Jugnutts and Slowbird join PsEG for a hectic podcast recorded an hour before Giant Bomb DiRT 3 Race Night in America. Within, we discuss pre-E3 thoughts on Forza Motorsport 4, along with DiRT 3's gameplay and career mode. We're panicking, everyone's rushing their thoughts -- sounds like status quo for We Are Race Night!
Featuring:
PsEG (Podcast editor, Giant Bomb GT season two champion)
Slowbird (Ford enthusiast, Giant Bomb GT season one champion)
Jugnutts (Race Night savior, F1 fan, bought a racing wheel)
Have Slowbird check over the RSS feed, then submit it to iTunes
Put up a link to our iTunes feed
Promote podcast on next Dave Snider radio show, because we bloody well can
Keep on keepin' on
Any questions or comments for our show? Either post them as a reply to this blog entry, or email them to giantbombforza@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy!
It's a packed weekend of racing, so PsEG, Keval, and Slowbird sit down to discuss Dirt 3, the new revelations about Forza Motorsport 4, the upcoming Indianapolis 500, and Keval's experience with go-karting. Plus, we talk way too much about food!
Featuring:
PsEG (Podcast editor, Giant Bomb GT season two champion)
Slowbird (Giant Bomb GT season one champion, featured on the Dirt 3 TNT)
Forza 3 Scrub League Race Nights, Thursdays, 8:00 PM EDT
Tired of being at the back of the pack at Forza Race Night? Join Slowbird as he guides inexperienced drivers in races specialized just for them! He'll give himself extreme handicaps throughout the night, so you know he won't be a problem at all. Join him, won't you? More information can be found in the Forza Race Night thread.
Giant Bomb DiRT 3 Race Night in America, Sundays, 8:00 PM EDT
DiRT 3 is awesome. It's even more awesome online. You should join us. Check out our thread here.
Still To Do
Figure out how to embed album art in mp3 files
Have Slowbird check over the RSS feed before submitting it to iTunes
Promote podcast on next Dave Snider radio show, assuming nobody did while we were recording last night
Keep on keepin' on
Any questions or comments for our show? Either post them as a reply to this blog entry, or email them to giantbombforza@gmail.com. Thanks for listening, and I hope you enjoy!
This week, another regular joins the fray as the crew rambles on about NASCAR's stupid little issues, before delving into yet another discussion about the imminent release of Dirt 3. In between all of that, we discuss last week's Race Night antics, and schedule ourselves two new recurring race night events. It's racing talk without the organization! Plus: Your email!
Featuring:
PsEG (Podcast editor, Giant Bomb GT season two champion
Slowbird (Giant Bomb GT season one champion, David Ragan supporter)
GTFan712 (BMW fanatic, doesn't know a thing about NASCAR)
This week on WARN, new regulars join us to talk about the end of Giant Bomb GT's second season, our various cars in real life, along with a little bit of Formula 1 and NASCAR chatter! It's a bunch of disjointed rambling as we stammer around some strange topics, and I couldn't be prouder. Plus, we talk more Forza 3, Dirt 3, and even delve into a discussion on GTA IV. Regan Smith!
Featuring:
PsEG (Podcast editor, Giant Bomb GT season two champion)
Beef Daddy (Race Night savior, F1 fan, AMP drinker)
Keval N (Race Night original, Hyundai Genesis Coupe owner)
Joined Partway Through By:
Slowbird (Giant Bomb GT season one champion, not Regan Smith)
Create an RSS feed manually, because I'm weird and inefficient like that
Find a Race Night regular that uses iTunes, and get them to figure out how to list our podcast on iTunes
Keep on keepin' on
As always, if you have any questions or comments (I'm especially curious to know if the volume's OK), please feel free to post them below or PM them to me. You can also send them to giantbombforza@gmail.com, if you're so inclined. Thanks, and I hope you enjoy the podcast!
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It was just another day in the sleepless city of lights. Rainy and foggy, as always. As I leaned back in my chair, sipping my glass of whiskey and pondering my next case, it reminded me a little of the corruption that plagued this city. Rain gets on everyone, and the fog only clouds the truth behind layers of grey.
Before I had the chance to think up more awful symbolism to describe the city, the silhouette of a woman appeared in my doorway. A real doll, this one. Femme fatale to the core, and I'm not just saying that because of the quest. I could tell she wanted something. Something...urgent.
"Little late to come in here lookin' for something, miss." It was only 7:00 PM, but I wasn't used to visitors. Happens when you forget to advertise your services.
She sighed softly and slowly stepped towards my desk. "What I am looking for always comes late, darlinge." She had a way with her words, and an accent that I simply couldn't place. "I am in the neede of services to finde something near and dear to my hearte."
Now I was completely confused. "Is...is that a lisp, or why are you talking like th-"
"Never mind the way I talke, detective. I neede you to find me...informatione on a passion of mine."
"Seriously, dame, I don't know what your angle is, but that impediment of yours is givin' me the willies. Nobody says those words like that, sweetheart."
She pulled out a small envelope and set it on my desk before turning to walk away. "Just give me the statistics on...the queste. I'll expect dailye reports from you untile it leaves thee citye."
"OK, seriously, now you're not even trying with that 'e' thing, miss."
She shot me a glare before walking out of my life. I didn't know if I'd see her again, or if I could trust her...but the contents of the envelope were too good to ignore. I may be a man of strong moral character, but I never turn down a payment of bonus XP, not even in this city.
First, though, I had to give her a sampling of my work.
Los Angeles Black Progress as of May 22nd, 12:32 AM EDT
The gold line is our 4,000 user goal, the red line's the progress we need to exceed to succeed, and that bright green line is our progress thus far. In the fog of the night, sometimes colors aren't what they seem.
We're just now touching the red line we needed to stay above for success. With one more day to go, our chances are pretty much gone.
Now, I just had to give her the numbers based on the latest graph update. I'm not sure she really wanted them.
We're about 132.5 hours into this quest, with 26.5 hours to go.
Over the last day, we earned 87 more completions. That's about a 18% drop-off in completions from yesterday.
At the end of yesterday, we needed at least 14.34 completions per hour to succeed.
Our current overall rate is 25.3 completions per hour. In the last hour, our average was closer to 4.7 completions per hour.
From this point forward, we need at least 24.33 completions per hour to succeed. Since tomorrow's the final day, we need all 644 remaining completions within the next 26.5 hours or so.
If the overall rate remained stable, we'd complete this quest in another 25.5 hours. If the short-term rate stays as it is, we'd fail, attaining only 3,479 completions.
My Pessimist's Estimation, using that 18% daily drop-off, predicts we'll fail, earning only 3,427 completions.
My CURVE estimate still thinks we'll fail, and using a second calculation that I'm testing, it now predicts we'll earn somewhere between 3,456-3,472 completions.
My Arbitrary Estimation of Success is 0%. Four days in a row where I agree completely. That might be a record!
Any questions, requests, or criticisms? Post them here. I'll be glad to respond, though I'm usually slow and end up responding around the time I update the stats each night.
Tomorrow, she expected more. I knew I had to deliver, and I didn't want to hear any lip from her. That accent of hers was more unsettling than a dark alleyway.
So Brink's a game! To be honest, I didn't know a thing about it until this week, when the reviews and quick looks started rolling out. Regardless, I've had this odd curiosity, this interest, this desire to try Brink out. You know why?
It's that neat light blue box cover. Maybe it's slightly aqua blueish. Still, they use that color for all the box cover-esque promotion materials, and it's really darn catchy to the eyes. That color choice alone has piqued my interest far too much. Perhaps my tired old graphs could stand to be renovated, too!
Let's try that right now.
On the Brink Final Progress
The yellow line at the top is our 3,000 user goal, the red line's the average pace we need to exceed to succeed, and the trendy white line is our progress over the duration of the quest.
SUCCESS! My vacuum effect exists! The closer the quest edged to its goal, the faster the completion rate increased. Also, this played out excellently for a quest, coming down to the final few hours to determine whether we'd succeed or fail. The decision to make this a 3,000 user goal was very wise, indeed.
I'm also considering making my graphs look more stylish in the future. I think prettier graphs are a must now.
Here's some bland final stats to look at when your eyes need a break from the beauty of our success:
We finished this quest at 11:25 PM EDT on May 15th, 130.2 hours into the quest. We finished with 3.6 hours still on the clock.
As of yesterday, we needed at least 7.07 completions per hour to succeed. Overnight, this increased to 8.7 completions per hour. Overall, we needed to exceed 22.43 completions per hour to succeed.
Our final overall average was 23 completions per hour. In the last half hour, our average was 32.1 completions per hour. Yeah, you read that last stat right. 32.1 is a huge number, spurred on by people scrambling to be one of the final few to earn bonus XP.
If our overall average pace remained stable, we'd have the potential to earn 3,082 completions. 3,000 was indeed a very wisely chosen user goal.
The most accurate estimation model was the CURVE estimate on day three, which estimated we'd succeed with less than an hour to go. No model did a particularly good job of guessing the increase in the final day, which is to be expected.
Just eyeballing the overall performance graph, it appears we're performing between the Hyper Combo Chain Multiplier and Uh Uh Uh Uh Uh quest. Still trying to think up a better way to present the overall graph to prevent it from being a mess of colored spaghetti-esque lines.
Questions? Requests? Criticisms? Don't hesitate to post them here. I'll be back with pretty graphs the next time a quest rears its ugly head.
A few months ago, while in the midst of Forza Race Night, a few of us joked about starting a podcast where we could have the same crazy conversations we typically have while playing Forza Motorsport 3.
Last week, I decided we'd actually give this crazy idea a shot, and invited the Race Night regulars to join me. The conversation's not as crazy as our weekly racing affairs, but it's certainly an interesting glimpse into some of our views on racing and gaming.
We Are Race Night Episode 1
On this week's WARN, we, the gritty veterans of Race Night, introduce ourselves, and talk about last week's happenings at Forza Race Night and the Giant Bomb GT tournament. The evolving single-player component of games is also discussed, and we muse on how to make racing games have a compelling narrative. Shift 2, Dirt 3, and Forza 4 all get their mention this week, amongst a surprising amount of older Codemasters titles!
Featuring:
PsEG (Host of Forza Race Night, editor of podcast)
Pax (Founder of Forza Race Night, Gamestop manager, writer)
Slowbird (Top-performing Race Night regular, makes bad jokes)
RSS and iTunes stuff will appear in the following few weeks, once we make a schedule out of this.
Any comments, suggestions, or questions are more than welcome. Since this is the first podcast I've edited, I'd love to hear what you think about the volume/quality of the mp3. We'd also love to hear your questions or suggestions for topics in future episodes. Feel free to either post them here, PM them to me, or email them to giantbombforza@gmail.com. Thanks!
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There are so many memes I could drop in here, but none of them feel right. There's only so many times I could say the cake's a lie or how I'm making a note of "huge success" (which I'm not just yet). Plus, I haven't played Portal 2 yet, and I'll be trying like crazy to dodge as many spoilers as possible until I get the chance to try it out.
I'm not so sure I'll be successful dodging spoilers this week. Regardless, I have graphs. It's time to enter the Quest Information and Tabulation Prognostication Station!
First, please indulge yourself in this, the last of our Lined Success Determination Scatterplots.
Questing With Portals Final Progress The yellow line is our Quest Success Barrier, the red line is the Diagonal Minimum Pace Indicator, and the green line is our progress over the course of the quest, or our Randomly Curvy Linear Progression Meter. The dashed orange line is the barrier into the heart of the Danger Zone™.
The quest box disappeared from the main page, so obviously we've failed. I don't think we had a shot at success even if this quest went unhindered, but it certainly would have looked nicer. Anyways, we'll pick ourselves up and enter the next quest chamber looking for success, won't we? Of course we will.
Now then, please finish off your diet of stats with the final serving of Graph-Synchronized Numerical Bulleted Statistics, which have not been seasoned with Interesting Tidbits™ or excitement. Accept our humble apologies.
The community quest lasted roughly 129.8 hours. It may have been more like 128.5 hours, but I'm not about to delve into a game of nitpicking with you monsters.
In our final waning hours, an additional 290 test subjects embraced futility and completed the quest set. That is a 1.7% drop-off from the previous measuring period, which is a minor victory in the face of horrendous failure. At least 1,210 of you should still be ashamed of yourselves. Take no victory from these statistics if you happen to be one of those failures.
According to my Overall Progress Pace Readings, we averaged 21.5 completions per hour over the duration of this quest. Given the adjusted time, we needed about 30.65 completions per hour to taste success. It's a taste you'll never know, at this rate.
To successfully complete this quest, I estimate we would need another 126.1 hours. For the mathematically-challenged, that's another 5.25 days.
This quest can't really be compared with past quests now, thanks to all the downtime. I'm sure you knew that already. Still, if you must know, it slightly underperformed when compared to Hyper Combo Chain Multiplier!, our MvC3 quest set. No other quest set is all that close to its awkward performance, and I'm attempting to brainstorm ideas for future quest comparison graphs so they're not as messy as they've been in the past.
If you have any questions, comments, or criticisms, please type them below in the Feedback Organization & Submission Box, and press the Post Reply key. Your submissions of interest will then be converted into love and beamed my way, or prompted ignored and disposed of in a fire.
Thank you for reading, and please stay tuned for when I start typing like a normal human being in the next community quest stats thread.
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I must admit, there's a part of me that wanted to put a bunch of 3D crap into this post. Maybe even make my graphs 3D through those red-blue glasses. Then I remembered how annoying a fad 3D can be. I also remembered how much my eyes hurt after using a Virtual Boy for a three-hour session of Mario Tennis or whatever that game was called.
In short, I'm just going to post these stats real quickly and hope we succeed and get some bonus XP. How's that sound?
First, our final graph:
3DSanity Final Progress The yellow line at the very top was the 3,000 user goal, the red line's the average pace we needed to exceed to succeed, and the green line was our overall progress. Because the community quest started well after the quest set was made public, the graph doesn't start right at zero.
Easy quest? Yes it was. Smashing job, everyone. I was going to post a picture of a 3D puppy, at least based on a Google image search, but the results were too creepy to share.
Some final stats:
We finished this quest at 7:52 PM EDT on March 30th, 30.1 hours into the community quest.
The 3000th user to complete this quest was Agent47. PooffBallzZzZ, BOOMgoestheDYNAMITE, and Van all narrowly missed their chance to be in the top 3000.
At the start of this community quest, we needed roughly 25.08 completions per hour to succeed.
Over the course of this quest, we averaged 91 completions per hour. In the final three hours, we averaged 48.5 completions per hour. That's really good.
Because of the nature of this quest set, with the community quest appearing a day after the set itself was published, I feel it'd be unfair to compare it to previous community quests. That said, taking this quest's full duration into account and using its point of success for judgement, it performed worse than The Odd Couple and slightly better than Going Commando.
Let's see which of my prediction methods was most accurate, eh? ...eh?
Long Straight-Line
Short Straight-Line
Pessimist's
CURVE
Success Point (hours in) as of Day 1 numbers
26.6
32.2
26.2
22.4
Wow. One of my straight-line averages was most accurate! In all fairness, none of the prediction methods took the overnight slowdown into account, and it's hard for any estimations to zero in on a proper target in just over one day. I'm going to keep using this table for future quests, though. I want to see how the estimations change over time, and when/if they're all that accurate.
As of the time I'm typing this, 3,077 people have completed the 3DSanity set. That's means in the time after we hit 3,000, our average rate dropped to 14.5 completions per hour. To be honest, that's still pretty good for a quest in which bonus XP is now out of reach. Heck, if that completion rate actually remained stable, we could have hit 4,000 completions before the quest's deadline.
If you have any questions, comments, or criticisms, don't hesitate to post them in this thread!
As always, thanks for reading, and I'll be back the next time a community quest rears its head.
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"The truth is, Dave, when it comes down to it...I just don't like people."
I merely intended it as a joke, a response to make Dave Snider laugh when he wondered aloud just why I wanted to become a moderator. Perhaps it isn't exactly what I said, but the gist of the joke is there.
Now, as I sit here nursing a tremendous post-PAX sinus infection, coughing up phlegm that can only be described as eldritch horrors from beyond time and space, the quip keeps repeating in my head. It's not because it's true, but rather because it would be such a perfect excuse for so many of the petty little problems I had at PAX East 2011. That's not to say I had anything less than a thrilling time, but as I describe my time at the show, you'll probably notice some points of surprising negativity, many self-inflicted.
Truthfully, I like people. I just don't like some of their habits.
In short, this was PAX East for me: Fantastic, pleasantly overwhelming, slightly awkward, and video games. Lots of awesome video games.
Day 0
The Boston Hustle
Naturally, after months of planning, problems have to occur within a day of heading to Boston.
I was one of many people who thought they had a room reserved at the Westin Waterfront, a hotel right next to the convention center for PAX East. As it turns out, the Waterfront had grossly overbooked for the weekend, and through some great foresight on their part, I had been dropped down to a single bed room to accommodate four people.
One bed, four people. Yeah, that totally works out.
There was an offer to switch to the Westin Copley Place, three miles away from PAX East, in exchange for a proper two-bed room and a comp'd day. As much as the whole matter disgusted me, the offer was a must given my scenario. The fact the booking agent thanked me for "voluntarily opting to switch" was almost laughable.
Regardless, I found myself sitting in the bustling confines of the Detroit Metropolitan Airport, thinking over my plans for the whole weekend that had now been complicated by a more distant hotel room. Most of my routes and pre-planned directions, all neatly printed out and bundled in my backpack well ahead of time, were now completely worthless. All I had to rely on for making my way around Boston was my Droid 2 and the help of others.
Smart phones are wonderful, I'll say that much.
The hour delay on my flight into Boston was a mere inconvenience by comparison, basically ruining my chances of making it to the screening of Heavy Metal before Rock Band Night at the Brattle Theatre. No big loss, there, but I was hoping to make it well ahead of time for Rock Band Night. I did have the luck of discussing travel plans on the plane with another PAX-bound guest, who was apparently an Ars Technica user. He wanted to attend the Rock Band festivities, as well, but wasn't able to acquire a ticket before they sold out. Telling him I had bought the second-to-last ticket probably wasn't all that nice.
I should also mention that somewhere around this point, I noted (via Twitter) that Marino and Dave Snider were both in Boston, and Dave had begun scoping out potential bars for the Whiskey Media meet-up. If only I could have booked an earlier flight -- drinking sounded awfully good at this point.
Dreams of afternoon drinking aside, my flight landed in Boston around 6:30 PM, and I started following the advice of my smart phone to make my way to my new hotel room at Copley Place. The MBTA, Boston's mass transit system, has a decent website that gives suggestions on best routes to take from point to point around the city, and this planning tool became my obsession for a short while. I rushed from bus stations to train stations with bulky rolling luggage, dealing with conductors with the most Boston-like accents I heard on the entire trip, as I moved from one concrete and steel-clad station to the next. I'm sure that there was a beautiful city to admire amidst all the exhaust fumes, but I was too busy glancing constantly at my phone for the next set of directions.
After a few missteps and numerous cases of my luggage getting in the way of normal pedestrians, I checked into the hotel around 8:30 PM. My fellow guests weren't due in until about 1:00 AM, so after sending out a few quick tweets to Marino and Snider and taking a quick breather, I knew my next stop was the Brattle Theatre and Rock Band Night.
Drunken Songs and Ramblings
It's at this point where I feel I should mention that one of my main goals at PAX East was to introduce myself to all of the Giant Bomb staff. Sure, I enjoy Rock Band, but I'm terrible at it, so my aim was to sit back, drink a little, enjoy the show, and see if I couldn't introduce myself around when the opportunity presented itself.
After more smart phone obsessions and a rather straight-forward trip through Cambridge, I used my phone's GPS to walk in the general direction of the Brattle Theatre. It's rather discomforting to walk through a crowded city street with a valuable phone so exposed and rife for swiping, so I ended up walking with a quick, angry pace. I'm used to such silliness from my times in shadier areas during my early college days, so even if it's somewhat anti-social, I felt much safer.
What I didn't expect is the Brattle to be located in a little nook along the sidewalk. I expected a logo as flashy as the website offered, with a neon blue angled logo illuminating the streets above a traditional movie theater entrance, but alas, I settled for a plain red canopy bearing its name.
My imagination tends to make hyperbole of the future for me.
The Brattle might be a little large to call quaint, but on first entrance, it evoked that feeling in me, the two men with tattoos and beards manning the lobby notwithstanding. I quietly made my way up to the theater itself and slid into a seat on the left side of the room, looking for Marino. He said he'd have an Atlanta Braves hat on with an N7 hoodie, but I didn't see anyone fitting his description. My smart phone came back out like an unhealthy obsession, and Twitter clearly showed he had just checked in.
This seemed like a time more appropriate than any to fire a message Marino's way, joking that we were sitting in the very same theatre but couldn't find one another.
That didn't last, as Marino approached me, we introduced ourselves, and began talking about the trips, Giant Bomb, and moderator life. To be short, you're not going to hear about any of that. Along with Marino's friend, who I think is named Alexander, we made our way to the front of the theatre for a better view.
I'd like to describe the entrance of the Giant Bomb guys as a magical celebrity sighting, where I began to scream like a little girl as my Fab Four (and the rest of the Whiskey Media dudes) entered the room and left my heart all a-flutter in a puddle of love and desire. For one, that's a little creepy, but more importantly, it was little more than a confirmation of all that I had seen online. These men were all real, and they were no different from the demeanor they took on daily for an online audience of thousands upon thousands. There's a real comfort in that, where distant men you want to deem as cool, chill folk appear in reality and do nothing to break from this character.
Many in the audience got up to introduce themselves to Giant Bomb and sign up for the Rock Band festivities. I did nothing of the sort, wishing to leave all the guys alone until afterward. I still think this was the wisest move at the time.
Rock Band Night itself won't get enough of a discussion from me here, but I assure you it was every bit as awesome and crazy as the pictures and videos taken as evidence of the revelry that night. I drank and sang from the crowd, and even before the first song was over, my ears were ringing, and my loud singing had ripped my throat hoarse like a tissue meeting a fire hose.
It might be important to note at this point that I have a weak voice and crappy hearing. I blame my mostly silent personality and hanging around race cars without ear protection in my youth, respectively.
The singing and drinking continued into the night, with delicious beer coaxing my easily-strained vocal chords. I don't think I knew half of the songs all that well, but when you're staring at a video game that's displaying the lyrics and tones in perfect timing, it's hard not to want to sing along. Most of the performances were entertaining, or entertainingly bad, but I will take note of a certain band and singer that thought it appropriate to bring their own spin to Du Hast by Rammstein.
My advice for anyone who thinks they can sing Rammstein songs in a style better than Rammstein: NO. YOU. FUCKING. CANNOT. I was enraged by this terrible performance, tempered only by the truth that there was no way in hell I could sing in better in my condition.
Thankfully, the music that followed brought the revelry back to its proper level, and although I've neglected to mention it until now, Giant Bomb did a wonderful job ripping every group properly to shreds, praising the few stand-out performances that existed.
The night ended too soon, and as a reward of sorts, the Harmonix staffers presented us with gigantic piles of Green Day Rock Band t-shirts, on the condition that we were to take them all and leave none behind. I ended up taking five shirts of various sizes to help my gracious hosts, and then meandered about, looking for Giant Bomb and Whiskey Media people to meet. Marino seemed more interested in leaving and catching public transportation before it shut down for the night, but I was worn out and buzzed. Meeting at least one of the men who made Giant Bomb possible had to happen.
Luckily, Dave Snider had shuffled down a few rows behind me, and with t-shirts still awkwardly in hand, I approached him and introduced myself as Trace, or "seg" on Giant Bomb.
Blank, confused stare.
"...or pee-seg."
The eyes lit up, and his response was much warmer then! This would be a bit of a trend with my online name. Maybe I just need to accept that I've been pronouncing it wrong even since I came up with the stupid anagram in the first place.
Snider is a polite and chill gentleman, and I've no doubt that he thinks I'm a bit of a weirdo given the looks I received from him over the days. I'm sure clutching five shirts didn't help in that initial first impression, though it did seem to amuse him multiple times over the night. He was going drinking, and I'm not sure if he invited me along, but I followed. I was interested in meeting him and all the other Giant Bomb names that followed, including Kessler, Matt/Pascual, Kat/Turbo_Toaster, and to my realization soon after, all the big name Giant Bomb guys.
I wasn't about to pass that opportunity up, even if I did completely fail at introducing myself to more than a couple of the men that night.
Drinkin' Force
I kind of feel sorry for Drew. You'll soon understand.
Somehow, the Giant Bomb party I had attached myself to found its way into a small bar/diner, and walking inside, I managed to amuse Snider yet again with my awkward pile of shirt. He made reference Forza Race Night, a certain regular who had apparently lied and claimed he was taking Race Night from me (*cough*), and then somehow the discussion switched to my quest stat Excel graphs. I'm pretty sure Dave asked me if I could put together stats of something. I gave him a blank stare because my ears were still ringing from all the Rock Band, and I had no clue what this something was. My hearing continuing to fail me, I finally announced that I could put together stats of anything about Giant Bomb onto an Excel graph.
That's not a fabrication -- I probably can, even if it's highly inaccurate. I still don't know what stats Dave was looking for, though. My hearing kind of sucks, to be blunt.
Somehow, through this awkwardness, I managed to wrangle a beer and my t-shirts into a booth, and ended up sitting with Drew, Matt/Pascual, and perhaps someone else. It might have been a sign of my inebriation, or perhaps it was a sign of just how much I ended up focusing my strange rambling conversation points on Drew. Somehow, though, I had pegged him as a racing guy, due to his DiRT 2 love, and damn it, I was going to talk racing.
I babbled on about racing games, Dirt 3, DiRT 2, Forza Race Night, how Drew or any of the guys should join Forza Race Night even though I know you guys are probably busy during that time but man it'd be awesome, racing in real life, rally, the site, how much I love the site, how awesome the videos are, no seriously I love Whiskey's business perspective, and at some point Matt wisely shifted into another booth as I engaged Drew in serious rambling conversation.
Don't get me wrong. I have a lot of respect for Drew, and I think he's an awesome and often-unsung hero at Whiskey Media. When retrospect came knocking after I sobered up later in the night, I felt really bad for bothering him so much with my halfway-inane ramblings. My conversations with him were brief from then on at PAX, for the fear of annoying him or coming across as a complete stalker.
There were glimpses and brief conversations with a few other gentlemen, by which I mean Matt. Small talk, mainly. Soon enough, last call came, and I stumbled into the first available taxi, which was in fact the only good taxi driver I encountered the entire weekend. Small talk about how nice Boston was followed, and in great time, my hotel room welcomed me with-...wait, my keycard doesn't work.
Reading up on old messages on my phone, it looks like the fellow guests arrived and had my keycard deactivated. Great!
Thankfully, they weren't dicks. I knocked, they opened, we introduced ourselves to each other and made small talk, and then we all passed out and slept in exhaustion, eager for PAX East to start for real.
PAX East hadn't even started, and already a tremendously long day in Boston had become a great introduction to a convention weekend. Can't ask for better than that, even amongst all the potentially awkward moments.
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