### Ep. 242 - Famous Characters in Funny Situations, with Mathew Kumar
Game design lead for Future Club [Mathew Kumar](https://twitter.com/mathewkumar) joins the panel to cover piles of graphics cards, Dall E, and customer service at the dream factory. Hosted by Alex Jaffe, with Frank Cifaldi, Tim Rogers, Brandon Sheffield and Mathew Kumar. Edited by Esper Quinn, original music by Kurt Feldman.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HqWZG_5IBf4
**Questions this week:**
1. What makes a video game “obscure?” (06:27)
2. Brandon Sheffield re-asks: What is a game you didn’t like until you played it? (14:52)
3. Imagine you’re streaming through a glitch where half your viewers get audio but no visuals, and half get visuals but no audio. What game could you play that both audiences would enjoy the most? (21:00)
4. Design a new mode for Minesweeper (27:59)
5. Dirtbag Seth asks: What responsibilities does a King of Fighters have to their subjects? (34:27)
6. What will AI-generated video games be like? (37:31)
7. Does fast travel mean traversing a game’s world isn’t interesting? (44:39)
8. Which video game feels the most Scottish? (51:48)
**LIGHTNING ROUND**: Famicom Feud: Top 8 Video Game movies on Rotten Tomatoes (56:36)
**Recommendations:** **Frank**: If you know any retired or semi-retired game developers in the midwest, let Frank know **Brandon:**[Tool Assisted Speedrun of Pac-Man World for PSX](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gY3AWahWBTY), [mikeyeldey: the album for Sega Genesis](https://mikeyeldey.bandcamp.com/album/mikeyeldey-the-album-for-sega-genesis), set up a nice time for yourself **Tim**: Say thank you for things in your life **Mathew**: Ignore Big Luhrman, [Mickey Reece's Alien (2017)](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6211748/)
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The question about game obscurity reminded me of the time I tried to enter the speedrunning Mystery Tournament a few years ago. As part of the application process, you have to submit at least three games that can work in the tournament (in other words, three games that most of the entrants haven't played.
I was someone who thought I was into small obscure games, so I went to like, Warp Door and freeindiegam.es and grabbed a few neat things and submitted them. However, because these people were like me and loved little obscure games, they had already played everything I had submitted. So, I had to dig way deeper to find stuff (and as a result, didn't enter again; too much work).
I feel like for a good number of game players, the games I submitted would have been completely alien to them, but for that specific audience, I was into the most obvious, popular games.
P.S. To whoever is still paying to keep freeindiegam.es up: thanks a bunch bud
I don't understand the not wanting to see babies on social media thing. If you can appreciate the cuteness of a kitten or puppy, you can probably appreciate the cuteness of a baby.
I feel like “you hate it because I like it” is some extremely strong Insert Credit energy to be coming out the gate with in the intro, Alex!
Also congratulations to Mr. Kumar for making a surprising and silent entrance! I generally don't read the show notes in advance, I just smash that play button when I am able. Good to hear you again Mathew. Now to listen to the whole episode to see how you badmouth all us dirtbags!
@“ColdyBags”#p75718 the cuteness is really different. I‘ve never found babies cute, I find them pretty alien and gross, and it’s not an uncommon response! For me an animal being covered in fur or scales or etc is part of the cuteness, a baby is more like a naked mole rat, where I can find some of them cute if I try hard, but not on the whole, and it‘s not something I’m inclined to try.
And the way people talk about them like they're not just small people doesn't help me either! Or the way people talk about how liking them (and the desire to make them) is a universal. Folks will say "do you like kids" and it's like... Do I like human beings? I've got to meet them one on one first. The pressure people who have babies put on others to care about their particular baby is exhausting and makes it harder to engage with.
Anyway, now you know: there are a lot of folks who do not find babies inherently cute or interesting and it has nothing to do taking an edgy stance or whatever (what would be the point of that, and that's not very much of a thing this community would do), it has to do with people being different from each other!
They sure can be alien and gross, lol. I do understand your point about people pressuring others into caring about their babies ('you have to come and see the baby' episode from Seinfeld comes to mind). I also get the pushback against the pressure to have babies or love babies or kids just because they are babies or kids. The inverse of that is also true. I've always found that the appropriate response to someone claiming they "don't like kids" is asking if they've met any adults.
I don't expect everyone to love babies and am well aware of the fact that there are people who just aren't baby people - I was pretty weirded out by them before having one. I think I just found it pretttyyy silly that Matthew Kumar would be that angry about it? I guess in the same way that one might be annoyed by the pressure to love babies or ooh and aaah over particular babies irks him is like way people being so adamantly anti-baby or anti-breeding (see /r/childfree) bothers me.
I‘ve yet to listen to the episode but my stance on babies is that some of them are somewhat cute but most of them look like the lemon-eating moment from The Simpsons crossed with Bonk. Some of them get cuter when they reach a pre-toddler age but even then it’s few and far between. I know a part of it is down to how well-behaved they are because I strongly dislike poorly behaved kids, and I‘m more than happy to admit that’s because I was a quiet kid that did not like people being needlessly loud. I still dislike people being needlessly loud.
The only exception to the rule is when it comes to my friend's kids whereas my tolerance for people being cute around them is higher but that's because I care about my friends! Thankfully most of my closer friends share my desire to not have kids either.
@“LeFish”#p75741 I still dislike people being needlessly loud.
we had a recent realization that my dog gets extremely scared of people yelling (or speaking loudly) out in the world because he's never heard us do it. He's lived with us his whole post shelter life (from either age 4 or 6 months) and just hasn't heard yelling. I was also a quiet kid and I don't raise my voice for really anything.
Anyway, I've seen people who really don't like seeing animal pictures on their feed either - ultimately it comes down to the fact you can't block image types, only text, which does seem like the one thing these art AI thingies could be good for.
incredible restraint on jaffe’s part not mentioning his other employer when mathew brings up the number 52 as auspicious.
i also don’t like babies!! all my mental associations with babies are poop smell, horrible shrieking, and constant panic. i have never had a pleasant experience even being in the same room as a baby. i have come to understand people who make em like em a lot, though.
one thing i’ll strongly recommend on the Social Media front; turn off phone notifications. turn them off for every app for a week, and see how much you actually miss. i am not kidding when i say this drastically, immediately improved my life.
@“esper”#p75748 oh wow, even thinking of having phone notifications on is incredibly stressful, ha ha. I think I turned them off within about 30 seconds of installing twitter on my phone.
Have not listened to the episode, so I may revise these thoughts after listening, but I would suggest to all concerned that social media is an exercise in exposing oneself to all the stuff that other people find important. This might be babies, pets or racism - whatever it is, you signed up for it!
I assume we're talking about people who are annoyed about babies in the same way I am about dogs (not interested, but whatever brings you joy), and not in some kind of weird fundamental anti-natalist way.
@"billy "#p75752 The thing I understand least about social media is people who are already rich and who no longer need to promote things who engage with it. If I became rich the very first thing I would do is get off all social media forever and just text my friends lol.
@“exodus”#p75755 Until very recently I had zero social media. That changed when I toured with a band last year and was left in charge of the Instagram and Twitter accounts for a night. The obvious and immediate exposure benefits unfortunately outweighed the social media bullshit and I resolved to start one for my ‘other band’. Sure enough, just having a Twitter that I don't even really engage with much immediately increased Bandcamp plays etc by a fairly huge margin.
I feel a bit bad I accidentally started a big “babies: good or bad???” discussion with a riff, but for what it‘s worth, I think you should be able to use AI to block anything you find distasteful/boring, which is really my point. It’s wild to me you can‘t successfully block gambling or alcohol advertising/images considering both have serious addicition issues, and one person’s cute dog is another person's triggering memory (same for babies, actually.)
Also I have no phone notifications on other than texts/calls, and I have cut facebook out entirely (although I still look at instagram, unfortunately.)