GX Australia

we've done it again what did we do we we went to another Expo oh we did we did good times it's our second one for the year isn't it is it only second I feel like we've done a lot more no I guess not no oh it is quite early in the year yeah yeah yeah welcome to multiple nerdgasms convention coverage should we introduce ourselves sure my name is Matt I'm Jenna I'm Luke and we are haven't done that in ages multiple no get our G gasm offshoot episode of multiple nerdgasm yeah so where have we been this weekend we went to GX Australia yeah is it just GX now I dropped the gamer X well all the websites say GX I wonder do you think they did they on purpose cuz it's more than just gay it's yeah maybe it's kind

of everything it's lgbti now is it yeah that's right it is but they also made a point of making it you know it's for everybody yeah maybe the they dropped all of those connotations a little bit did you guys feel welcome yeah I did actually I always feel welcome yeah yeah no I had a good time yeah so did I everybody there was really great yeah yeah now I have to start by saying they were so pleasant to deal with in regards to getting media passes yeah it is the best experience I have had so far so thank you Joshua yeah though were very accommodating yeah I mean it it was well organized Joshua Meadows and Liam esler those are the two guys who organized it yeah they did a good job yeah they did a great job it was it was a very small convention yeah I only went to the one

day yeah yeah yeah because I had to come back to cam yeah yeah as you said it was a small convention it was not uh it was not like PX or or one of the other big conventions or RTX that was in the same space you know a month ago yeah it was a huge difference in feel from RTX cuz RTX was just packed out there were people everywhere it didn't feel it didn't feel comfortable to be anywhere yeah it was a really nice place yeah I mean I don't think they expected it to be anything like the you know the same enormous crowds or anything like that they said that they wanted it to be quite small because it's a bit overwhelming to have too many people there yeah it's it's a lot easier to keep crowds and control and yeah there's a lot that I liked about this over the others I can

understand you know that that they can't all be like this like there's no way PX is going to ever be a small little thing no even though I maybe it started out that small but yeah it was nice especially you know like walking the main hall and looking at the vendors and and stuff in the main hall checking out the games and stuff like that it was nice to not be crowded and jostled and to be able to take your time yeah you could spend a lot more time playing the game and talking to the developer or to be Hest yeah the atmosphere was just good had a good time I think the next one will help it find its feed a little bit more of course yeah yeah yeah this was its first year and um it was totally crowdfunded so there was a Kickstarter for for it they made 55,000 just over

55,000 um which is which is pretty good because I don't think the marketing was huge yeah um most of that actually uh they have a breakdown of where all that money went 43% of that was just for the venue oh wow wow okay so the Australian Technology Park is not cheap no I guess not oh makes sense oh it's a big area I guess if you want to book the whole thing out what happens if no one's using it like I've only ever been to two things there yeah yeah same so Wonder what it's been used for before well they did have a blacksmithing class on the way in we were had to walk by that that was unusual so what was your favorite thing about it well mine was actually I I nearly beat a developer at his own game oh that was terrific he was so cocky and confident we played this game

called screen cheet by Samurai punk you play as an invisible character it's kind of like golden eye you're invisible and you have to look at other people's screens to find out where they are to kill them yes so you um you you'll never see the other players in the game world but you can look cuz it's split screen you can look at where they are from their perspective to figure out where they are yes and all the levels are different colors like the levels of one uh area are different colors so you can kind of tell yeah what they're between and when you kill them their body appears and you can see the body but until that point you can only see you know if they shoot you can see where the shots came from and then yeah like by looking at their screen you can kind of

figure out where they are but it's it's a cool game it's a good concept really like that the bodies stayed they were they were so floppy yeah yeah it was good I was enjoying it cuz I was just beating everyone yeah you kicking our asses yeah we even teamed up against Luke right and still couldn't beat him yeah three versus one actually that just makes it easier for me yeah it just goes to show that you were a Sant at cheating when you were younger yep and probably continued to this day yeah no I don't cheat I I don't like cheating because you don't play I don't Playmore yeah I tried to play split screen a little while ago I can't do it anymore apart from that game where you have to do it yeah we tried playing gears the new the re-release of Gears split screen and you

can't do it so do you want to talk us through your your epic battle with the developer well you all asked him if you think he could beat me and he's gone I've got 800 hours in this game yeah I can beat him so we set up a one V1 and I was winning for most of that match he even chose a new map yeah yeah like I've already played the game twice before and he goes oh we'll throw it on a new map that you don't know to make it easier for him I think if I had of cuz I didn't even worry about changing weapons cuz you start off with this musket thing that's the only gun I've ever blund the bus it's only weapon I've ever used so I just stuck with that and at the end he goes yeah that's probably like the it's a good weapon but it's everything else is better than yep he beat me by one

point in the end so the moral of the story is do not challenge Luke to anything yeah video game related if you challenge him to a foot race you'll be fine oh you'll kick my ass um I enjoyed that I enjoyed the couple of panels we went to oh the role playing panel was fantastic yeah definitely that was amazing to be in the room with some of the guys who have created some of my favorite games yeah it's great like the original Fallout yep Dragon Age got the shape David Gator's hand afterwards and tell him that I like Dragon Age and I couldn't think of anything else to say cuz I suck oh man that was like the most embarrassing encounter I've ever had I was like I hate it when I get a mental BL I'm so sorry that I spoke to you sir yeah that's why I tend not to no he was

great he was really really friendly he was really friendly yeah that was a great panel it was interesting they were talking mostly I mean the whole the whole event was focused on diversity and and making diverse people more welcome because gaming does tend to be for various reasons kind of a straight white people's medium and so a lot of the panels were focused around that theme like making it more inclusive uh this one was particularly good I thought because they handled everything well and they had some really good ideas about how to do that and there was no there was no negativity cuz I think sometimes it seems like those conversations can get very negative and there's not a whole lot of solutions presented I don't know why that is and it's one of the

things that I feel like as a straight white male I'm very well represented so one of the things that I actually got out of it was like throughout the day and the hearing people talk was I I probably got a bit more of an understanding now about why people are really wanting to have this inclusion in games I agree with theity I agree as well I I was I was a little bit on the fence about it before because it seems like everybody's argument is always just aggressive rather than offering a solution yeah I I think the problem is when we hear about it it's it's on Twitter or it's in a news article and it's always associated with some outrage we never we're not exposed to it daytoday in a positive way right and

nobody's really saying here's what we should do to make it better it's always just like someone needs to make it better and that doesn't help this particular thing is really bad and it's like okay I don't know yeah it's it's negative yeah and there was a panel that we went to yesterday that was like that yeah I didn't so much enjoy that panel it was the gender in video games panel was that the name the title of it yeah that was gendering games yeah I felt like they had some very good points but I also felt like it it was very uh finger pointy and especially towards Luke yeah every guided Fedora are the enemy well we know that cuz that's a Trope but it was just funny to hear them disparage you know the generalization of uh of people and how people are

individuals and you shouldn't make assumptions about groups of people and then to make a a general just a sweeping generalization about menoras and then and obviously it was a joke and we know it was a joke and it was fine but it but Luke from the back going hey what did I do that that was probably my favorite moment of yesterday yeah so they made a joke that said that uh the diversity in gaming will probably upset people wearing fedoras and everyone had a laugh and it's a funny joke because that is a a kind of a a silly internet joke except Luke was the only person in the room wearing a fedora and so and then they realized and apologized to him and it I don't know it just felt like ironic yeah exactly because she was going on about not generalizing in yeah yeah and you

know and just to be clear on that we don't care we're just we're not we don't expect her to apologize or anything I just think no I didn't think anything of it no it was it was very funny but it just kind of proved to me that they make just as bad of generalizations yeah it's just a human thing and we can get better at it but everybody does it and it's not fair to to to point the finger all the time now one thing I did quite get at of that which they said was um with our Dragon Age with the transgender character yeah that was such a good thing cuz while a lot of players of video games are quite older there are still a lot of children who play them and who actually have like someone who is Young playing a game seeing a trans trended character and

starting to feel that's okay that's Norm normal yeah and that makes it a bit easier for them to deal with it I never thought of that before yeah well it's hard to change the minds of people who have already come to conclusions but for young Generations if you just treat stuff as normal they only see it as normal yeah and I feel like a lot of the things that we talk about at the you know like they talk about these events and stuff like that I feel like we're as a group like as in I'm talking about us personally my friends we're quite accepting of people um it's just that some of this stuff is new to us as well that's right and and we make mistakes like for example I make assumptions when I meet somebody like I say oh hey man kind of thing and I appreciate now that

that can be upsetting for somebody but on the other it's new to me right and there there are things like gender fluidity for example that I hadn't heard of until recently and I didn't know was a thing so now that I do I'm coming to understand it but it does take some time yeah and also I feel like too the people discussing these things often talk amongst themselves on Twitter or on Facebook and then when they they get out that maybe they forget that I don't know not everyone that there's not really an audience on on Twitter and Facebook yeah not everybody is as familiar as they are with these things and so some someone takes offense to something that's not meant to be offensive yeah they get defensive about it and again I'm not making excuses there are people on the

internet who are just and there are people in life that are just it's actually part of the reason why I don't use social media but they're on both sides sometimes and I think it's good to remember that and from my point of view I feel like I learned that there are a lot of valid points being made that sometimes get drowned out by the on both sides yeah I I think going to an event like this was a lot better than trying to read up on it on Twitter or any social media yeah the problem with Twitter is that the most outrageous stuff floats to the surface and the people who are being reasonable and rational generally syn to the bottom because that's not as interesting yeah it's the same with YouTube videos on the subject the louder and more aggressive people are the ones

that you hear yeah so anyway yeah overall I feel like for me it was a positive EXP experience and sorry not to disparage the people in that the gender and video games panel completely they had some good points I just feel like maybe they didn't I think maybe the the the format of it didn't allow them to reach point I think they actually even apologized for that because um they were meant to have someone in there Giving Them Questions a moderator yeah and they were basically just thrown in there on their own and just started talking it kind of felt they were prepared talking about Concepts that to me I wanted to ask questions but I felt like I I didn't quite even know what ask and there was a lot of like assumed knowledge where it's just a bit vague to me and I guess I

just didn't understand it and then someone asked a question I thought was very good they were talking about the representation of women in films and how when you see strong women they feel like often the woman is just a man is a man's character put a woman in the role it's a man yeah it's a man who's been portrayed by a woman and the example they used was um alien yeah because that was Ripley was originally a male character and they just gone let's make that character female right and I know that and that's true my question was I'm like do you think that because you know that it was written as a man or do you think that because because the character is actually written to be a man and they just put you know sigoni Weaver in the role and I didn't quite understand how

to how you fix that right it wasn't just alien either it was um all horror movies that she said the Trope is that like the strongest of the women survive and well what's wrong with that yeah what's wrong with having a strong female character isn't that the goal right and the guy asked the question he asked was you said that if putting masculine characteristics onto a woman or or characteristics that are generally considered to be masculine onto a woman doesn't make a strong female character but is it not true that they're just human characteristics and they're not necessarily masculine or feminine and it's it's more kind of stereotyping that says the strong woman is masculine and I was like yeah it was a really good question yeah and then I

just really don't think that they they addressed it at all she kind of deflected it well I I don't know if she quite understood what he meant I I don't know what's my favorite panel ever no no I hate all panels to tell the truth I I really liked the RPG one later though no the second people start asking questions oh when audience members ask questions oh no they should not ask questions no it is horrible they weren't the worst questions I've heard though no they weren't the worst some were actually quite good but I just I dread that every time that the audience gets ask questions hi um excuse me thank you for coming I've talked to on this about this on the podcast I'm sure but the worst one I ever heard was it the first packs I ever went to in Seattle and a guy got

up and started talking about his script that he'd written about a science fiction film he went on and on and to the point where it was this was in the penny arcade Q&A so Mike and Jerry actually just sat down on the stage as this guy was talking and everyone was just kind of like chuckling and going when is this going to finish talking about his script and how he he worked through it it's kind of like Firefly meets this and for ages and then at the end he said anyway my question is um I know that will weaton is here do you think you could ask him to ask Felicia Dave if she'll get in touch with me about um being in the pilot for the for the script that's terrible and they were like no next question yeah they're like no I'm moving on so embarrassing yeah

but the people get up there and ask about jobs or they'll ask a question where it's so specific and they're just trying to show that hey I'm a super fan I'm going to ask you a question that no one else knows all that means is no one else cares yeah but that's just me yeah but uh oh but somebody actually asked so in that panel it was Chris Avalon who uh wrote for Fallout and South Park 2o is that right yeah yeah the guy from obsidian um yep Tim Kane a programmer of Fallout David Gainer from BioWare and also manver I'm not sure how to pronounce his name man air from BioWare spot on thanks I have no idea so somebody from the audience asked them what their ideal game would be ideal RPG and that was a great question because the answers were so great yeah yeah some

really interesting stuff and it's it kind of a shame that I know that the format of the event was about you know diversity and stuff like that but that question in particular made me think it's a shame that not only do people get excluded but ideas get excluded due to the demographic stuff like um you know like the Call of Duty players I mean that's a generalization but you know what I mean is it about war is it about dragons or is it about space in the future if it's not to it's too risky let's not do it I feel like there's some great ideas out there that don't get a look in in AAA stuff yeah well one of them I think it was Tim Kane was it that had was the best his ideal game was that you're walking around in afterlife having to make reparations for

everything that you've done in life it was really yeah my biggest takeaway from all of this stuff was and I feel like sometimes like I said people are a bit negative about all this stuff but it seems like there's an opportunity there if you're a game developer and you want more games about say transgender issues or whatever right the fact that the big companies the ubisoft's and the and the Bethesda and that aren't focusing in on that market is an opportunity for you leaves it open for you yeah and then it means games like uh like gone home can be made by Indie companies and can kind of focus on those things without just being drowned out by that was a terrific game yeah it was you know by Assassin's Creed whatever CU we need more of those yeah we don't need an Assassin's Creed game

you know about those issues I don't think we don't need an Assassin's Creed game about anything anymore no maybe not I still like Assassin's Creed you would you're one of I guess you're one of many if they keep making them but they keep selling I don't actually pay attention to the story in Assassin's Creed games anymore you just collect feathers y see what do you collect in in the newer ones letters in the Paris one in Trinity like the alphabet no no no actual letters I think I can't actually remember lots of Chess Street I would play that well let's get back to uh GX yeah try and focus the one thing that I think was that they need to work on is probably the cost of it the cost of going yeah well look to be fair

they gave out a lot of free tickets no no but what Hannah was nearly not going to go just due to the price cuz there was no like one day pass which I was big shock over like there's no one day was from what I could see it h I think the whole convention could have been pushed into one one day well we didn't go to a whole lot of the panels so maybe I mean there was there was a lot on but I don't there weren't too many overlapping um there were mostly two at any one time sure but even if uh maybe there are rules with the venue that it couldn't have stayed open any later but if it had stayed maybe another 3 hours or so oh sure sure sure it could have accommodated all of that and had it all in one day yeah yeah especially if they're not going to split the passes up um exactly

I'd be interested to because we didn't go on the Sunday I'd be interested to see how busy it was on the Sunday but yeah it was $100 for a general admission ticket which something like RTX or super over is half that for two days yeah three days in in Supernova I think next one they really need the price needs to come down and I think although dud are they're having it at that price point to keep the sort of the numbers where they want they got they got the numbers that they were wanting exactly they did yeah and the other thing is too something like Supernova has the benefit of of just sheer volume of of attendees where I think they probably knew they weren't going to get anywhere near those numbers because it's it is quite a niche event

and because it was a Kickstarter as well like if people were willing to put that money forward then awesome that helps them out and if not they were willing to give out free tickets yeah another cool thing we did was the escape room I'm so sorry guys no I still say I won that that escape room in the first 10 seconds you broke it so Enigma put on this uh kind of a trial room it was just a single room and you had a 15 minute window to escape yeah Luke do you mean you won when you just submitted yes and said I'll never win this no I didn't sub I didn't submit say wi I submitted cuz there was a story and that the world has been taken over by vacuum cleaners the idea of our escape room was to build the EMP to wipe them out I just went I now give in to our new overlords and vacuum

cleansers I was going to work for them I think the people running the room really enjoyed that so I won and then screwed up every single clue certainly did we couldn't figure out the um lock code so Luke just sat there playing with it until it opened yeah we've kind of I don't know we I don't know what happened on that first puzzle we bued that up so badly yeah the first puzzle just took way too long it's cuz you left me in charge of it yeah I know after that we did all right it's just late I I did learn a valuable lesson and that don't trust Luke yeah don't trust Luke especially in an emergency situation no definitely not but no we need to um we need to organize to go to a escape room oh yeah so we so we can get stuck in it y yeah next organize it and then we will exclude you

well this this was cool they had the uh the EMP machine I don't want to give away the plot of the escape room in case it's part of one of their things but uh but it was pretty cool the way they had it set up and you know the puzzles were cool it was good I'd do a legit one with them yeah I would too they were very helpful will you take me with you probably not I wouldn't either N I don't think there's a wheelchair ramp at the venue what else did you guys play um we played a game called retrovision by Kyle McKeller mhm uh it was pretty cool it's it's still in its development stage yeah it's like an endless Runner but it's kind of first person you just avoid obstacles and yeah and it's it's I forget what you call that look it's you know like Tron where it's it's very um

oh yes there's a name for it um yeah I know I just can't think of it cuz I suck lines and yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah yeah I'm sure I'm sure the listen to what I'm talking about so you're kind of shooting along and you rotate the column that you're shooting along to dodge obstacles and it reacts to music and yeah it's cool very cool yeah it was really cool I can see um wasting time trying to get a high score on that yeah exactly I know cuz you got you started off getting the highest score of the day yeah until I had my turn did you really yeah I smashed it ah he told me somebody got 6 and a half thousand yeah I got seven well all right forget it because I Matt and I were both around the 3,000 Mark Oh I thought Matt was had the highest oh sorry yeah I got seven

maybe he was humoring me maybe he just tells everybody that oh yeah Matt did a great job until I beat him cuz I no I did hear that I did hear him telling you that uh he someone got $65,000 the highest of the day and that's why I thought Matt had gotten that not half that no no not Matt sorry oh man I have a question for you guys how much would you be willing to pay for Tungsten dice $800 $800 have I got a deal for you then well not me Level Up dice we at GX and they make these fancy ass Dice from precious stones and metals and cool um and boy dud I feel amazing oh man they're cool Dice Man beautiful dice if I was if I was rich I wouldn't play with any

other dice I would have yeah if I was rich I would have like different sets for just different days of the week of those dice they weren't all $800 no no no just the tungsten ones Yeah we actually each got a um secret grab bag thing of um of one die lucky dip that was cool and they they were selling them in um sets of like the gay and the byy and trans colors that was only for the day that's right yeah but that was pretty cool that was awesome cuz normally they s all the different colors just in the the D and D set on their own yeah I didn't know they had colors for all of those different things neither did I but that's enlightening I learned that from a dice company yep but no it's um the only thing that's a shame is you can't buy them online they're only doing

the conventions at the moment that's right he said that they're handmade but I mean they are sort of they have a machine that does it but I think they're not mass produced no um is is a good way to put it because cuz they're very expensive to make you know with with dice he the way he explained it the dice ideally should be as random as as possible but you get things like air pockets and Imperfections and things that when they test them they apparently they have machines that can test this the dice usually end up I think he said like 60 70% random like they'll they'll be weighted in some way that makes them more likely to to roll a certain way mhm um which maybe that explains why we always roll so badly at D and D I know just getting new dice I think maybe

we all need new dice it was the aluminium ones he said right that they had like engraved some numbers a bit deeper because right say like the one doesn't have as much taken out of it as like the 20 does yeah he said the machine will take it and not rather than just do a side and then a side and then a side it does a little bit of a side then a little bit of one on the other side and then it just it kind of flicks around and changes it to make sure it's all perfectly even which is pretty rad yeah it would be cool to play with them but yeah he said they're at 99.9% random he said that they won't give them the extra 1% which is pretty cool good but yeah so the aluminium ones start at what 120 I said think 120 yeah yeah the precious stones cuz they make them out of semi

precious sorry what did I say precious oh precious semi precious they they're not precious they're just a little bit precious um amethyst and uh lapis lauli or however you pronounce that uh there was that sparkly gold one yeah soap stone um some of the middle wants that had like copper yep yeah copper yeah they were great actually cuz they tonish over time they look look cool yeah I'd love a set of them but if I wasn't saving up for a wedding at the moment I probably would have been coming home with a set I'll tell you what those tungston ones would destroy your table so you better make sure you got enough money to buy a new table I wouldn't use them at my house it's like the heaviest metal isn't it or one of them or like a tungston table maybe I think it's like

the second strongest metal on Earth or something but yeah I wouldn't use it at my house I'd only use it when I was playing at your house or something yeah right fair enough on our Diamond table they're at LevelUp di.net um you can't buy them online apparently at the moment but they've got a they've got where they're going to be yeah they're at conventions everywhere and stuff like that so yeah check them out they're really really cool if you're after some unique and uh I guess eye-catching dice they've definitely definitely got you covered oh and we ran into um Lucas from articulate sex oh yeah we did that card game that that we reviewed at PS yeah it's so weird cuz he's from camra oh is he I've never met him in camra met him in Melbourne I've

met him in Sydney now you you know everyone in CRA yep cuz there's only like four people nobody lives in CRA so unfortunately he's had to put that game on hold but hopefully we'll see it come back yeah and and if even when it shows up um we'll definitely let you know about it yeah he just said um after speaking with a lot of people he understand that he probably went started the kickstarter too early instead of getting the word around about it first and as we know from doing our own Kickstarter oh kickstarter's rough man yeah yeah you you need to basically people need to know that it's happening before you've got it up and running and yeah and it's already got to have some money on it running a Kickstarter is a full-time job for somebody for the

period that it's happening so it was pretty cool that GX was funded like that yeah totally it's not easy to do as we discovered you played a game with bunny rabbits in it Luke blast them bunnies what' you think of that I enjoyed it I'm going to get it oh yeah yeah it comes out in a couple of weeks okay it's a just a tow defense game so you're on a turret and you've got bunnies coming at you and the weapons you get are sort of like carrots and water melons and a free Ray that no that fits I think it's just going to be a very good quick casual game stuff you have lying around on your farm stuff you feed your rabbit yeah so what platforms is this on uh I know I saw it on the DS but it's I know it's definit no I play it on the Xbox

one no I play it on PlayStation 4 but I know it's coming out on Xbox one okay cuz if it doesn't come out on an Xbox you're not playing it there's no achievements if I don't play on the Xbox yeah do you even play on your PC anym not really cuz I play a few games that I can get achievements on on my PC right oh Microsoft ones yeah but no I haven't really sat down and played like a game on Steam in a very long time okay and I probably won't until I upgrade the computer and then I'll go through a big PC phase again H well one game I want to talk about briefly that was also a GX mhm is killing time at light speed which is a game by grit fish my friend John and it's a game that's got my music in it I did some music for it so o listeners head on over to grit fish.net

and check out killing time at lighted it's got an enhanced Edition coming out on Steam but you can check it out uh killing time at lightspeed.com um or on gri fish.net check it out so yeah we had a great time at GX uh hopefully they'll be back again next year and you should all check it out I will attend it was a great convention it was a very small one but it felt very personable no I had a good time it was a good con yeah convention no con I was I didn't feel ripped off we're bad at this thanks again to Liam and Joshua for setting it all up putting it on and giving us some tickets we really appreciate it that's all for this week thank you for listening and we hope you enjoy the show if you enjoyed listening to us talk you can find some more content over at

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