling funds even with finally finding at least a part time job. So many games I have yet to play ... 

Man, I wish I could play P.T.

I love stories about creepy things happening to people working on creepy things ... even if half the time I suspect these are fairly typical issues on any production that are being embellsihed for PR reasons. 

I don't think I've ever played a game that I couldn't put down or someone told me I had a problem, but I remember when my brother would EXPLODE at Madden and if I so much as sighed at a game, my parents would think another outburst was coming and yell at me just for that. So I guess the real life ramifications of Madden can be spooky ..

I should listen to that Clickbait Podcast. 

I'd definitely recommend Arkham Knight to Patrick. Game of the Year 2015!* 

*For non-PC users and people who aren't as into Bloodborne or Witcher III as others. 

I wonder how ED holds up (pun intended?) now, cause I too only rented it a couple of times. 

I have no idea how anyone plays REVII in VR. That's just too damn much. At that point, just call that mansion that literally kidnaps you or whatever, ya freaks. 

I'm glad you agree with my picks for the most part, cause I was wondering if horror game fans would look at my list and think "n00b" (which would still be fair). 

And by cheese in Untl Dawn, I mean all the slasher and teen cabin vacation tropes throughout. It rises above that in a lot of ways, but that base is still there to make me laugh enough that it loses some horror effectiveness. Not ragging on Until Dawn. It is a great game. 

N64 is good for horror just cause of how dark all those games look. 

NWP building new friendships ... 

Back later with Stage Select picks and to listen to Consumption Junction ... maybe after playing more of My Brother Rabbit, so I can FINALLY review the damn thing for Nick. 

It was that last scene with the mom in the attic that did me in on Hereditary. It was just so creepy and off-putting, and it stayed with me for weeks.

I can see that. It was a pretty creepy scene. My main issue with that movie is it reminded me too much of The Last Exorcism, which has you guessing "psychological or supernatural" throughout and gives you the answer in the last scene. Hereditary felt like that, but with the answer given in the middle of the movie. A friend's interpretation based on this short story The Yellow Wallpaper contended it was in fact all psychological and that made Hereditary more interesting to me as a possibly more layered movie than what's on screen. 

The truth is, I have always found Patrick's topics to be a little too nebulous and heady for me.  I find it difficult to think creatively enough about games to come up to his level.

I think that gaming is pervasive enough that I am not sure how one would go about gamifying the education system any more than it already is.  My wife is a teacher and a couple weeks ago we set up an escape room activity for her students.  Isn't that enough gamification?

Honestly, one reason I'm having trouble with this one as a former educator is cause I feel there's already a little too much gamification. At a certain point, you need to learn to do boring shit or hard things you don't want to instead of expecting everyone to meet you where you are. That kind of defeats the purpose of self-growth. 

Having said that, I do think making things competitive helps engage students in a way that tests their abilities without simply giving them all the answers, but the fact I used a lot of Kahoot!s, scaffolding etc. per the requests of the Center for Teaching and Learning isn't the most creative answer to this question. Also, a lot of what I taught was using Adobe Suite programs and writing, which are things you learn through doing, getting feedback and critique, and doing some more. 

Still, I'll come up with something ...

Stage Select: Let me just say up front, that I'm probably the last person we should ask this question... With that being said...

3. Okay we drop 100 kids on an island and have a battle royale style scenario. Kids like the Fortnite right? Well now they can have a real one. Then they can learn about how real life guns work and how to hide in the bathroom for hours on end. It worked in that one Japanese movie I saw... Oh wait...

2. Okay... We hire a sorcerer right? And then he like, opens up a realm to another dimension. Then all the bad stuff comes out of the portal, and the sorcerer holds a fighting tournament for some reason and we make the school kids do it. Maybe they'll learn martial arts this way or they'll learn how to trash talk using math. Because normally in a fight you have a fifty fifty chance of winning that fight, but if you're an expert martial artist, like myself, you only got a 25 percent chance at best of winning against me... (Cue this Scott Steiner promo)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msDuNZyYAIQ

1. Fuck man, I don't know, just make Chun Li a teacher. I'd go back to school to see that. Hell get the whole cast of Street Fighter involved in teaching. There's somebody there for everyone... Probably... Again I should not be asked questions like this.

My Episode Comment: Yea this stage select is really hard. I really got nothin, but hey I tried. Hopefully Julian and Patrick got something bettter than what I do. Anyways, THANKS SO MUCH FOR THE SHOUT OUT!!!! I appreciate that sooooo much! And you were definitely right to wait, I made sure we were going to be in it for a while before I even released an episode, but we're both havin a blast recording it so I think we'll be around for a while. Hopefully the review (For NWP) that I wrote just now actually goes though this time, because last time, it didn't. ITunes is a fickle mistress and confuses me in many ways.

Anyways, I laughed super hard at that Bethesda joke. THEY DO ALWAYS MAKE THE MOST BROKEN ASS GAMES, but for some reason I still love em. I think it's because I'm a big fan of modding games, and there is no crazier modding community than the Skyrim/Fallout games. I usually wait a good year before I play a game they release, just so the mods can catch up and get good. I've never been big on the way combat is in those games either, but my Skyrim feels like Dark Souls because of all the crazy combat mods I have going. Bethesda may kill that community themselves with their creation club nonsense, but I really hope they give up on that. It's really the only reason I love those games.

Oh! And I'm glad I'm actually not the only one who got scared by that Bioshock part. The girl I mentioned in that story was actually super impressed by Bioshock, and immediately demanded I buy and play the sequel... And that was pretty underwhelming so I showed her Mass Effect and she came back around.

I haven't watched a playthrough of the Resident Evil remake yet, maybe I'll do that after I get done playing Red Dead and Soul Calibur. I can't play horror games myself because I find it hard to push the narrative, but I love watching them for some reason. Binge watched Silent Hill 1,2, and 3 over the summer at some point for some reason. Looking forward to watching RE2 remake when that happens. (Although I can't handle horror games that are in first person. Something about those really messes with me)

Anyways, great episode as always! Hope this finds you well. Thanks once again for the shout out, it really helped! Keep it real dudes!

So, this is curious to me. You say you're a coward, but you've watched all of the Silent Hill games in Let's Play form? Does the scary come from not watching it passively, but controlling the character? I mean, that's why I prefer horror games to horror movies, but I can still find the occasional horror flick that scares me. 

You pretty much nailed it. I find it very hard to push the narrative forward when I'm in control of the character. I used to watch a friend of mine play through Resident Evil games as a kid, and we had a ton of fun. I used to be kind of the guide for him and help him figure out puzzles and what not. But if you hand me the controller I won't do anything, because I'll be scared I'll cause something to trigger in thr game. Now, here's a weird thing, I can easily watch the older Resident Evil and Silent Hill games no problem and it's mainly because of the camera in them. Third person perspective does t bother me so much, but as soon as it's changed to first I can't even make it more than a few minutes at best. RE7 and PT are an absolute no go for me. Believe me, I tried to watch them once and my anxiety went nuts in no time. Horror movies I dont prefer but I can make it through them usually. Most of the scares I can see coming and I just kind of look away. Not exactly noble, but its what I do if I have to. I can also usually employ that tactic in a let's play too, so that helps. I HAVE to look at the screen if I'm controlling the character, so it forces that guard down. Hope that makes sense.

STAGE SELECT:

Outside of the gamification methods already being used in classrooms, like Kahoot!s, role playing (especially in history courses), battle royales to the death (social studies) as mentioned by Tyrone Swift, etc., I think one thing we could do is set up lessons with the same thought process as egoraptor explains Mega Man X's first level:

What I basically mean is set things up to intentionally get students stuck until they use the resources available to them ... which would turn into a fucking nightmare scenario when you're trying to teach how layers work to beginning PhotoShop students, but may be useful for, say, asking students to recreate a famous scene in a movie without telling them how it was done. "Now you need this shot. Where does the camera have to be? Lights? How will you edit it later?" You have to allow them to completely mess this up without their grade hurting, the same way you can replay that stage as many times as you want. Eventually, they'd have to recreate or make their own scenes with more competence (liken this to robot master's). 

Then again, pretty much this exact process of thought was used on me by people trying to teach math and I hated math as a kid. 

One thing I'll mention always helped me learn is relating my learning to things I already had fond feelings toward and memories of. I aced a lot of tests because The Simpsons decided to make episodes about the content of those tests (this was mostly useful in English courses). If you're an RPG fan, you could, like, pretend acing a math test was like draining the boss's HP? I don't know man, I hate turn-based RPGS for the mostpart. 

Wait, HP. Harry Potter! Kids love Harry Potter! Do that thing where you separate the little fuckers into houses and give them points and shit! Dress 'em up in those prep school robes and have a dusty old hat tell the all non-religious people they're in the house of evil snakes, even if everything else about their personality leaves that making NO sense (I'm still a little salty about that shit, Rowling)! They'll love that shit! 

I did try to gamify my classroom as much as I could with heady discussions mixed in (remember, I taught at the college level) when it was a lecture course, but in hindsight I should have forced everyone to be a witch or a wizard. The surrounding Nacogdoches community would have LOVED that! 

In summation: Battle Royale. 

Also, if anyone is wondering, I did implement or teach based on these methods while employed as a full-time Visiting Lecturer/adjunct, short of the robes and Battle Royale.

Great show guys. Been lucky to catch it on my midnight's at work. I wish I had submitted to stage select last week but I was having a hard time thinking of times I was scared. I don't typically get scared. 

This weeks Stage Select is also going to require some thought. I love when Patrick goes off rails with these but this one is definitely one I had a hard time wrapping my head around. I waited awhile to see some other SS answers before trying but even the others seem to be struggling. 

Well here goes. It'll be off the wall and probably illegal but whatever...

Stage Select: Gamifying Schools

3. Make a, "My Hero Academia" video game. Wait that exists already? Ok kindergartners must play Chrono Cross to learn their colors. Teens must play to realize their choices could affect everything. Adults must play to realize that some times less is more. Finally, senior citizens must play to get ice cream. Don't know what exactly that teaches them, but hey its ice cream!

2. Ever see the movie, "Cube?" Well let's do that but with teens. They must solve the puzzles and survive. Break up classes into groups of 5 and see if they work together. Maybe less death than in the movie....maybe not...

1. This ones for Superstep. How about we take his Chun-Li teacher idea and amp it up. You know those games where the more you win the more clothes that come off? Well let's do that. Every 3 right answers removes an article of clothing. 1 wrong answer puts them all back on. I know I would have studied harder. Possibly wrong choice of words...

Sorry guys this one was a bit tough for me. Please don't be discouraged Patrick. I love many of your SS picks since they invite some off the wall thinking. Keep up the great work guys.

Oh man, somehow this comment didn't load for me or something when I went to the site on recording day, so we didn't get these excellent comments into the show. :(

I do love how a lot of things boil down to "throw the kids in a murder scenario and see who lives."

No problem. I was just winging it. Except the Chun-Li thing. That was thought through VERY thoroughly...

I know gamefying academia has been a topic in recent years. I used to play Oregon Trail a lot when I was a kid, who didn't have the fun of dying from dysentery or having a tombstone saved on the disk that other kids could run across?

I guess that maybe we could have Civilization VI as a teaching aid for history class. We could have Cities Skylines for American Federal Government to explain taxes and public policy. The Fallout series could be used as a teaching aid for the Cold War. I'm pretty sure my mother ate squirrel on a stick and told me about how Roger Maxson encountered the vats of FEV at Mariposa Military Base, right?

I'm actually halfway serious about Cities and Civ VI. I learned a bit about local government and public policy from playing the original SimCity when I was 13, as well as resource and waste management. Of course, now it's Cities Skylines because EA killed SimCity, which they then befouled.

And I'm sure I'd definitely pay attention in class if my teacher were dressed like Tifa... I'd pay attention, and... uh... I should really be saddling up now.... oh, found the fire door...