Distant Socializing - Gaming in the Time of COVID - Extra Credits

hey everyone we wrote this episode several weeks ago before the tragic murder of George Floyd and the critical social movement that came afterward while it's important for everyone to take action at this time in any ways that they can for instance we'll be donating the YouTube revenue from this episode to the NAACP Legal Defense Fund it's equally important to take care of your community and yourself to prevent burning out so while we do have a few episodes in production that more directly deal with the us's often ignored racial history we hope that this episode can still offer you some new ideas to connect with your loved ones while also being socially distant please look out for yourselves look out for each other signed petitions call your representatives donate protests and most importantly keep the conversation going because black lives matter today families and friends are physically separated by a lot of things miles oceans and of course kovat 19 luckily though we have a lot of

technology helping us to stay in touch zoom Skype FaceTime tick-tock maybe I wouldn't uh know anything about that one but sometimes just seeing a loved one on a screen hearing their voices or reading their texts still can feel lacking like we're missing something beyond conversation interaction humans are social animals after all and we like to do actual stuff together like build a snowman or bake cookies or go to a concert and often it's that act of shared experience that really brings on the emotional engagement now if only there was a way in these trying times that we could not only see our friends and families remotely but also interact in shared tasks and goals with them while we did it huh hmm oh hey video games [Music] thanks so much two great courses plus for sponsoring this episode want to learn how to see their amazing lectures for free stay tuned until after the episode Oh despite the last few months being extremely hard for many folks one small

positive note is that the game industry has seen a huge increase in sales and while that growth can be seen across all consoles plus the PC and mobile markets the leaders in both hardware and software are connected Animal Crossing new horizons and the hardware to play it on in fact the Nintendo switch set an all-time record for unit sales for any month since the NPD began tracking in 1995 that's a lot of bells and a large part of why this spike has occurred is because in a time when we can't get together for our ell activities with loved ones we can still play games add to that that Animal Crossing is also a family-friendly game that doesn't require a ton of gaming literacy to have fun with and you can see the appeal but I suspect there's an additional attraction you know author then flick hey there because Animal Crossing is a multiplayer game that can be played in the same room or across continents of course this online trend isn't anything new and even before the invention of the internet or the telephone people were still driven to play games with each other from miles away for instance the first authenticated correspondence chess game was between two Dutch military

officers in 1804 and oh boy you really have to pity those worn-out messengers on horseback TRUCKING all those chess moves back and forth tiring our team at extra credits is a remote one as well and therefore like many of you we are no strangers to playing games remotely so we thought it might be fun to share with you how some of the members of our team are trying to make social distancing a little more entertaining for our loved ones that aren't used to playing games together online and hopefully you can share these ideas with your parents siblings or anyone you'd like to interact with in your life who might be new to gaming during this time okay then so with that in mind here's what we're playing a TC to stay connected with our family and friends first up Lee a writer is in New England his daughter is down south and his son lives on the west coast now Wally himself plays a lot of games he wanted to find something that his whole family could enjoy that appealed to a large range of Ages and video game expertise and in came Lee's son and daughter-in-law to the rescue now they host jackbox sessions for the family they're set up on skype is pretty

low-tech relying on an extra device with a camera focused on their TV screen but the game show hilarity goes a long way in shrinking the distance between the three family households if you're not familiar with jackbox it's a party game pack from the folks that brought you you don't know jack back in the mid 90s and a few years ago their game fib äj-- moved to streaming media and their follow up of jack box party pack games is now played today with your mobile phone as the controller so using a game show esque format and a device that most folks are familiar with to participate in the game they make a perfect intergenerational gaming starting point so don't give up on granny and actually we've been playing some of the jack box games with our community over on our twitch channel so you can come swing by and check it out for yourself things get weird and speaking of twitch our streaming Overlord will has been connecting with the community and extended friend groups more and more through games he plays Monster Hunter Magic the Gathering arena and other multiplayer games online in lieu of going over someone's house to play and hang out but another cool thing he's done is began a few online play groups for webcam magic the gathering

that way even while self isolating he can still get that familiar tactile interaction with the cards and therefore more easily mimic that feeling of playing a game with another person across the table over in Zooey nice neck of the woods we've tried giving video chats with friends a bit more structure by taking some points of inspiration from the good folks over at critical role and began running our own sessions of narrative telephone / zoom how it works is I record a story and then send it to a friend who can only watch it once and then they record what they can remember of the tale and then send that video to another friend and so on and so on then we all get together online to watch our poor memories play out while we chat and while will never be as entertaining as mr. Mercer and the mighty nine it's insanely fun to watch a story unravel into madness with your friends but on the more video game side of things my better half Jamie and I have been keeping the spark alive by practicing a ton of MORTAL KOMBAT 11 when we can't be together and let me tell you you haven't lived until you've experienced the loved one freeze you solid shatter your body and then collect your brain and spine to

install into a cyber ninja I'm just so proud Allie one of our extra history artists has been doing the animal crossing thing herself and finds it to be a relaxing virtual vacation from a world with more than its share of stresses and while she's been working hard to transform her island she's really found the fun in visiting other people's islands and checking out their themes and designs plus it's just a great way to hang out for activities together while not actually being together for instance her friend Mae recently put together an art show with a bunch of her friends where they could come together and show off their custom clothing designs she even made goodie bags and drinks for visitors and while our community manager Arthur does prefer to play tabletop games in person he's recently taken a deep dive into learning fantasy grabs which is a program that lets you run tabletop RPGs with players anywhere in the world and a great side effect of that is that it's connected and with people whom he wouldn't normally get to play with because of the distance and he's now running a D&D campaign for his little brother who lives across the country Oh and Arthur also wanted to point out that

discord based games like this discord has ghosts in it have seriously boomed in popularity lately because of the sudden availability of time and tools so that's what some of our crew has been doing to stay connected and to engage in some much-needed distant socializing hopefully you've found something you can try to introduce to your non gaming family and friends in order to interact with them beyond a standard video call and since we know we've only scratched the surface please let us know what cool games you come up with to distantly socialize in the comments below and who knows once these dark days are behind us we might have even convinced some of non-gaming loved ones to keep on playing even if they're just doing it to collect our brains until next week everyone once again thanks so much to our sponsor for this episode great courses plus an undemanding resource for learning featuring lectures and courses from the world's top professors and experts from national geographic the Smithsonian and more and with topics spanning science cooking history photography literature or even how to play chess you're sure to find something you're psyched about the

latest of which I checked out was the Black Death the world's most dangerous play because these days I'm very interested in shedding light on how we persevered through history's worst illnesses wonder why that is and right now you can try great courses plus for free and check out their library of over 11,000 video lectures on your desktop tablet or phone wherever you learn best just head to the great courses plus comm slash extra credits and to check it out for yourself legendary thanks to Ahmed zo Turk Alesia bramble Casey Mucha Dominic Valenciana Gunnar Clovis Kyle Murgatroyd kool-aid Jakari at Orioles one [Music] [Music]