Episode 185 - Psychadelic Toad Venom

Welcome to another episode of DYCIWMDVGC, the only podcast to tell you "Damn You Corona, I Want My Dumb Video Game Christmas" every week. At the time of writing, it's t-minus 23 hours until our first taste of our new E3-less future. This time of year any other year I'd be looking at conference schedules, making snacks, and dammit even going to bed at a reasonable time just to catch an hour and a half of trailers for games that will either never look like the trailer or be pushed back again and again until they do. Until then all we can do is start World War Three with China because of this, I'm sorry, it's the only rational thing to do besides:

* Trusting Science
* Systemic Racism
* Bad Timing
* Publisher v. Platform

There used to be a time where you could trust "science" and "experts". That time is long gone now. Don't get me wrong, i'm not going to turn into a born-again Christian until Jesus himself tells me to, but that's me in the corner. That's me in the spotlight. Losing my religion. George Michael is not getting through to me, I can't have Faith in science anymore, and it sucks.

We get spicy.

Imagine you drop your phone. Crack it all to hell. Technically usable still, but now you have to go and get a new phone. Oh well. You do your research into phones, you settle on the hot new iPhone. You're on the way to the phone store, when a car swerves toward you but stops just in time to not hit you. Then you hit every red light. You arrive at the store, and they've got a water leak so they're closing early, but the one 15 minutes away is still open. At this point anyone familiar with bad timing would drop everything and stay as safe as possible. Odds are you've angered some ancient cosmic being and on the way home, you'll hit someone with your car and magically they'll be fine but your car will be done for and the tow truck guy you call will make unwanted sexual advances on you. You've got bad timing, son.

When you're a platform, you let anyone on. Aside from a few legality-related rules, anyone can join and have fun. Let's take Spotify for an example. No one but hipsters would use it if they only let music with a 7.0 or better from Pitchfork on it. At that point Spotify is not a platform, it's a publisher of curated tastes. This isn't always a bad thing, a radio station for example, curates genres and artists by the DJ's picks and the popularity of the music. But, then there's when platforms slowly pick and choose what's right and wrong and eventually become publishers that say they're platforms.

All this and more on this week’s  episode! Don't forget to join us on DISCORD, and support us on PATREON, NEWPROJECT2, or by BUYING A SHIRT!