Techlinked was the world's first link type channel and now GameLinked. What does that mean? What GameLinked is the world's second?
Link type channel shout out to my boy Hideo Kojima
Well, whatever linked whatever Techlinked or GameLinked is now there's there's two of them basically
Yep, yeah, you guys might have noticed if you watch Techlinked the channel this video is going up on that we launched GameLinked
Recently, it's been Buh a few weeks. I don't even know. Yep. I think we have eight episodes
Eight episodes for four weeks. Well, there will be one more by the time this goes up on Monday, but anyways
And you might have noticed I mean we didn't really address it on this channel that much
We did a community post we did there was an LTT video. That's true
So here we are if you guys were wondering what the heck is up with GameLinked what kind of content?
You can expect I mean clearly, you know, we've done some videos already
But we have ideas plans and
If you're wondering about the the background and how it came to be
That's what this episode is gonna be so stick around and the reason we're here today doing a talkland is because of you know
We had LTX people work throughout the weekend. We're taking today Monday off
So we recorded this before LTX to publish instead of a regular Techlinked. We recorded this in the past. You're watching it in your present
Tell let us know. Let us know how it feels
Is everything cool? I'm here with Jacob Rush
The guy who was hired to write GameLinked in October last year October of last year only to wait
How long months but I mean many months like eight months or something eight months. No, really eight and a half
Oh, June 30th. I think June 29th is when we launched it. Okay, so that's probably I might also be wrong
I don't I just switched to Windows 11. I don't know where that's that's fine
The calendar is the point is it was months. First of all, how did that feel?
Being hired for something that wouldn't exist now to be clear you were hired as the Techlinked and
Yeah, yeah, well, but then you were hired and you're like no games
Yeah, that was that was the weird thing is like spelled AEM Zed. No games. No games
So My first day you and James pulled me into a conference room. You guys go. Hey, remember GameLinked
It's not happening. Not yet So writing for Mac Address
No, I remember I remember James literally said he's like so I guess we're gonna have to find some busy work for you to do on Tuesdays and Thursdays
Okay sweeping the floors Yeah, picking up people's empty coffee mugs
Boosting Linus so you can grab the top shelf
Yeah, yeah, I'm sorry about that. We've talked about this. Yeah, there are a bunch of reasons why
Didn't launch right away number one is because you know
We've already we're Techlinked was already on a one day one video a day schedule and we were doing it three times a week
Yeah, a channel launch where we do another episode on Tuesday and Thursday would mean
You know a video a day five days a week. Yeah, and Edzel and Nicole who are our editing people
They they lead the editing department. They were like, we just don't have the bandwidth for that, you know, LMG
How many channels do we have? I don't even know Seven seven functioning channels. So they needed to hire another editor
They did that. I think in in the fall. I think they hired one before Christmas
And then I'm like, all right, we hired an editor. Can we when can we launch in there? Like we need to hire another one
Editor to came on board same problem
But at that point it was kind of like, all right, we need to get a new set
We need to we can't film GameLinked on the Techlinked set. Do you remember what some of the ideas were?
For the GameLinked set early on Yeah, I mean I designed a few of them like I was going for like a vaporwave
Outrun this whole thing. That was a whole thing because we went through a whole set design process where
Well, it wasn't like a set design process. We knew that we knew that they wanted inspo from us
We were making Pinterest boards. We made a Pinterest board for inspiration. Yeah, and then I realized okay
This is kind of messy. Honestly, I don't understand how people use Pinterest. It's like all over the place
It's a lot. It's nice if you want absolutely everything in like a big internally scrolling thing
Let's not go on a Pinterest engine. I want this to be a Pinterest review episode
Does anyone use Pinterest? I'd like used paint. I
Spent like 20 to 30 minutes in paint. Yeah, you do this like because we so the idea one of our ideas was to have
The talk the the Techlinked set and the GameLinked set kind of be like
Reflections of each other or be like connected. We were gonna have a physical set and have one half of the set be
Techlinked and one half of the set be GameLinked and you could kind of like see a bit of the other set in the other in the
In one of them, you know what I mean? So you came up with this like split logo thing
Yeah, because I figured like vaporwave which is inspired by like early 90s would really fit in with Techlinked because like
You know you think about computers in the early 90s and the big boom of of tech like that sort of fits and then outrun is supposed
To be inspired but the retro futuristic 80s inspired thing and that's makes sense because it's
You know, that's around the time of the big boom of like gaming like like game consoles
Yeah, we were I mean we were thinking about it. Yeah, we went deep. We went deep into our minds and into the internet
Then it was decided we're actually gonna do a virtual set. Yeah, it was revealed to us
You know Edzel had this idea to to have a virtual set within Unreal Engine
So which is kind of cool because it's a gaming channel. Yep, but we'll I mean quote-unquote gaming channel. We'll get to that
So, I mean, you know all these details are in the LTT
Video if you have guys haven't watched it. It's a good one because they go over the whole technology about how we're doing live
Green screen compositing where you know, we don't take the green screen footage and we put it in the computer and then process it
It's processed in real time as we film and then it's like sent right to the the editor
In its current state with the background already baked on so that's pretty cool
I mean, it's basically you know, basically laptops are doing this PCs are doing this with like, you know streaming software
But it's like that but way higher fidelity. I mean
If you guys have seen any of the videos you might be able to tell please watch our videos around the edges
There's some in least watch in perfection But anyways, if you're interested in the technical details, there's the LTT video for that
But what we wanted to talk about on this video was kind of like the channel itself game-linked content and what we're thinking about
In that regard so one thing that we noticed when we launched the first video was people kind of being confused about
the format or the content let us know in the comments if you were
Confused because some people thought that when Linus who talked about this channel way before he was supposed to talk about it on
Wancho When he mentioned it, he's he kept calling it a gaming channel
And so people were like, oh, are you gonna be playing games on the on the channel and maybe we will I don't know
I that's not in the cards right now. I mean even before that the first day I started
One of the colleagues at Labs Tim. He said he said I'm so excited for game-linked
And then I talked to him like more recently and he's like, yeah, I thought you guys are gonna be doing gaming reviews
Yeah, and I guess I guess probably what happened is in the year since
In the year since TechLinked was first announced like not the people that were there for it were the ones
I mean game like no TechLinked people were there for TechLinked
They kind of knew they're more familiar with what TechLinked is
So they're the ones that are actually watching TechLinked whereas the LTT
Audience at large. There's a large proportion of the audience that isn't also a TechLinked audience
So they probably just saw like oh, there's a TechLinked channel. There's also a gaming channel
Maybe they're related in some way and then when they hear Linus saying oh, it's a gaming channel 15 times
They're like oh, so they're gonna be doing like gaming reviews gonna be doing like all these other things like gaming stuff
Finally LTT is breaking into gaming which is you know
We are it's just when we started TechLinked here at LNG in 2018 a bunch of people
Wanted something like game-linked LMG has kind of
Dipped its toes into gaming content at various times, but it doesn't seem like this is what one of the weirdest things about about
You guys the LTT slash LMG audience
Ostensibly Supposedly the reason why you're interested in all this like gaming PC hardware is because you play games
But for whatever reason every time we like made gaming content on
LTT or you know if on on TechLinked we made we had like gaming content as the we experimented with having gaming content as the thumbnail a
Few times and the videos didn't do very well and we're like it just seems like the LMG audience
Even though they're all Gamers they must be mm-hmm. They don't want to see gaming content from us
So I kind of you know people had the idea in the company to to start gaming
They're like when are we gonna get game-linked started? You know and I was kind of like I don't know because it seems like every time
We've done gaming stuff. It hasn't really done very well and
You know LMG does let us pursue passions
They you know Linus let me do two tech loggers that took ridiculous amount of time
But at the same time we have to be data-driven. Yeah, and it was kind of like it's a business
But for whatever reason last summer
I got the directive being like all right, we're gonna do the GameLinked. It's time. Oh really that was one
Yeah, okay in the summer. I remember James sitting me down in one of my one of my check-ins and he's like
So we're doing TechLinked and I'm like you mean game like game like and I'm like, okay
We're doing TechLinked. I haven't been doing that for years Well, and so here's why when you're like I was hired as the GameLinked guy
I'm kind of like because the launch of GameLinked was also an excuse to hire you and
You know hopefully hire people to kind of flesh out the news team as we're calling ourselves
so from the get-go the the
There was a desire at LMG to launch a gaming channel
And I think that no one really knew exactly what that would look like and we
Are still kind of figuring that that out so we can talk about some of our like content ideas
None of these have been approved by the way
At this point, we don't even have approval to tell you guys about it
So what you need to do after you hear this is just bombard every LTT video comment section with this
Yeah, I mean what we're really trying to do is obviously what we've started with on GameLinked is gaming news and
We want to keep doing that because we know that that's what we can do and we're pretty good at it
So we're gonna keep doing that on Tuesdays and Thursdays, but you know long term
We definitely want to Expand into other types of content ideas. We're not doing gaming reviews right now. Maybe later
But gaming reviews are also something, you know, it's it's tough. You know, we talked about this a little bit
Yeah, we have to spend time playing the game like and like a lot of games now are open-world games
And they're just massive and then you have to decide what what do I need to play?
in order to get the cohesive experience of the game without
Hopefully doing the entire thing and 100% again. Yeah, like I'll
Gerard the completionist you were you were assigned the idea to come up with some content ideas
Yes, I was so why don't we why don't we talk about some of those because you know if you guys
Hear any of this and you're like, but that's something I would
Tune in for yeah, maybe we'll maybe we'll do it and maybe we'll do none of it
We'll have to see The first one I started with it's kind of a staple of like gaming channels
But it's something I am actually legitimately interested in and that's
D&D slash TTRPG actual play. Mm-hmm. I don't
This is probably the least feasible of all of them because it requires like a three-hour commitment
Yeah, and it's kind of funny like the YouTube landscape is so interesting
You know this this goes back a little bit to the sort of like discrete audiences thing
Hmm or our is our audience one that would watch
Let's plays. I don't even know if let's plays are really a big thing anymore. It seems like streamers do it
And there are these big channels that do channels that do I think it's harder
Maybe for newer let's players to break into the space, but a lot of people still like I get recommended
Videos a lot that are like very few views, but they're people playing games
So it's still something that's very much happening in the YouTube landscape I mean we have people meeting here every once in a while to play games. I would love to DM
You and maybe like James like a lot of the personalities
I think there would be something that really interesting in that you just want to suck me into your
Fantasy world. I just like doing voices and creating worlds
You just want to bring me into the world and then you would just like immediately kill you turn the turn the whole world against me
Everyone hates Riley Murdock. Give me weight. Wait a dice. All right. I try to cast a spell and
Rebounds I think kills my wife. All right. I think
I think we covered that all right So the other one the other one is something like my favorite game, which is just like getting different people from the company to
Talk about their favorite game and maybe get the host or the cop like a colleague
Like maybe one of us to like play one of their most memorable moments from that game. That's pretty cool. Yeah, I think there's
Like my favorite game is fallout, New Vegas, and I think my favorites
I'm a double check on this, but I'm pretty sure it's vault 11
There might be one quest that makes you go to it, but you don't even have to go to it
You can go to any of the other vaults. It's not a required location to go to but if you go there the story
That you experience is fantastic. I'll destroy you and make you cry. I mean that actually sounds I like that
You would like it because it's it's it's quite philosophical. The other one is the unwritten rules of game design
I kind of find it interesting You know because me someone who's like really into the gaming space and and is so familiar because I've been gaming since I was a
small child, there's a lot of little unwritten rules that
like my gamer brain doesn't even
Contemplate anymore. They're just kind of there But there's a lot of things that game designers use to communicate certain things that
We take for granted because we automatically know what they are, but someone who's maybe more
New to right gaming would be confused by them. There's actually a really great video
Rasputin it's called what games are like for someone who doesn't play games. Oh, I saved that video
I think I started watching it. It's very interesting to watch I so I kind of was inspired by that and I thought it would kind of be cool to like maybe talk about things that you
Know from games, but you didn't actually know so kind of like a series talking about
elements of games that You know non-gamers might not be super familiar with yeah, so the next one
Sort of inspired by something I wanted to do streaming actually, but it's called humble beginnings
We're basically we discuss and demonstrate the earlier games in a what is now an iconic franchise. So games that
generally inspired or or Spiritual successors that became iconic friends present. So like fallout one and two
I mean, it's weird to say they inspired fallout three, but like they're very different games in terms of gameplay
And stuff Baldur's Gate one and two both inspired Dragon Age because by where I worked on those games system shock
inspired bio shock Eco inspired Shadow of the Colossus Delta may cry and PN03 and both inspired Bayonetta
So there's there's a lot of different games that actually
have some sort of inspiration either something that the creator had worked on earlier that
Spurred them to create this new thing that became a phenomenon I think that's kind of a cool place to explore is to go back to those original games see what's similar see why maybe
They didn't get the recognition that they deserved if they didn't or or why they did get the recognition
They deserved in their time. I can see this kind of being a part of maybe a
broader series doing sort of like an investigation. I mean like one one game longers well
so Game longers and tech longers take a long time to make that's true
However, I feel like there might be space for like a Techquickie style gaming thing where you know
We aren't doing like the deepest dive ever and going and interviewing people and like taking months to do like investigative
Recording like we just kind of you know, we write like a Techquickie where John makes three in a week
We'll call it game lengthy game lengthy. Yeah, you know, it's not a longer, but this is like the game girthy
Oh, the other the other thing is is you didn't even hear that game girthy. No, I heard it
Okay, thank you. It was beautiful. Thank you rally. You're beautiful. Stop. Okay. Next one. The other one is game first impressions
So I think it'd be cool to like either take someone who's Gamed a lot in in one specific genre like they have like one genre that they're very familiar with or just people who haven't game
the lot at all and Get them to spend like five to ten hours in a game and then have like a little talk with them like a talking style
Yeah, so this is kind of the thing that maybe could
fill in this like reviews the
Pocket that people are you know people thought we were gonna do game reviews. We're probably not gonna do full game reviews
Where it's like here's our definitive take on the subject
But what we might do is you know, this kind of like Diablo 4 launches a bunch of people the office are gonna be playing it
A lot at home. So then once they've put in a certain amount of hours
We can all kind of like get together and like have like talk about it. Maybe you talk about our experience
I think there's kind of two prongs to go about so it's one where you're talking to people who actually know a lot about the
About that game and then I think it would be cool to also have someone who's like never played the game before
And like either place completely different genre of games or doesn't play games
Yeah, that could work really well and have them kind of talk because you can have one person really nerd off a one-piece person
Be very confused and be totally looking for answers after their five to ten hours of whatever the confusion confusion can be very entertaining
Yes, here's the last one that I finally kind of came up with it's kind of I've kind of got two names
For it flawed reviews slash review reboot
So flawed reviews is I'm trying to think of a way that we can sort of do reviews
But it still sort of fits into the comedic flavor of of link channels while also fitting within a time frame
What is time to Troy Baker? Okay, we'll get to that so like I was thinking either like one hour two hour reviews
We're we literally just review the first one to two hours of the game
Which would be really funny for games that have like really in-depth character creation
We could have so this is what he was talking about previously the old man Murray throwback
They had they had a they had a really strong critique of game design in like the late 90s where everyone just had crates
So they developed this this start to create magic a old man Murray. So they were there were an online
website, okay And so yeah, and so they would basically count the number of seconds
It would take for you to run into your first quite crater barrel And that was that was your that was your start to create score
But I thought maybe we could update that for like modern game tropes like time to tutorial stream that pauses the game
So time to Troy Baker is because Troy Baker is in almost every game
The man is the man does work So we're gonna have to like look up who if if Troy Baker plays a character in the in the game and see how fast we encounter that character
Yeah, basically I Mean think of think of a frickin like series and he's he's probably voice of character and it's almost certainly yeah
Time to actual effing game. Yes, which is you know games
Let's start with a barrage of cutscenes games where you're supposed to be this cool character in a mystical world with magic
But for the some reason the first 45 minutes of gameplay are you walking through an apartment building trying to find out for some reason?
That's the worst anyway Can you make a monster which is basically we judge the character creation based on how how much we can offend God with our creations?
Now that that is like a let's play concept that I think could work where
We're we're there, you know, we're basically doing like Mario Party minigames where we're we're in one part of a game
And we're trying to see who can do a certain thing first
Mm-hmm, and then my my last idea was does it have couch co-op and if not zero out of ten?
So the whole idea of like review reboot because I was kind of think I didn't bring this up to you
But so I had the flawed reviews idea, but then I thought of like what if we just for fun
Decided that every different review we would be reviewing that game on a completely different metric
That was somewhat arbitrary reviewing it on like view distance. Yeah, like just like just like everyone had like like a very
Verticality yeah, like some sort of very specific metric that only applies to like that game tears of the kingdom would win on that one
Yeah, so like that would be like one like it would be like you can fall for like ten minutes
Yeah, okay, so I mean if any of those if any of those concepts tickled something inside of you in a
Totally platonic way. Let us know and leave a comment
You know, we're excited to have game link launched and we're excited to do some more stuff with it other than just news
Maybe again, this is all very speculative, but we basically want to know what you guys want to see
So we can hopefully make some content on this gaming channel not just gaming news, but for now
100% what we're doing is gaming news and then in the future. You just let us know how you want these monkeys to dance. I
Take offense to that. I don't dance and I'm not a monkey. Ape
I'm sorry. We're good. These apes can boogie. All right, so that's all the time we have for today
Thanks for watching guys. This is I mean this is sort of a talk link It seems like we're only doing talk linked on days where we physically can't go and upload a regular TechLinked episode
But subscribe let us know if you want to see more of this
Let us know what you want to see on GameLinked and we'll see you soon and as always. I love you
That's I used to that's my thing Love you. I love you too. Wait, sorry. Yeah, right cut that