A Green Mushroom

Hitman & Complex Game Systems In this episode: If there is anything in the world Void loves, it’s a complex system that he can learn and exploit in video games. When he found out about Hitman, he jumped in and loved it so much, he gifted it to Beej just so this episode could exist. While neither of us really likes the “murder” aspect of the game, it doesn’t feel like it’s really violence. We really do both see it as a puzzle game, and we tend to overlook the violence as it’s a means to solve the puzzles presented. Beej isn’t entirely into complex systems like Void. They have to serve a true gameplay purpose. Some games are complicated for the sake of being complicated and add nothing to the experience, but Hitman is the opposite of that. It feels as though you are learning skills and building on them as you progress. The game really helps you learn the systems through its very thorough tutorials--they don’t really feel much like tutorials, either. If you go through th...

YouTube In this episode: For a lot of people, YouTube pretty much is the internet. It’s the world’s second largest search engine (next to Google, obvs), so we wanted to discuss how we use YouTube, get some great channels out there to you guys, and also find out what you’re watching and how you use. What we actually watch on YouTube differs quite a bit. We initially thought it would be balanced, but it very much isn’t. Void uses YouTube as essentially a TV with all sorts of cool shows and creators he loves, while Beej sees it more as a novelty for one-off views. Beej doesn’t have much that he watches: VetRanch, Dr. PimplePopper, Woodworking for Mere Mortals, ObeseToBeast, RunSelfieRepeat, various funny puppy and kitty clips, CineFix, and catches up on clips of late-night shows or music videos. And really, that’s about it. Void, on the other hand, uses PLEX to stream YouTube to his TV where he follows various channels and creators like most people do their network sitcoms and...

Career Corner and Life Transitions In this episode: We are both going through pretty major life transitions right now, and we expect some of you are, too. We wanted to discuss how we’re coping with them so that maybe your life can get just a little easier. Mostly talking about new jobs because that’s the kind of transition we are both going through, but lots of things cause them, from health to marriage to kids to a hundred other things. What’s funny about us, though, is that we traded--Void went from freelancing into a full-time position, while Beej went from a full-time position to freelancing. Weird, right? It turns out that we have kind of the Geek to Geek Career Corner this episode inadvertently, so we talk about how we use our skills from other places to really move into something we love, and that even though we are changing, it’s still a career path that we both intended to take, and that some things happened by accident. The hardest parts of life transitions, thou...

Geeky Knick-Knacks and Toys to Life In this episode: Geeks love toys. And collecting things. It’s just kind of what we do. So we wanted to talk about that for a while, and really dig in deep about the kind of knick-knacks that we keep around us at all times, those that are special, and the kinds we just don’t care about. Void is very particular about what he collects, and Beej is now. He used to be a “gimme all the stuff” kind of person, while Void has always been more pragmatic about the kinds of collectibles he buys. But you folks could have probably guessed that. Knick-knacks don’t always have to be physical, either. We talk about collecting in games, such as Pokemon and MMO items, getting ultimate weapons in Final Fantasy and things like that. Do we finish games all the way and feel as though we need to get every single thing we can? And nowadays, there’s a huge surge in toys-to-life products. Skylanders, Disney Infinity, Amiibo, Lego Dimensions. All of these are huge...