This Coffee Ain't From the Bay Area

So much social justice nonsense.

@tehjedicake said:

Good choice!

Damn, July 3rd must be cursed for Patrick. A year ago his father dies, then this year Ryan dies? Jesus. That is pretty strange, and kind of freaky.

Ugh tired of this feminist shit. Glad I'm subscribed to thunderf00t

Can someone answer me this in a PM, so as to not turn this comments section in a spoilerfest:

What was the ambiguity Patrick was talking about, in relation to gender identity, in The Last of Us? Was it about a specific character? I'm thinking of one but I don't believe it's the answer...

Patrick has a lot of interesting content ideas for the site, and as much as it bums me out to see him leave the office and crew, I feel like he'll be able to expand and execute on those ideas more completely now. A lot of GB's standard content has gotten quite stale for me, and I feel that Patrick has the potential to breathe some fresh air into this site, and even usher in a new era of great content.

Boo on the anti-free speach talk, particularly if we're paid subscribers. You can't say you want open debates and simultaneously suppress opinions considered "wrong" only by someone's personal standards.

@patrickklepek

What lies between a quick-look and an endurance run? THE DEEP DIVE!

Sounds good to me.

Scoops!!!!! Love how much more Patrick the site will be getting. I would kill for a weekly Scoopin'

The problem I see actually comes from both sides, and that is very simply that both sides are over-simplifying the issue to an insulting level. The issue is nowhere near as simple as "This game has a male protagonist" NOR "these games have strong women, therefore there is no problem," but far, far too many of the loudest proponents of both sides want to force the narrative to be that. Because things like subtlety and nuance are actually difficult to talk about on a platform like the internet, so both sides have just decided that screaming at each other at the tops of their lungs is the solution.

Glad you're back! This was actually the video that made me a subscriber. I saw it on the homepage and wanted to see how you were doing/ what you were up to.

I support Patrick , I want that guy on Giantbomb all i can get

Good board game suggestions, I'll add some.

Dominion is fantastic, aslo a card game, but its super easy to pick up and play. Games are very fluid and only about an hour.

X-Wing Miniatures is also a very easy game to pick up. It sounds a bit complex being a minis game but its actually very simple and has a lot of fun strategy.

And if you aren't afraid of a more complicated game Arkham Horror is the best Lovecraft themed game out there. I wouldn't jump right into this one, its got a lot of cards and bits and seems a little intimidating at first.

I live out in Colorado and it sounds like you may have been talking about Hanging Lake. You mentioned near Rifle, which is a bit west of Glenwood Springs. Hanging Lake is just a bit east of Glenwood Springs. If that is where you went, it's an absolutely beautiful hike with a great payoff. Colorado National Monument is also spectacular. Hopefully you caught a sunset/rise while you were going over the Rockies, they're quite amazing.

As for boardgames, everything Y2Ken mentioned is great, i'd also like to add some two player suggestions for you. We live up in the mountains, so it's often just me and roommate playing, so if you find yourself with only one other person to play with, these are some great games.

Rivals of Catan, while technically a card game, not board game, is a great version of Settlers of Catan redesigned to work as a card game for two players. The board game is also excellent, but you definitely need at least three players.

Stone Age is a great resource board game that scales up or down really well, so with only two people, or the max, you'll have a good time, although I definitely recommend buying an extra set of the resource tokens for more than two players.

Pandemic is also a game that allows you to play with more than just two, but still works really well if that's all you have. It's also one of the best cooperative board games out there in my opinion. You play against the game trying to cure diseases before they basically get out of control and you have a worldwide pandemic. It's incredibly fun and makes a great introduction to cooperative board games.

I'd also highly recommend you check out two websites:

boardgamegeek.com is a great place that has information and forums and the like for pretty much every board game ever made. It's a great way to find out more about various board games and gauge your interest in them.

Tabletop is part of the Geek And Sundry YouTube channel, hosted by everyone's favorite geek, Wil Wheaton. It's kind of like Dinner for Five with geek celebrities playing a boardgame instead of eating at a fancy restaurant. It's also what reignited my interest in board games over the past year.

You going deeper into games like Monster Hunter, Dark Souls and STALKER gets me real excited Patrick. Looking forward to seeing what you do!

patrick you should watch https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PEikGKDVsCc

@patrickklepek STALKER Endurance Run? Oh fucking hell yes!

Still the most ahead-of-its-time FPS for a long while with its unscripted world and survival management.

I have 9 hours on it, would give me a good reason to continue.

Always good to hear from you Scoops.

If you're looking for board games, I highly recommend Shadow Hunters if you can manage to get 6-9 players together. It's an incredibly fun game which starts out with players trying to work out who their allocated allies are and often ends with big twist or surprise plays out of someone who has been fairly quiet all game. It's a blast.

Other than that, games like Agricola, Settlers of Catan, Carcassonne, and Small World are all fantastic staples which suit 3-4 players perfectly and you can't go far wrong with any of them as an entry point into board games. Hope you get the chance to give it a shot sometime, let us know how you get on!

I agree with you about the article. It did kind of boils down to a lot of "I liked the female characters story potential more than Joel, but because games are sexist the protagonist had to be a male." and I don't think that says anything about sexism as a problem. This is not the game to pick on.

The representation of women in the game is a different issue, but the main thing that jumped out at me was complaining that you play as a male character, and equating that to sexism.

yea, but at a certain point, these guys get that same question all the time,

so, it's the easiest way to answer that question, and although Patrick is thoughtful, sometimes his answers are a little run-on, a little efficiency goes a long way.

I really don't like the whole "if you don't trust us don't follow us" response. It's so unnecessarily defensive and not really something I expect to hear from someone as thoughtful as Patrick.

I personally see Giant Bomb as the last US-based site worth paying attention to. If I had a gripe with the way certain things were carried out, I'd hope it would be taken as encouragement instead of insult.

BURN YOURSELVESSSSSS !!!!!!!!!!!!! or not, that maybe bad!

How out of control is the sexism thing getting? The Last of Us? Really? I just read an article that said The Last of Us is sexist because Joel is not a woman! It seems to me there is alot of ACTUAL sexism and racism going on out there in the world that maybe we could focus on real problems instead. The Last of Us is the seedless water melon of sexism! We could be trying to cure cancer but instead lets make a water melon with no fucking seeds in it! Why? Because the water melon will make money and curing cancer won't! You see, actually solving sexism is not profitable! Engineering sexism in the summer's hottest title in order to sell papers and website subscriptions is! Women still get payed less then men... Who gives a shit about a fucking video game? Why don't they pick on Dead or Alive? You know, DoA... The game that is actually sexist!

@sil3n7: Seems a little more like a mid west accent to me. Wouldn't look into it too hard.

Sup Pat

This is one of the results this upsurge about rights will get us. This puritanical Orwellian horseshit is a fight extremists can win, not the the one they must (or should I say, we all should win).

And why was there so little praise for ND sticking to their guns and doing the right thing in the first place? LOLZ I DUNNO.

___________________________

Dragon Quarter is a veteran RPGers' RPG. Fair warning; its very merciless and deliciously arcane.

Hey Patrick,

It seems to me that you force inflections in your voice in these videos for whatever reason. It just comes off as unnatural and a little pretentious.

Just be cool man.

Jesus christ. Give this feminism shit a rest. TLoU had a great story, and treated the characters properly.

Please play Dark Souls Patrick :)

I want the Alex/Patrick podcast to be an hour of both of them insulting each other. News team fight!

im kind of with you, because then at what point does socializing with folks online becomes much more weird than it is right now when you'ill have to constantly check what you say before you piss off a crowd.

i dont think having the internet be more militant is the best way to do things, that will just make things more weird and to an extent, also draw people away from socializing on the net.

I hope you aren't implying that you believe Sony is around to be your buddy. They're a business as well. Jeff laid this out pretty well in one of the more recent (most recent?) jar time videos. However, if that is what you're implying, you need to open your eyes.

actually kind of stoked patrick is out in the other time zone, this would mean that we'll get more content on the site

Keep up the good work, Klepek! Glad to see that the change o' scenery hasn't affected your exposure on the site.

I spent a few days in Champaign for "Unofficial" when I was going to school in Chicago. I was sure up to that point that the massive campus wide college parties seen in teen movies were not based on anything approaching reality. I was wrong. This town was fucking packed to the rafters with over 40,000 drunk college students from all the surrounding states. The frat houses and sororities were like carbon copies of what you'd see in a straight to DVD American Pie: kegs being thrown off the second floor, beer pong everywhere, girls dancing on tables, just chaos in all directions.

Thanks for the video Patrick, always love these. Looking forward to the new content from here on out!

Is he stoned?

Awesome having you back Patrick. If at any time you mention a meetup at Three Floyd's I'd be there in a heartbeat lol.

"I think a part of living is learning from your mistakes. We're all ignorant of a great many things. But it's important to learn from that. You're allowed to make mistakes."

Ain't that the truth.

PK... in the coffee.

Great video Patrick. I have lot a lot of respect for Gabe and his comments, all the way back to the whole issue with the "dickwolves" and then his recent comments.

I still don't understand what Gabe said that was so hateful or ignorant or whatever...maybe he deleted some tweets or something but all I saw was him being shouted down by a lot of very mean-spirited people for expressing an opinion that the VAST majority of people have.

I don't follow Penny Arcade so I just don't know if he said anything else. I usually find their stuff tasteless and crude so I'm not interested but he sure didn't say anything extreme from what I found.

When it comes to making money, you'll be surprised at what MS will do. Their policy change is one indicator.

Great Q&A, Patrick. And thanks for answering my question!

Man, society is getting crazy. We have to be careful when we say "woman," "female," "male," and "man?" I don't want to sound trans-whatever (I'm a big fan of human rights) (that sounded really sarcastic, I did not mean it as such) but jeese... maybe we, as a society, need to start developing thicker skin? (I'm just musing, not mandating).

Anywho, glad to see the trip went well! Can't wait for a meet up, hopefully I'll be able to make the trip from Ann Arbor!

Could someone tell me exactly what Patrick was hinting at about the gender representation issue in The Last Of Us? I would look up the articles now, but I don't really have the time right now.

I second this notion. This site has a scoops quota to maintain!

Congrats on the successful move! Welcome back!

Glad to see you remaining visible. Don't disappear like certain other satellite correspondents.

Patrick is in the diary room....