Press Start: Lawson Nuland's Passion for Games and Laughter

Lawson Nuland is an actor, comedian, and host of the Super Wall Jump podcast. We chat about video games, gaming culture, and why the industry needs to embrace being weird again.

We dive into growing up as gamers, the rise and fall of gaming journalism, Baldur’s Gate 3, Call of Duty fatigue, competitive shooters, RPGs, and what actually makes a game memorable. We also get into AI in games, live service burnout, and why originality matters more than ever.

You can find Lawson's podcast Super Wall Jump Here.

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Transcript

Intro Song

Lawson Nuland: Button.

Rob Valincius: Boom. He, he beat me to the punch. This is the Drink O’Clock podcast. I'm your host, Rob Valincius. Now I have the pleasure of having with me Lawson Nuwland. Welcome to the podcast, brother.

Lawson Nuland: Hello. Thank you for getting my name right. Many people just say Nuland or they put like a weird, um, out above the U, but

Rob Valincius: You know, I gotta tell you, I'm terrible at asking people about their names, and I feel like it's a game for myself at this point to see if I get it right. 'cause my last name is not the easiest thing to say either. So I've gotten some, we'll just say some interesting pronunciations. Um,

Lawson Nuland: yeah,

Rob Valincius: now, Lawson, you're an actor, comedian, and you're the host and owner of the Super Wall Jump podcast.

So you got a lot going on there, man.

Lawson Nuland: yes, I, I cannot sit still. It's a, it's a, I cannot sit still. And also I'm unemployed, so me.

Rob Valincius: Hey, listen, man, I mean, you're unemployed, but you're doing stuff right? I

Lawson Nuland: am. I'm fun employed.

Rob Valincius: You gotta, I, it comes back to, uh, so, uh, I don't know how much SpongeBob squarepants that you've ever watched,

Lawson Nuland: I watched a good bit.

Rob Valincius: okay. So me and the wifey laugh because, uh, she's never, she never saw it up until two or three months ago. And then for some reason we just had Nickelodeon on.

It just happened. Like we were just, 'cause I have YouTube tv, so, and, uh, SpongeBob was, we just had on the background and she starts laughing. She's like, this is actually pretty funny. I'm like, you've never seen SpongeBob. So now we ke we just, it's like our background show, because they played on Nickelodeon like 24 7.

And, uh, he's got, there's an episode where, um, well there's a couple episodes where SpongeBob loses his job, but one, he gets fired and, uh, he goes to Patrick and Patrick's like, oh. This is great. I'll teach you how, what it's like to be unemployed and, and it's just this episode of him just like, like he does nothing.

He just like, there's like a group meeting of other unemployed people that he hangs out with and he talks about getting free food and all this other shit, and SpongeBob's just like miserable. Uh, but now I equate everything to Sponge. There's just SpongeBob references everywhere.

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. I watched a bit of it growing up. My wife didn't, because my mother-in-law was like, I hate the sound of that sponges laugh, so it's not coming on in my house.

Rob Valincius: He does have a very unique laugh. We will definitely say that.

Lawson Nuland: I think it's a parenting hack that I am going to take whenever my wife and I have kids, which is okay, cool. We're gonna be able to ban like maybe one or two shows for personal reasons, and I think that's okay, and I'm going to abide by that. I don't know what shows it's gonna be, but they're gonna be a couple shows.

I'm gonna be like, no, I'm not dealing with that.

Rob Valincius: Like, like the, uh, the Baby Shark song, the, you know, baby Shark. Do, do, do. I don't know if you've ever heard that

Lawson Nuland: I, I, I have heard it plenty of times. I have a niece and a nephew who are both around four or five, so I I hear it plenty.

Rob Valincius: Prime Age. Prime age for the, the annoying songs and some of those shows that they, it just makes you wanna take their freaking phone or iPad, just shove it in the toilet, you know?

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. My cousin has this thing where what he does is for his kids. He's like, all right, cool. iPads are for the car only. They are only for when kids are traveling, so. It keeps them from being a menace when they're in the car or on a plane, but also they don't become iPad babies. Um,

Rob Valincius: I like that. That's actually a good rule. I feel like more people, 'cause a lot of times I feel like in today's world, they, they just get handed a tablet and the kid, that's what they do, that's how they entertain themselves and it's like. Cognitively speaking. I'm sure some of it helps, but it's also like, I don't know.

I feel like you need other things to stimulate a kid's brain a little bit, you know?

Lawson Nuland: yeah. Um, a big part of it I think is also like fine motor skills. If you're staring at a screen constantly, you're not developing the fine motor skills or the depth perception you need to like exist in the world. And I was a really nerdy kid with big old glasses at seven and I was reading my book the whole time, and I can tell you I was thus very bad at sports, so I can't imagine, oh man, but what if I had double the amount of time, but it was at a screen that was this close to my face.

Rob Valincius: yeah. Yeah. I, I mean, I grew up in a, in a pretty different time on that front too, and I've, I've talked about this before, but I was kind of a, like a closet nerd. Like I, I played sports, but I just loved. Nerdy shit my whole life. You know, I was a gamer since I was five. Like, that's actually maybe even younger.

Maybe I was three or four when my dad first had me playing Nintendo. But, um, it's just always run in the blood, you know? So I would actually, I would actually hustle people. We would, uh, in high school, I'd have bring, like some of my buddies would come back, kids from like the, the football team or basketball team and I would just whoop their ass in Madden.

Like just, I was, that's all I did when I got home. Fucking played Madden, you know? So, uh, they're like, oh, I'll fucking whoop your ass. I'm like, no, you will not come to my house. I got you. And they would come to the house. I don't know, I, I think I was up on the betting there, you know, I maybe won a couple bucks here and there.

Uh, 'cause they thought they were really good. But I was very good at Madden on the police station

Lawson Nuland: I wasn't very good at games or sports until I really hit college. Um, I was long and gangly for basically all of my, uh, pre adult life. And it really sucked for my dad because my dad was a tennis pro for a short time. Um, and he played rugby in college and like even to this day, he's in his like mid sixties and he is built and it's like, man, sorry dad.

You got a nerd instead of a jock. But not even like the good kind of nerd where I could like do speed runs or whatever. It's like, oh, hey, you want me to talk to you about fallout lower that I have, remember? I got you.

Rob Valincius: shit. That like, nobody's like, what the fuck are you talking about, man? You

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. Yeah. It's not what I would say my most marketable skill is, but you know, it, it could be worse. I'm, I'm, I'm mildly interesting at parties.

Rob Valincius: Listen. Um, LASA, talk to me a little bit about growing up, man. What, what was, uh, what was the cha, I know you mentioned a couple things, but talk about growing up and, uh, what got you into the, everyone kind of has that moment where they realize, I fucking love video games, or I love sports. What was that moment for you?

Um, you know, when you get to that,

Lawson Nuland: man, I think mostly it, so one of the things I love a lot about my family is that my family all has very disparate interests, just broadly. Uh, my dad obviously super tennis. My mom really loves British TV shows. She has like Brit Box and Acorn and other ones that you don't even think would exist, but they do.

My brother is insanely into history and can tell you basically at any point in history and any civilization, um. me, I like games. I like games, and I'm pretty good at games. And now that I'm 30, I'm good at talking about games. Again, it's not the most marketable thing. My brother's getting his PhD right now and I feel, and I feel like that's a little bit more useful than having a video game podcast, but to each of their own,

Rob Valincius: At least it's, it's something you wanna do, you know?

Lawson Nuland: this is true

Rob Valincius: I

Lawson Nuland: and I, and I enjoy doing it and I enjoy like putting in the extra effort. Otherwise I wouldn't do stuff like make tiktoks.

Rob Valincius: That's true, that's true. So, so you, what you're saying is, is you were, you were a nerd through and through your whole

Lawson Nuland: Oh, I was, I was, I was so bad at basically all sports growing up, that video games were like the one area that I could do kind of Okay. In, um, I distinctly remember my dad taking us to tennis courts and be like, alright, cool. I need you to just hit the ball. Oh, back over the net. I would take that racket and I would swing like I had never swung before, and those balls would never be seen again.

They'd go up over the net, over the fence and they'd be gone forever. And after a few months, my dad finally threw in the towel and was like, I guess we're just gonna go with soccer.

Rob Valincius: Soccer is like the, the standard sport when you're a kid that if you can't do anything else, so like, let's just do soccer because you're just running up and down trying to kick the ball into the,

Lawson Nuland: And I wasn't even good at that. I, I wasn't even good at that because I didn't wanna run because I didn't like sweating. And we lived in Florida and I was like, ah, this sharks, I wanna play Pokemon.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. Florida's, I mean, look, I'm from Philly, man, so, uh, it's cold. It's cold and it sucks and I hate it. But here we are.

Lawson Nuland: Yeah, I'm originally from Jacksonville, Florida, which is why I now live in Atlanta. Uh, because Jacksonville is where dreams go to die, and anyone who has left Jacksonville is will be able to tell you, Hey, yeah, don't go to Jacksonville, Florida.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. I will say I do love, I do love Georgia. I, I've, uh, for my job, I've traveled down there a couple times and, uh, I love southern hospitality. I think, uh, people are just, they're a lot nicer in the south and I don't consider Florida. The South Florida is like another northeast, it's mostly us that go down there.

Lawson Nuland: So the more north you go in Florida, the more southern it is. So Jacksonville is like it. Jacksonville's just a weird place. I'd say the one good thing about Jacksonville is the zoo, but I moved to Atlanta a few years ago so I could work in film, which has kind of worked. And also I like that there are seasons in Atlanta, there are seasons.

I've seen snow multiple times. It's great.

Rob Valincius: I hate,

Lawson Nuland: but

Rob Valincius: I hate snow because I gotta tell you, we had last Sunday. Three to five inches and uh, and then it was like 15 degrees at night, so everything just froze. Um, so then going to work on Monday is like the worst thing ever. Um, snow, like, we'll say snow before the pandemic. Snow pre pandemic and post pandemic are two different things because pre pandemic my office, if there was a lot of snow and you couldn't get in, it would shut down then we just wouldn't have work that day.

But we would get paid our

Lawson Nuland: There that, wouldn't that be nice?

Rob Valincius: and I had some snow days and it was fucking great. Now at Post Pandemic, everyone can fucking work from home. We're very mobilely designed. Now that, uh, on the plus side, if there's like one inch of snow, it looks a little annoying. They might be like, it's fine guys work from home.

Before it would have to be a little more substantial. We're talking. Four or five inches before they would be like, okay, office is closed. So there's a, a give and take to that, but snow's

Lawson Nuland: mean, you, you don't have to go in, but it's annoying That work has now followed you home. There's no real escape from it now,

Rob Valincius: Yeah,

Lawson Nuland: if you have like a computer job.

Rob Valincius: yeah, yeah. I mean, basically everything I do is phone and computer. So it's like, there, there's no escaping it to a certain degree, you know?

Lawson Nuland: I, I understand. Stand.

Rob Valincius: so what, how did the podcast start for you? Like what, what got you in a podcasting? What made you go, you know what, I'm gonna podcast about gaming. Obviously you're, you love games, so

Lawson Nuland: I, I do, I do. Um, I'd say a big thing that made me want to do the podcast was seeing just gaming journalism as a whole kind of collapse. Um, big outlets like Polygon Game, former, a bunch of like staples that I grew up with are now gone. I mean, polygon still technically exists, but it got bought by, like, they're not a malware company, but they basically just put out like slop over and over and over again to get clicks.

And it's a far cry from the journalism that they used to do. And I'm like, Hey, there's no, there's a big, uh, hole where a lot of this gaming journalism used to be. Maybe we could fill it in. And if not, then at the very least, I made something cool and got to talk about video games. So here we are.

Rob Valincius: yeah, yeah. And even, uh, game former, they shut down, but then they, they came back. Right? They reopened it. Um, I think I get my gaming news from Kotaku. I think I've, I've been using them for a really long time, and even then, I mean, they're okay. I, I don't know. I guess there's no real. Like number one place to get your gaming news and you

Lawson Nuland: isn't, I mean, with Twitch as a platform and YouTube and just how the internet has developed as a whole, and it's hard to really get what you need. But also the question is, what do you need? Because now there's all kinds of different niches of gamer out there. Um, there are people like my wife who will play Pickman and Star de Valley, and that's about it.

Oh. And also animal crossing. Um, and that's a cozy gamer, which is different than someone who buys Call of Duty every year and really loves shooters because that's also a different kind of gamer. And so

Rob Valincius: call that the brain dead gamer.

Lawson Nuland: I, I, so I'm, I'm friends with some people like that, and I under, I under listen, they, they really love guns.

They love gun play and for them, they love getting shot in the head and dying instantly. And I'm like, I'm so happy for you. I am never gonna really wanna play a game like that.

Rob Valincius: Call of Duty has never been as good as it was since. Yeah. I played Call of Duty quite a bit growing up and I, I think at the Call of Duty is really what sparked the online video game era really. Um, like Call of Duty for Modern Warfare

Lawson Nuland: Yep. That was the, that was the inflection point when Call of Duty was no longer like a oh World War II reenactment franchise, and instead was like, oh, what could this be?

Rob Valincius: yeah. And that's what I, I mean I played that religiously and that was so much fun because you had, you know, lobbies where you could talk trash to people and people said the craziest shit and you wouldn't get banned in two seconds. And Yeah, I mean, you know, most of it was like racist shit. 'cause that's just how Call of Duty lobbies are.

But I mean, that was like the. Uh, for me that was Peak Call of Duty. And then, you know, obviously you had some great games in between there, the original Black Ops, things like that. But then now it's just this, and, and it's funny because Activision, I don't know if you saw this, came out and said, look, we get it.

You guys are frustrated. 'cause people were freaking out. It's like you have a, a warfare game, but now you have a giant robotic boss fight. And it's like, what the fuck

Lawson Nuland: Which is I, I think it was you were on Hallucinogenics or something. I think the big problem is, is that Call of Duty is a yearly franchise,

Rob Valincius: Yep.

Lawson Nuland: and because video games as an industry, it's hard. Video games are hard to make. Having interviewed multiple game developers, the overall thing is games are hard to make and they're hard to put out.

Doing it yearly means even with a big team. At some point it's gonna be easy to phone it in because, oh, hey, cool. Even if this one flops, don't worry. We got the next one for next year. They don't have a lot of time to really put Polish on anything or really make the best thing that they can because they're, well, their jobs are at stake.

Right. Alright, cool. They, if they have, if they are given the choice of, okay, cool, you can work for a little while longer, but you're gonna be working off the clock on your own time on this feature, they're gonna just go home because they want to, you know, be rested for the next day.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. And here's the thing. So back in the day, so like I, I worked for GameStop for many years, probably 12 years. I was a, a district manager at one point and Call of Duty, even though it came out every year, they did this cycle with studios. So it was always like Infinity Ward. Tre Arc, infinity Ward, Trey Arc, I think they had sledgehammer games in there somewhere, but it was like they would bounce back and forth.

So you had two studios that had different views and Call of Duty felt different. And then, I don't know when they stopped doing that, but apparently activists came out and said, we, we know the game is shit. We see you, we know that the, um, hold tight. We're gonna have some updates to try to make the game better, but we are no longer doing yearly releases.

It's gonna be every two years. So I think even though two years sometimes is, is not enough time to, to do something big and, and, and better. But people just, uh, PE for one, I've never played a Call of Duty single player campaign in my entire life. I have friends. They, that's the first thing they do is they, they beat the single player and they love it.

Um, and I guess the single player sucked this year to a point where those, if you're gonna anger the people that literally buy it just to. Just to play the single player mode. That's like your hardcore people that you're pissing off,

Lawson Nuland: Yeah, the, there's a very specific kind of person that will play Call of Duty every single year when it comes out, and they will always buy the new one. And once you lose them, you have no one else because everyone else has been turned off from Call of Duty due to. You know, you mentioned the racist lobby chatter.

Um, the fact that the genre's kind of sweaty, um, the fact that like now they keep going like further and further into the future, or you keep introducing weirder and weirder stuff and it's like, okay, cool, well you're getting farther away from what the average person wants. And also, hey, it's sort of like the Madden equivalent or like a FIFA equivalent.

Okay, cool. How is FIFA 2026 different from FIFA 2014? It's still soccer baby. It's the same game. Cool. The only reason I get the new one is to play with my friends, but guess what? If all my friends own FIFA 2014, we can all just play that together. I don't need to buy the new one. Man. I'm good.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. And look, I'm one, I used, I was a, a sports, big time sports gamer. I bought every year and then up maybe, well, one, it's a lot different. Once I went to, like, I, I, I still have my old consoles, but I went strictly pc maybe. I, I've always, so I have an IT degree. I've always built my computers. It's a, it's something I've done since, jeez, I probably have been doing it for 20 years.

'cause I just love building computers. It's like my, like I could zone out and build a computer for eight hours and not, didn't even realize I'm doing it, you know? Um, I just, I really enjoy it. Um, but, and I enjoy building it. It's the software I don't enjoy because the software never fucking works the way it's supposed to.

Lawson Nuland: Software is evil. Um, software is an invention by the devil.

Rob Valincius: Yeah, yeah, yeah. And windows, especially when you're dealing with Windows. For some reason, windows is just, that's just what they like to do. But, um, when I made that move from console to just pc, um, now I still have a switch and we, I'll play the switch with the wifey, we'll play Mario Party, Mario Cart, things like that.

But me, I'm just a PC gamer now. I will, I haven't bought a Madden or, or NBA 2K in years. Uh, I have Xbox Ultimate, so a lot of times it's, since they own Activision at some point, Madden, I think around the Super Bowl is just free on, on there. So I'll just wait it out and then I'll play it. 'cause I only ever play it for two or three months.

You know, I like to build a franchise, play it till like year 10 or 15 or whatever. And then at some point I just get bored of it and. Stop playing. So, um, but that, when I made that switch, I, I turned off a lot of the, the sports style gaming 'cause it's, and, and you're right, it's, you're just playing with new rosters and the, the fluff at that point.

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. And that's one of the problems that the industry has because not only do, uh, these companies want you to buy the games every year, but also now with life service games, they expect you to play them forever. Which you might notice is kind of counter to, we're selling games every year. We want you to pick one game and play it forever.

We want that game to be ours, please.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. It's, especially when you're talking like a game like Call of Duty, right? Where you're trying to get di all the, the guns to diamond and you know, you're trying to be number one in, in Fucking Kills and all this other shit. But what's the point?

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. I think it was like a grant to reasonable game that, uh, recently was taken offline, but people were like, Hey, you took the game offline. I spent like 60, $70 on this, and then I spent more money on it, like for DLC or micro transactions or whatever, and you're just taking it all away. I can't even like go on a race on my own.

What? And that's why in the eu, there's that petition to stop killing games, so that way people can't sell you a game for $60 and then say, actually servers are offline. Sorry. Bye.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. And look, I, I, I'll be the first person to tell you. So, working at GameStop, I, I, I was there during a very pivotal time in gaming. Okay. So, um, I started, I actually started before the 360 came out. Um, I was just a seasonal help. I was, you know, 17, I'd just graduated high school and, uh. You know, that was a crazy era, right?

Uh, we had a demo console with Elder Scroll, elder Scroll's, oblivion. And it was just unlike anything that you've ever seen, you know, compared to original Xbox and PlayStation and all that. And, um, you know, we moved into, you know, more of that online gaming aspect as, as the consoles got better. And then that's when, uh, GameStop started doing the DLC.

And, you know, Ubisoft, it was the bane of my existence because they sucked the money as much money. Like it's, you know, for so long we got these fresh games. It's, it's why I, uh, to the, like as of right now, I have, I have a good top five and we'll talk about your top. I'm sure you got a, a good top five, but in my Top five is one of the more recent titles from Layering Games, bald Skate three, because.

I love that they said, no, we're releasing the full game. There's gonna be no DLC. This is the full fucking game and we want everybody to enjoy it. And I appre and I feel like that's why they sold so many copies because people was like, that's, that's, that's the old school gaming, that's where it's at.

Ubisoft at one point would just nickel and dime you for every little possible piece that they could. And it was a running joke. So like GameStop would have manager meetings once a year, they would fly us out, all of us, you know, from store manager up. And we would go into, we'd have breakout sessions with all these developers.

Uh, you know, we'd get to see new games come out before the public and things like that. So we would go to Ubisoft and it was a running joke 'cause they'd have all these games for the DS and, and Nintendo and, um, for the we. And it was like, you know, my pet too. And we're all sitting there and I'm like, I bet you there's a, there's a season pass for this.

And my buddy would be like, nah, dude. How? And like, and now announcing a season pass where you could get three pets and you're just like, there's no fucking way. Like, it, it was so bad. Like, I don't understand how they had such a, like, they made decent games, but they fucked over their people so bad.

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. Um, it's sort of the problem is the system, but also I think the big thing is they wanna make as much money as possible and hey, they know that they have, like, say you have like 10 million people that will buy Assassin's Creed every year for some goddamn reason. They'll buy it every single year.

That number of people isn't really growing. Your shareholders are gonna want the number to go up every year. So they're like, alright, cool, let's have more dlc. And we're still like, they, well it took until like this year for them to raise the price of a game, which that's a whole conversation in and of itself.

So they're like, alright, well if we wanna have like 10% more revenue every year, we gotta put up more DLC every year. Hello? $10 horse armor and oblivion.

Rob Valincius: It's just, I don't know, man. I, I, I get the, like, look, I get, we live in a consumerist society, right? Everything is sold to you. Um, at this point, even, you know your name and. D where you live and your likes and dislikes, those are sold whether you even realize it or not. I mean, you know, we talk about something, it shows up on our phone.

It's 'cause our phone's fucking listening to us twenty four seven. Um, and I, I get that, but I, I, you gotta appreciate, um, a studio and, and they're not AAA studio, you know, it's like they weren't, I mean, they made some good games, you know, divinity and things like that. And I Have you, did you see the trailer for

Lawson Nuland: I did see the trailer for the New Divinity. I am very excited.

Rob Valincius: I mean, basically what they came out and said was if you thought Balder's Gate was wild, wait till you see what we do with our own ip.

Lawson Nuland: So did you ever play Divinity Original Sin two?

Rob Valincius: I have not played any of the Divinities because I will say this, I'm not the biggest fan. I wasn't the biggest fan of term base combat, uh, huge RPG fan. I love being able to make my own decisions go my own way. It's why I fell in love with Boulder's Gate three. Um, and I know that they've had that in all of their games, but it, it deterred me.

But Boulder's Gate three Turn Bay Style, I actually, I came to like it, like I didn't love it, but I came to like it.

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. Um, divinity Originals in two. I like the world more than I like the world of, of Butler's Gate, um, which I, I'm gonna get hate for. I know. But I've played DDA lot and I, there's a lot of DD content out there, so playing Boulders Gate three is like, okay, cool. I not only know like the world, I know the genre rules of the world, you know, like, ah, yes, a grand old wizard named Bird or something, and like.

Oh, and oh, there's dragons and they're wise and powerful and maybe evil, and there's a rhythm to it that is like, okay, cool. It's a familiar rhythm. It's a good rhythm, but it's also a familiar rhythm.

Rob Valincius: Yeah.

Lawson Nuland: Divinity, original sin is not d and d and that is something that I appreciate, especially, you know, the older I get and the more I'm like, okay, cool.

D and D is great. What else is out there?

Rob Valincius: Yeah, I mean, look, um, I'm excited for those of you that are listening that have not seen the trailer for the New Divinity game, which it seems like they're setting it up to, I, I don't know if they said it's a reboot, but they said it's like a, a, maybe it was a reboot of the franchise. 'cause it's just divinity, right?

Lawson Nuland: Yeah, I have absolutely no idea. And the gameplay, the trailer actually had no gameplay in it. It was basically just a tone setting thing. But I would say it was probably the second best trailer at the game awards. Um, and the fir my first one, that's just be because of personal bias on my part.

Rob Valincius: Well, what, what was your first one that you liked?

Lawson Nuland: Control, resonant.

Rob Valincius: yeah. Yeah. I saw your, I saw you tweet out about it. I saw you tweet out about it.

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. Um, I, I really loved, uh, the first control. It was really good. It was really weird. I do think the, like government agency to contain anomalies thing, I do feel like that sort of worn its welcome, uh, vis-a-vis like the broader culture at this point. How many, how many goddamn games are we gonna have? Oh, this specimen has breached containment.

I, I get it. I, there's a big scary monster and you put 'em in a weird padded cell and there are 80 million games that are doing that now. It's fine. It's cool. I get it. Can we just be a little weirder? And control was like, okay, cool. But also you're weird now too, because Es essentially what happens in control is you are going to try to find your brother.

You go into this secret facility and then you essentially get possessed and. It's like, oh, hey, cool. Yeah, you are, you gain the ability to like fly and like do tele and stuff and it's all really cool, but it's also like, okay, cool, but you're becoming a stranger creature because of this. And my main complaint with control was the ga was the gun play because the guns were all kind of eh.

Rob Valincius: Yeah.

Lawson Nuland: Um, but the melee comment that I showed in resonant, I am very excited for because it looks really weird. I'm hype for it.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. I mean, dude, uh, I, I'll tell you my number one trailer, um, and that was for fate from Star Wars fate of, was it fate of the U Galaxy

Lawson Nuland: I have, uh, no, it was, uh, co cottor was uh, like Knights of the Old Republic. It's fate of the Old Republic.

Rob Valincius: F of the old Republic. That's what it's,

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. But they didn't, uh, give you the acronym because Fotor sounds bad. I.

Rob Valincius: yes, it does. Um, and I'll tell you this, you know, you know, we're talking top five at some point. Uh, the first two, my number one game of all time is the original co tour, uh, as a human that has played video games, that loves video games, there has not been a video game twist for me. Uh, that's hit me as hard as halfway through the game, uh, that you're playing.

Um, you know, I'm not gonna spoil it for anyone, even though it's a 30-year-old game at this point,

Lawson Nuland: Yeah,

Rob Valincius: game, but halfway through the twist, you're just like, what the fuck? No way. And I haven't had that feeling in a really, like, I just, I don't remember the last game that, that might be the last game where I've had a twist like that that just threw me for a fucking loop.

Lawson Nuland: I, I had that experience this year with cla obscure, um, exhibition 33, the one that won like nine out of 13 awards at the game awards. Um, that narrative, uh, punched me in the dick.

Rob Valincius: Is it that good?

Lawson Nuland: Um, so I would say that it's one, it's like one of those cases of like everything in the game is like a nine outta 10. And it's one of those cases where like, okay, cool, it's a nine outta 10 everywhere, which is basically a 10 out of 10 because there are no points in the game where I'm like, man, this is bad.

There are parts of the game where I'm like, man, it's weird that there's no mini map when you're in the over world, but over, hey, the over world's still beautiful and interesting to look at. And it's a fun time. Like there was nothing that really took me outta the game. And by the time I hit the big thing, well, one of the big things I was like, huh, I, I put the game down and I just went to my wife and I'm like, babe, I need to tell you what just happened.

Rob Valincius: And she's like, I don't fucking care.

Lawson Nuland: it took like 30 minutes to explain.

Rob Valincius: Yeah.

Lawson Nuland: but she's like, oh, that's pretty cool. That's what part of why it won all the awards is because once you hit that twist, um, which it, it works really well because it's so well established, you just wouldn't put those pieces together. Um, it's like, okay, cool.

Yeah, no, this game went from being pretty good to incredible just due to the quality of the twist and the way it like changes the narrative.

Rob Valincius: So what, what combat style is it? Like, what are we

Lawson Nuland: It, it's, um, it's, you know, paper Mario,

Rob Valincius: Ah, dude, I probably haven't played paper Mario in a very long time.

Lawson Nuland: it's turn based with QuickTime events.

Rob Valincius: Okay. Like a, okay. I

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. So, so similar as Paper Mario, you'll be like, okay, cool. I'm gonna do this attack. And then you can time it right and do extra damage. And when enemies attack you, you can either Dodge or Perry or do a fancy counter sometimes. But you also have like typing a la Pokemon where, okay, cool, you gotta figure out like what your enemy's weak to.

So there's a lot of systems in play and also due to how you can build out all of your characters, which there's only five. Once you can like build them out, they can all play incredibly differently, which is nice.

Rob Valincius: Interesting. Yeah, I mean.

Lawson Nuland: it doesn't oversay. It's welcome. And that's the biggest thing. You, the game can end after 30 hours if you play right

Rob Valincius: Okay. Yeah. See, I played, yeah, see, I've played, um, so I, I'm on Boulder's Gate three now, still. I, I stopped playing it for a while. I'm on the third act, and I haven't, I haven't brought myself to be able to go through and finish the story yet because I, I just was enjoying it a lot. So I, for me, sometimes I just take breaks, uh, especially like if I had like, role playing games are my favorite genre.

Um, you know, and then competitive style games is my second. So the game that I play probably the most frequently all the time is Valant.

Lawson Nuland: mm-hmm.

Rob Valincius: and I'm really good at it. I'm, I'm, I'm pretty

Lawson Nuland: so what do you think, what do you think of High Guard then? The thing that looked kind of like o valant with horses.

Rob Valincius: It's made by the same guys that did Apex, right.

Lawson Nuland: Apex and Titanfall, allegedly. And then they made a game, which, which, whose name is literally a synonym for Overwatch. High Guard, Overwatch. It's the same thing, but there's horses now, I guess.

Rob Valincius: Look, I, I, I love Apex. I play, I was, uh, day one, apex Legends player. Um, you know, I have, I have much love for the game. It's, I, I think the thing that always deterred me from Apex, uh, at a certain point, 'cause I played it religiously every day, um, was that their MMR system is really bad.

Lawson Nuland: What is MMR?

Rob Valincius: So that's your match rate, like ranking system.

Okay. So you have MMR, which might be your. Your rank that you see, but then the game has an MMR system that you can't see. It's invisible. And so it's, they try to rank, take you like as a skilled player and put you with other players of similar skill and

Lawson Nuland: It's skill-based matchmaking basically.

Rob Valincius: Exactly. Right. Um, but it's, it's something you don't know so that, you know, all these games have their own algorithms.

They have their own way of setting this up. And um, you know, Valant is kind of the same way. So Valant, um, they've been getting flack for their match system. Do, do, have you ever played valant?

Lawson Nuland: I have seen it and I was like, wow, this looks like Counterstrike mixed with Overwatch two games that I don't play.

Rob Valincius: It's exactly. I mean, it's, it's a bomb diffuse game. Five, five, E five, uh, all the characters have a either a role, uh, and they have their own powers and their own things that they're good at. Um, and your team has to. Be compromised of, you know, uh, someone that guards, which is a sentinel. Um, you have initiators which kind of, you know, give you the information.

You have doulas which fight, and, and they're the ones that initiate the combat and take space for you when you're trying to take a site, whatever it is. And they have different maps. Um, their MMR system is asked to like the, but the problem is, and like, I don't know how you can fix it, but you have people that just smurf.

So a smurf is someone that's got a high level character. They create a, a rookie account, go through the training and do the, the matches that they need to do and that, or they buy the account from, you know, someone from, you know, Venezuela or Brazil and who was just creating characters and they buy for 10 bucks so that they can just dominate in the lower ranks.

Lawson Nuland: Yeah, so they can play it on stream and be like, yeah, look at how good

Rob Valincius: Yeah. They're like, boom, boom, boom, boom. And you're like, what the fuck? You know? Um, eh, it sucks. Um, but then you have games, you know, I played a game the other day at, whoa, man. So Valerie can be very frustrating. So it's, uh, first to 13, by the way. So it's, it's not a, yeah, yeah. It's, it's a long game. It's, the minimum you can go typically is about 25 minutes.

Like that's at its minimum. Um, most ca most cases, most cases you're talking 40 ish minutes for a match. Um, the problem is, is if you go into OT overtime, 13, 13, I had this match two days ago. Went in overtime, it was about close to an hour. 'cause it, we, we, uh, goes in when it was into triple overtime. So first overtime, once it's done, if you tie, so you each get, there's two rounds and if, if the other team wins both game's over.

But if you tie, you go on and then you vote if you wanna continue. So after you do OT one, OT two, you need just six people to say yes. Boom, you're in, um, OT two, you need three people. And then by the time you get to OT three, if you finish OT three and it's tied, you only need one person to say draw. And the match is over and it's a draw and it's basically you wasted an hour of your life.

It's,

Lawson Nuland: And you didn't even win.

Rob Valincius: and like, so it's an RR system, right? So if you win, you get, depend on how well you did. It could be plus 18 rr it might be. Plus 27 if you're a match, m, VP, whatever, um, or if you lose minus 18, if you've, you know, got 13 owed, which doesn't happen often, but it can, you might lose 25 or whatever. Right.

But that's all based on the MR that the game creates. Like where you are in the system compared to who you're playing with and who you're playing against. Also with your rank, there's so much shit. Um, but I got plus four for, because I was match MVP, so like had I not got match MVP, it'd still be zero, you know?

Um, but those games with those systems, uh, I don't know if there's a way to fix 'em, but Valant is my, like crack. That's what I, I enjoy playing 'cause I like com competition. I like being competitive and, uh, I don't play sports anymore, uh, because I tore my a CLA long time ago. So, um, I don't get that competitive flow, you know what I mean?

Lawson Nuland: Yeah.

Rob Valincius: And I need it. I need the competitive flow.

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. I play like one competitive type game, and that's called the finals. Um,

Rob Valincius: the finals. I played the finals.

Lawson Nuland: the final. It's so good. I love the, the movement in the finals is so nice. Um. I wish the guns were more interesting, but then again, I am also that kind of person who's like, alright, cool, so you're setting us in like a virtual world.

Why is there not a gun that shoots lasers? Why is there not an electro whip or something? Right? Like, I, I don't, you don't need, okay, they have a gun that is like a three shot incendiary shotgun. So I know you can get weird with it. Embark, get weirder. Get, get me, get me a weapon. That's also a pogo stick. I don't know.

I don't care. Gimme something weird, man.

Rob Valincius: So what I'm getting from you so far in this interview, Lawson, is that you just like weird shit, man. You want your games to be weird.

Lawson Nuland: Yes. Because if I, if it's the same, if I play a game and it's the same thing as another game, why am I playing that game? I, I know, I know that I am going to die one day. I, I am going to die and it's gonna suck. And so in that time, I wanna enjoy myself as much as possible. So I don't wanna play 80 call of duties that are all the same game.

I get it. You go, you point, you click, they're dead. It's fine.

Rob Valincius: Yeah, look, I love, I love the thought process, right? Um, but you know, much like a game, like, you know, the co tour series, right? Where. They just fuck with your head. You know, in, in the, in co tour two, you end up, you know, the, the person that's on your team ends up being the bad guy of the game. Um, you know, and, and there's just so many of those things and you know, I I, I'm pushing 40 and I gotta say, there's certain things that you remember in life and I need, I need that.

Lawson Nuland: Yeah.

Rob Valincius: me, as a gamer, I need like the, those memorable moments where you're gonna remember that shit for the rest of your life. Like, uh, I'll tell you this story. So with co tour, I was a, just a sports gamer. At that time, I, I didn't, I was not like the nerd you see today, Lawson, I, I just, I played Madden, I played 2K, well, at that time it was NBA Live.

It wasn't 2K, 2K wasn't even really a thing, but that's what I played all the time, 24 7. And then, um, I went into a GameStop and I was. At the time, this was before I worked at GameStop, so I was maybe, I think I was 16, 17. It was, it was like right around the same time that I was thinking about trying to apply.

But I go in and I'm like, look, dude, I'm so tired of playing sports games. What's a game? I, and I, at the time, I was an X boxer, uh, well, I had Xbox and PlayStation, I had 'em both. Um, and he's like, listen, he walked me over to the Xbox section and he pulled out co tour and, uh, it was a used copy. It was a used one.

And he goes, I want you to play this. And I, at the time, I also wasn't into Star Wars and I, that game literally threw me into the stratosphere for Star Wars. But uh, he said, if you do not like this game, you can bring it back in and I will buy it back from you. Like, that's how confident he was. I'm like, all right, man.

His name was James, by the way. I still remember his name. And I still remember the conversation and, um, I took it home. I started playing it and I just, I played it for, so I was working at, at the time, I was working at CVS, I would work eight hours, come home. I would play until one o'clock in the morning, go to bed, rinse, repeat for, for days, just entrenched into the game.

And I have not had an experience like that probably my entire life. That's what like, I think just, it opened the floodgates for me for gaming and I'll never forget it. And you know, to this day I thank him for, for doing that because it, it gave my, it like sparked my love of Star Wars, of role-playing games and it opened me into playing outside of that sports world.

And I think sometimes sports gamers, if you're listening, open the door, man. Go try something new. Try something weird.

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. Listen, if there's, if a game does not present me with something interesting from the jump, I am not particularly inclined to keep playing because again, there's, there's so many games out there. About 50 games come out every single day on Steam

Rob Valincius: Really.

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. Cover that in my first episode because we were talking about how to market your game and marketing your game is hard when 50 games come out every day so you can release like the, one of the coolest games ever.

You didn't market it properly. No one cares. Sorry. Too bad

Rob Valincius: Yeah, I mean, um, there's some, there's some odd ball game, like steam is definitely, uh, do, do you have a steam deck?

Lawson Nuland: I do not have a steam deck because, um, well, I have a nice gaming PC and. Honestly, I don't think I should be trusted with, uh, PC gaming on the go.

Rob Valincius: It's awesome. I have a steam deck. I use, I use it every other day, if not every day. It is awesome. I love it. Fantastic purchase. Uh, and I encourage people, uh, look, the graphics aren't, uh, you know, like a, the full on gaming pc, but to be able to play like, uh, the Witcher three on the go and it looks, it makes the switch look like, you know, child's play.

You know, like a, uh, like a kid's iPad type thing. But fucking awesome. Love it. It was a great purchase. I, I kind of mad 'cause you know, they came at the LED version now and stuff like that, but it's still I love it, dude. It was a

Lawson Nuland: It it's one of those things where it's like, man, that'd be really nice to have, but that it's, there's a list of things that I'm like, man, I'd really like to have X and Y and Z and z.

Rob Valincius: Good Christmas present. That's all I'm saying.

Lawson Nuland: The man,

Rob Valincius: Better tell the wifey and Santa

Lawson Nuland: mean, listen, my, my, uh, ideal Christmas person would be a new gaming chair because this one has been destroyed by my cat.

Rob Valincius: Yeah, my, uh, my gaming chair has, I don't have a cat, but it's, it's, at this point, it's seven years old, I think. And, uh, my ass has destroyed it. It's, it's, it's,

Lawson Nuland: It's, it, it, it's about time. It's starting to like burst at the seams in places. I, I'd like to get a new one at some point, but you know, maybe if Super Wall jump really takes off, I can be like, Hey guys, if you'd give me enough money on Patreon, I can get a chair that doesn't hurt my butt.

Rob Valincius: well, what you could also do too, man, is you can, like, I have a LLC, so I, I deviate. So I, um, Drink O’Clock podcast. It's, uh, technically a business. And, uh, if I need, if I needed a new chair, it's, it's a business. Write off baby taxes.

Lawson Nuland: true, but I, I would like to have money coming into the LLC first. That, that's the thing is I can't, I would love to make money from the podcast, but also I've put out like eight episodes, so if we're being honest, the podcast is still in its infancy,

Rob Valincius: Yeah, yeah. Look, I'm at well over three years and I haven't made a dime, so, uh, I also could do better. I don't, I don't post as much on socials like I should. Um, I don't, uh, I don't post, uh, on TikTok and stuff like that, like I should, I just don't have the time. 'cause I do have a full-time job. So half of the things that I do, um, I mean, really the, my YouTube videos and stuff, if I didn't have ai, it would be, it'd be pretty tough.

It'd be difficult because once again, perfectionist, Adobe Premier is fucking awesome. I taught myself how to use it, but. I can't just throw the video files in and be done with it there. There's a lot more to it. Whereas AI can be like, Hey, here you go, video files, do it.

Lawson Nuland: Yeah, perk of the perk of the gaming space is a lot of times I can just do, my goal is do one TikTok a week and one piece of vertical content can go on Instagram, it can go on TikTok, it can go on YouTube shorts. Will it necessarily get a lot of followers or subscribers? No, but then I will be in the habit of posting and then people will regularly be getting eyes on my work. Like, uh, the latest TikTok I did did like 2000 on Bo. I did 2000 on YouTube. I did a thousand on TikTok and 200 on Instagram reels because Instagram reels is bad. Um, but that's. That's 3,200 people that have seen my stuff, and that's more people who are getting eyes on it and well, the more stuff I have, the bigger backlog I have, the better marketing materials I have, it's eventually a numbers game.

Once I hit certain points, I'll launch a Discord to form a community. Then I'll launch the Patreon and then I'll be able to be like, Hey, I make money doing games journalism. Would you like to be on my podcast? People at Yousoft? Would you like to tell me about your crunch?

Rob Valincius: Yeah. Would you like to tell me how much you sucked the soul outta fucking gamers?

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. How, how well do you treat your employees? Do you have a union?

Rob Valincius: now we, we mentioned, uh, you know, we talked a a lot about Boulder's Gate three and Larry and Games. Right? One the trailer, which we didn't discuss is. Awesome because you

Lawson Nuland: Oh yeah.

Rob Valincius: uh, someone being burnt at the stake and then at the end everyone's dead on a giant tree of death and just awesome, awesome trailer.

But they came into a lot of fire this past week 'cause they were talking about utilizing AI to generate some of the game. What are your thoughts about that? Obviously as a gamer, um, you know, the, the use of ai. I know you've had some episodes, um, about, you know, AI's threat to voice acting and stuff. How do you feel AI's role in video games is gonna be, and do you think it's a good or bad thing?

Lawson Nuland: I think that the places that are pitching AI stuff are the bigger companies. And I know L's not a big studio, but it's still a pretty big studio.

Rob Valincius: Oh, they're a big studio now, man. They got big boy money. They got big boy money.

Lawson Nuland: Oh, they definitely do. But that's part of the thing with investors and share shareholders, and it's been a thing that I've also been seeing in the film industry. Basically due to interest rates being higher, money is more expensive to come by. People are no longer willing to take out tons of loans, and investors are way more reticent to give out money.

And there's one quick and easy way for many people to get more funding. And that's by saying, did you know that we're implementing AI at Chipotle? And a lot of times AI's not even that particularly useful. And it's just, oh, hey, cool. My boss wants me to use this tool. So that way he can tell his boss, who can tell his boss, who can tell the investors, don't worry.

We're using chat GPT to brush kids' teeth. And it's like, I don't think I, I think that a, it, it's a thing a lot of people use. And I'm not gonna say, oh, hey, cool. You're the devil if you use ai. But I am gonna be like, but did you have to, did you have to use AI or was it just convenient? You know, it's like taking steroids.

Yeah, you could take steroids and get, get a lot of bulk real quick. But is that good? Because I've tinkered with AI here and there and usually for me it gets me maybe half where to where I want to go, but I have to start from scratch anyways because the ways in which it messes up are ways that are like fundamental.

It's like, oh hey cool. I want to be able to do blank, but I would, I need to do it from first principles anyways. So is it great? No. Have a lot of people said, Hey, yeah, we use ai. 'cause experts 33 also apparently used ai. I think unfortunately AI is here to stay, but I do think I.

Rob Valincius: Sorry

Lawson Nuland: Yeah, you're all good. Um, I do think it's about how you use it.

You know, a knife is not necessarily a weapon unless you use it like a weapon. Some people just use knives to cut carrots. Some people use knives to kill people and, hey, ai, like when it's used in the medical field. Great. Cool. That's a great use of the technology and can be very helpful. Do I think that, you know, you should use ai if you want to have a cool picture of a dog?

No. Talk to an artist. They'll be, you could, you'll be able to commission something that's cool and unique and also pays someone's rent.

Rob Valincius: that's true. I mean, look, um, I think if, if ai, if you're using AI as a tool, right, and not the full on generator.

Lawson Nuland: mm.

Rob Valincius: And it can speed up the process. So it could take a game that's would've taken eight years to build and maybe cuts it to five or six. That's great. You shouldn't be using ai, like you said, as, as the baseline, right?

Is the kind of that funda, uh, the foundation of your house that that's not gonna be very good at the end of the

Lawson Nuland: Yes, because a lot of, like for AI coding and stuff, a lot of times it'll introduce errors and all the time you saved coding, you have to spend debugging.

Rob Valincius: yeah. Yeah. So I mean, like, if you're using it to just generate, you know, a thousand trees, you know, or something that you would've had to do by hand or you

Lawson Nuland: would've, you probably would've just, you probably would've just bought an asset pack off of like the unreal store anyways. You weren't gonna hand make a thousand trees. Mm-hmm.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. So I think in that aspect, okay. And, um, I guess they, they got a lot of flack for that. And the, the, um, the head of Larian and the owner was like, come down. That's not like you guys are, that's not what we're gonna do. Like, you're taking this way overboard. We're just saying we're gonna use AI in certain elements to help with the game.

So it was like

Lawson Nuland: there's also the like pro worker perspective on it, which is, hey. Are you pushing AI onto, Hey, A, are you pushing AI onto your employees and like making them use it? And also, are you making your employees use it to see just how few employees you need? Because that's been a thing in the marketing field of, oh, hey, well, we don't actually need a graphic designer or like a video guy or any of these things.

We just need one dude with a chat GPT subscription, and he'll do everything. And it's just an excuse to not hire people. And the thing is, is that it's Im, it's basically impossible to know people's motives without being able to talk with him face to face. If, Hey, why are you using ai? Are you using AI because it's genuinely a way to save money and time?

Or are you doing it because you don't wanna pay good rates?

Rob Valincius: Yeah, I mean, look, there's a lot of people out there and I don't wanna get doom and gloom at the end of this, but there's a lot of people out there saying that, you know, within the next 15 to 20 years, you know, we might be talking universal income because AI's just gonna take over so many jobs and industries that there's gonna be so many people that ha don't have a job or anything to do because everything's being run by that, you know?

Lawson Nuland: is gonna happen. When we get cold fusion, it's always 20 years away.

Rob Valincius: Yeah, that's

Lawson Nuland: Even since I was like 12 people, I've been talking about UBI and we, like we've had dozens of test cases or it's like, Hey, cool, it works. We know it works. If you just give people money, they spend it and the economy gets better.

We know that it works. But do I think it's ever gonna happen in America? No, I know that there is currently a initiative in Ireland for artists that will, that are getting a stipend, but it's obviously just for artists and it's a whole thing, and it's also just in Ireland. So I think that we will see broader welfare, but I think that without severe political change, we are not gonna see universal basic income, just broadly, which is unfortunate because it would help a lot of people.

Rob Valincius: yeah, yeah. Look, I, I'm okay with them taking the, uh, abolishing the IRS, you know, I'll take that. 'cause at least, uh, at least I'll get all I looked at my, my pay and it's like, dude. How much money is, is well one, social security won't exist. When I, when, when we hit 65, I would be

Lawson Nuland: yeah. Definitely not.

Rob Valincius: it, but I've been, I've been working since 14, so I've spent the past fucking, you know, 25 years, 27 years, whatever, put money into the system where I'm never even gonna benefit from it, you know?

So, uh,

Lawson Nuland: I don't know. Maybe,

Rob Valincius: other podcast. Maybe

Lawson Nuland: maybe things would be better if, you know, the Pentagon could pass an audit at some point in the past decade. I don't know. Maybe if $3 trillion didn't just evaporate and no one knows where it is, that'd be good.

Rob Valincius: yeah. Yeah. Would love to know where, where, you know, trucks of fucking dollars just happen to disappear to,

Lawson Nuland: I mean, it's the, it's the reason that, uh, the very few, like Pentagon stuff that we've seen, it's like, oh, they spend $50 on a wrench, but where is that money actually going? Because you can get a wrench at Home Depot for 10.

Rob Valincius: Yeah. Yeah. It's a joke. It's a running joke. And it's funny because, you know, you had so much turmoil when you had, you know, doge and Elon working on stuff and he was like blatantly saying like, you know, you got people that are getting social security that are 350 years old and you know, all this other stuff.

And I'm sure he embellished to a certain degree, but just wild to think how much money the government just wastes. That's our money, you know, where we're working every day to just fucking hand over to Joe Schmo that can buy a, you know, a wrench set for $300.

Lawson Nuland: I'm just happy that Elon got punched in the face

Rob Valincius: yeah. Yeah.

Lawson Nuland: because allegedly that's how he left the White House. Uh, he got into a fight with somebody and they punched him in the face and then he's gone. Doge is gonna be disbanded, I think, within the next few months. Um, yeah. Uh,

Rob Valincius: uh, look, hey, look. If you're gonna go out, go out swinging, I guess, right?

Lawson Nuland: I, I don't, I don't think he was swinging. Uh, he's not the, he's not the kind of guy that takes, the only swings he takes is when he gets mad and butt hurt on Twitter. Uh, like, oh no, we should abolish women or something, because women are mean to me because they, they don't wanna accept a horse in exchange for a hand job. A literal thing that happened. There was an airplane stewardess that he, that worked for him and he was like, Hey, get busy with me and I'll give you a horse. Yeah,

Rob Valincius: I mean, did she, did she get a

Lawson Nuland: no, no. Um, but basic, basically every white woman of childbearing age, he has come on to that works for him.

Rob Valincius: It doesn't shock me. I mean, he's, he's a billionaire, so I

Lawson Nuland: he's just kind of like a general creep, broadly and,

Rob Valincius: oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Big

Lawson Nuland: and considering how like he wanted to make grok a sexy cat girl, like, Hmm.

Rob Valincius: Oh yeah. Well, he, it's also rock's got like the, um, what's the, what's the mode? Um, there's a mode on grok where it's like, it will like, like, uh, demean you and like talk down you and shit like that. It's

Lawson Nuland: I have, I have no idea. I, the only time I use Twitter nowadays is when I am po. I'm like, okay, well I have an idea for a post and I'll post on Blue Sky Threads and then Twitter in that order.

Rob Valincius: I used, I use Twitter or x, whatever the fuck you wanna call it. I use it for all of my sports knowledge because in, in most cases, I'm gonna find out on, on Twitter 10 minutes before everyone else. But a lot of news too, I mean, like, fuck dude, the, the stuff with Charlie Kirk, I mean, there, that video was on Twitter within, within 30 seconds of it happening.

And, and most people are like, that's gotta be ai, that's gotta be fake. And then before you know it, people are like, oh shit. No, that wasn't fake,

Lawson Nuland: Yeah. Well, that's the other risk of AI is what is real. How do you know what's real? People can say literally anything now, and you have to be like, but, but did they say that?

Rob Valincius: Yeah. And then there's a video recording and it sounds exactly like Denzel Washington. You're like, is that Denzel Washington? I

Lawson Nuland: Denzel Washington says, we need to kill all birds. I don't understand why he's saying that.

Rob Valincius: Birds are, you know, the, uh, all run by the government and they're robots. There's actually a, a people that believe that, by the way, that birds aren't real.

Lawson Nuland: oh, a hundred percent. Uh, that's another thing about the internet is that you pre-internet, these people would just have these beliefs and keep 'em to their selves. But because now they can talk to anyone ever, they can talk to the three other people that also think birds aren't real and be like, I'm not alone.

I'm not crazy. And really it's just them reinforcing people's craziness and like, ah, yes.

Rob Valincius: Yeah, it's just three people. It's like one crazy now it's three crazy. It's, it's

Lawson Nuland: like the, it's the flat earthers of like, dude, this is like, so they. Back in like World War I, they, they were studying how they, they were calculating the earth's curvature for artillery plans. Like, come on man.

Rob Valincius: Well look man, this was, uh, this was a lot of fun. I need you to plug yourself, where can they find your podcast? And, uh, you know, if you got anything that's coming out in the near future that you wanna plug away.

Lawson Nuland: Sure thing. Uh, I am Lawson Nuland, basically everywhere. That's Nuland with N-U-L-A-N-D. Um, I'm an actor, I'm a sound mixer, and I'm just overall a kind of chill guy. You can check out my podcast, super Wall, jump on Spotify, apple Podcast, YouTube, or wherever else you listen to podcasts. Um, and also I am just about to start a YouTube channel called Two Story Entertainment.

There's going to be a short documentary on there, probably by the time this episode releases, so I'd appreciate if you go and check that out. It's gonna be called Bigger and Faster, and it's about the neighborhood where I grew up. But aside from that, uh, yeah, follow me, check me out and tell people to hire me to be in their movie because I am, you know, I'm cool.

Rob Valincius: He needs money. People, he needs a job. Uh,

Lawson Nuland: I, I, well, listen, I, I, I freelance. I freelance where I can, but you know, I would like more money. I'd like to buy a house one day, and you can make that happen by telling Netflix that they need to hire me.

Rob Valincius: well look man, uh, it was a pleasure having you on. Uh, my podcast is DrinkOClockPod on all socials, Drink O'Clock podcast, wherever you listen to podcasts. And this episode will hopefully be up, uh, you know, within the next week or two.

Lawson Nuland: Alright.

Rob Valincius: Awesome. And you guys have a great night and uh, thank you for hanging out. 

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