Get Played with Roman Mars and Ben Brock Johnson

0:01Hello, beautiful nerds. I am so excited about our new miniseries, Hidden Levels. It's a six-part show about how video games left the arcade and started reshaping the real world. We made it in partnership with WBUR's Endless Thread, and it's co-hosted and created by Ben Brock Johnson. The show launches wide on both the 99PI and Endless Thread feeds on Tuesday, October 7th, but if you're already a SiriusXM podcast plus subscriber, the first two episodes are already waiting for you right now. Ben and I wanted to get the word out about the show to video gamers everywhere. So we went on the great Get Played podcast to talk with hosts Heather Ann Campbell and Matt Apodaca.

0:42And it was such a great conversation. And they were such gracious hosts that we wanted to share that conversation with 99PI listeners. You'll hear about how Ben came up with the idea for the series and a sneak peek at some of the things that we'll be covering. And as the kids say, a whole lot of new Roman Mars lore gets dropped. So if you're ever curious about what I was doing from around 1997 to 1999, and what it has to do with video games, stay tuned.

1:09All right. Well, Heather, why don't we introduce our guests? OK, Matt, let's do it. OK. From the podcast 99 % Invisible and WBUR and their new series Hidden Levels. Hidden Levels. What could that be about? Well, I'll tell you. It explores the impact of video games on modern culture. It's Roman Mars and Ben Brock Johnson. What's up, guys? Hi, guys. Hey. Hey. Nice to see y 'all. Welcome to the show. Welcome to Get Played, the show. This is like we're actually We're doing the show in a very serious way now We sound so professional And normally none of this tone is present No, no, everyone is like This is false This is not true There's an artifice here Matt and Heather have been replaced with AI They've got like just avatars doing the show I was just sitting with my fingers Like laced In the hand Little Gendo from Evangelion I was being Gendo from Evangelion.

2:04Get in the robot. Yeah. Roman, get in the robot. Thanks for being here, you guys. So you guys have a new podcast series that's coming out. You said the street date was October 7th. Why don't you tell us a little bit about Hidden Levels? Go for it, Ben. All right. Well, Hidden Levels is something that I started talking to Roman and his team about about a year ago. Wow. And it came out of this thing that I was seeing. And look, this is going to be a statement of the obvious for you and your audience, right? Like video games impact the world beyond video games. Hell yeah. And I think it's one of those things that people who are in gaming and who play video games, they know.

2:41They see it all the time as they walk through the world. They see things that they recognize as coming from their culture and the world that they inhabit when they play games. But I think a lot of people who don't know video gaming as well or don't play games don't see that stuff and don't recognize it as easily. And I've always been a huge fan of Roman Show. I make a show about the internet called Endless Thread for WBUR, this public radio station in Boston, and always been a huge fan of Roman's show. And Roman's show, which Roman will introduce better than me, is all about the architecture and design in the world that you don't see, but is hugely important and has an impact beyond its creators.

3:22So it just kind of felt like a match made in a video game dungeon, and we went from there. It's neat to hear you say that like video games have become sort of like ubiquitously infused into culture because there was a time in certainly our lifetimes when that wasn't the case. And now you will see video game language on like a billboard. You'll see things that say like level up your workout. And leveling up was once a thing that was in an instruction booklet for Super Mario Brothers. Like you would have to be like you'd have to learn the vocabulary and then understand it on your television and tell your friends at recess.

4:04And now these are just they're sort of like permafrost on reality now. Yeah. I mean, they're really they're they're almost mundane and every day is part of the thing. They're not like notable. And that's sort of what that's where the bailiwick of 99 percent invisible. It's about, you know, the design that is part of the built world that becomes so ordinary doorknobs, sewer covers, you know, like, and, and all of a sudden, like, looking at them deeply and going, oh, there's a story in that, like somebody made that a decision there. And they designed something and we're interacting with it every day.

4:40And video games are just ripe for this because the way that they've infiltrated real life and back and forth and they communicate and it's just – it's huge and it's rich. And we had – we have six stories in this series, but there's like hundreds more like we could possibly do. Yeah. I guess so there's – it's a six-episode miniseries, right? And so there's six different stories. Do they all sort of like follow like a similar trajectory? Do they intersect in any sort of way or like are all these things kind of like on their own island? as far as like impact? I would say like, it's a little bit of both.

5:13Yeah. You know, they, they, I think we found in making the series that they, they led into each other really well. You know, we have an episode about a very famous sports game that I think the sounds of which you will recognize. And, and, you know, the way that story ends with a boom shakalaka, shall we say, you know, had us, had us starting to talk about, interestingly enough, just joysticks and the ways that we control these games. And that leads into a story, for instance, about the hardware that we use to control these games and how that hardware has itself influenced all these other parts of the world that are not specifically or exclusively about gaming.

5:56Is that, Roman, would you say that's fair? It's not serialized, but it's... You can listen to each episode on its own, but because the world is so connected, You know, like they kind of talked to each other and it was becoming clear as we were putting them together. Like, oh, this is the right order to speak, you know, speak about the men, you know, just because it, you know, like it set up those connections kind of nicely. Right. Like you're talking about controllers. Like I think before video games, people used to have to fly planes by pulling these different ropes. Yeah. And then they saw the joysticks and they were like, you know, this could make flying a lot easier.

6:31It's interesting that you picked this. Stay tuned. Episode two, you're going to have the full story because we trace, Emory like traces the whole like evolution of a joystick. The plane is involved, you know. Oh, really? War games are involved. Well, I was going to say, it's interesting that airplanes was the thing that you pegged there, because I was just thinking, based on using a video game controller and playing games where you have to fly planes, like Flight Simulator, or even the Rogue Squadron, the Star Wars flying game, I kind of think I could fly a plane. I kind of think I could just do it having never tried it.

7:10Matt, have I ever told you the story of me flying a plane? I think you have, but you have to tell. You have to say it now. I was in Wisconsin and they have those like, you know, like roadside, like get in an airplane that a farmer owns and he'll take you on a quick. I mean, I've never seen that myself, but I understand. If you go deep enough into Wisconsin, there's like, you know, the guys who are crop dusters and they're like, you know, 20 bucks for a ride. So I got into one of these planes and was like flying around. and the guy was like, do you want to fly the plane? And I was like, yes. And so he let me fly the plane and then he was like, hey, you're pretty good at this.

7:52Crazy thing to learn while letting somebody else fly a plane. And I was like, yeah, I've played a lot of Microsoft Flight Simulator. And he's like, yeah, it's kind of the same thing. I mean, those Microsoft Flight Simulator folks are for real. I feel like that's close to the real deal. Oh, yeah, with like a full rig? Yeah, the full rig. I will say, as much as we like flying planes with sort of like game input, I've heard that game controllers are really bad at submarines. Yeah, I heard something about that too, actually. I can't remember what it was, but I sort of do remember some story. I think, if I'm remembering the details correctly, a submarine was involved.

8:36I'm not sure it was the controller's fault in that situation. It certainly wasn't an airtight vessel with no escape. Yeah. Couldn't have been the reason. There might have been some other science there. Yeah. Yeah. But it is fascinating. And I love the story that we do about controllers because, and there's a couple of other stories that we have in the series that talk about this too. And I think Roman said this earlier. These things are talking to each other, right? Like you have this piece of hardware that's really created for an actual massive mechanical machine that people use to traverse the real world.

9:13And that inspires then a digital world. And then that then again goes back and inspires the real world. And I think that's the thing that's really fascinated us when working on this series. That's really cool. Was there anything, I mean, I guess without spoiling any sort of particular story. No, I mean, just tell us the top five moments of your upcoming series. Just like, give us all. I mean, Heather, you sound like you already heard the second episode. So, you know, I don't know. I think somebody leaked it. I don't know. I guess, yeah, was anything in particular, like, particularly revelatory to you?

9:48Like, were you, like, upon learning something, you just, like, never would have even considered, like, this, like, you know, like, a video game being that impactful in the modern sort of world at all? Wow. Okay. Okay. Well, there's a lot for me. I mean, what I loved about the joystick one, since we're talking about it, is I cover design a lot. And so I think about the principles of design. And there's this concept of affordance, like what a device kind of telegraphs what you're supposed to do with it just by looking at it, essentially. And so a joystick has an extremely just grokkable affordance.

10:26Like you know that when you want to go up, you push up. when you want to go down, you push down. And so there's that sort of thing. And then, you know, in the world of flat screen, touch screen games, you know, a flat screen has no affordance. Like you can do anything with a screen and it becomes like less fun to me, you know, like in many ways. And so there's things like this, like the principles of design that we were able to drill down on that even though I've done a show about design for 15 years, like I've never really had a good example to describe that to an audience, you know, like. And so when we were talking about it in the editing and it was being reported out by Amory, like, you know, like we were able to discuss this and, you know, bring.

11:04So it's like it's just like what was fascinating to me was how fundamental both like, you know, story and thought and theory and design all is part of all video games. And it should be obvious because, you know, video games, because I mean, they are completely designed from the ground up. There's no part of it that you're like, there is the earth that I'm going to build on and therefore I have to deal with the earth. The earth is created by somebody's mind. The air is created by somebody's mind. And so everything is thought of. And because of that, there's so many avenues to explore because everyone made a decision about every pixel inside of a video game.

11:39And that is really – that was just like lit me up in sort of every story in so many ways because it just is like – there's like super smart people making decisions and thinking about things. and you just and what's great about it and that's sort of the 99 % invisible part of video games is you don't necessarily have to feel the author you just feel immersed and that means that they're doing a good job in a lot of ways this is why I particularly enjoy animation over live action is because there's so few accidents in animation like so much of it is just curated choices of design and intent. And that's also a lot of video games, although now there's a lot of emergent play that isn't particularly the designed purpose of the game.

12:24And that sort of stuff will like float to the surface. I had a side question, which is you talking about the looking at an object and knowing what its purpose is. And I think this is probably maybe something you've talked about on your podcast before, but if it isn't, I'm super curious. What is, what do you think are like, what is the most, how do I put this? What's an object that you think is very poorly, not a touchscreen, but that you look at it and you don't know what it's supposed to do. And it's supposed to do one thing. For example, when I look at a carrot peeler, I am absolutely not thinking that's so that I can scrape it on a carrot.

13:06I was going to say pickle picker upper. So like I feel like we're in the same headspace somehow. You know those things where you like you got to like. Like it's a tong? Yeah. It's sort of like it looks like a syringe on the back end and on the front end it looks like one of those claws in the gaming in the actual. You know what I'm saying? I actually didn't know that that was what that was. Today we learned. I thought that was for like a turkey. I've seen that in a kitchen and I didn't know. I also say. Touching and they're like scratching her back with it. Picking my pickles. I also think, and this is not because our show is for and made by stupid people.

13:48Yeah. Yeah. Toilets are not, like they don't necessarily say what they are. You wouldn't necessarily know that you have to do that. Right, because you wouldn't be like, oh, I should go over there and empty into the water. You would look at it and you would think, is this a kind of bathing apparatus? Do I put my foot in here to clean it? Or you see water and you would just be like, I'm going to drink this. Yeah. I mean, my cat thinks that. My cat thinks that. Yeah, of course. Yeah, absolutely. If the toilet has 40 buttons on it, then it gets really dangerous. And you know I'm going to push all of them so I can learn exactly what the buttons do and then be horrified by the results every now and then.

14:31Just like the elevator. Yep, yep. I think the sort of plurality of smart devices have terrible affordance and you don't know how to use them and you have to read, you know, like instructions on how to get them. And one of the things that makes things – I mean like I would argue not to disagree greatly with the carrot peeler thing. If you had a carrot peeler, I think you'd quickly learn that it peeled. You know, like you would see it and go like, here's what I'm going to do.

14:58one way or the other but but like i like to think about this as like you know you know when you you know we i think everyone's had this experience when you've lived in a house for maybe 20 years and you still don't know which knob goes to which burner on your stove yeah that's a type of weird bad design that is like it's like you shouldn't have to think about it or like if you have a bank of light switches and you have some kind of mnemonic as to which socket it goes to. Like those represent, you know, design fails. And I think a lot of us take those things on as like, I'm so dumb, I can't remember what light switch goes to which socket.

15:35But really, those are bad design decisions. And they don't represent, you know, they don't sort of like exhibit good design that would sort of like you would normally have to set that up so you wouldn't get confused. And that's the way to do that. So would you say that in terms of video game design and then real world design that your interests lie in more skeuomorphic design choices? Or are you do you find that trying to translate like looking at an icon for a tape recorder on a screen doesn't tell you the story that you are supposed to push that button in order to make the recording start? Because also you have dissociated so much from what a tape recorder is.

16:17like what how would you do you have a way to make game design better yeah yeah i honestly don't but but i mean i can tell you like you know i think these sort of um you know these these kind of things like skeuomorphisms that that sort of lead people because they because you know the real world analog and therefore you know how to do them inside of a digital space you know they have their role especially during the transitional phase of of getting used to a digital space. But I think at this point, there is like, there's no point in putting like an analog, you know, reel to reel in front of my kid on icon and have them have that make sense to them.

16:58So like that, I think that design language, you know, just evolves and changes over time for sure. And maybe this is a different kind of thing when we're talking about design, but I, one thing that I'm amazed at, you know, I'm 45, right? So like I, the first games that I played were arcade games and Nintendo games. And I remember games that were, they took forever and so long to figure out how to use, how to like move the player, how to move the sprite, whatever. And just like, you know, I think of a game like, well, this is a new example, but like Cuphead, if you know that game. And like that game, I don't think, I think I've still not made it past the first level of that game.

17:37Like that's a hard, that's a hard game. But it's sort of, I feel like it's calling back to some of those games where you just really, it didn't sort of push you forward. The game didn't pull you forward in the way that games do now where like you're immediately immersed in the space that you're playing in and you're just getting these directives one at a time, like press X to pick up the gun. You know what I mean? Like there's a way in which the game is communicating with you as a player that is, I feel much better now than it used to be, where they used to be kind of like esoteric and hard to get into in some ways.

18:11And now it's like it's kind of dummy proof some of the way that the games communicate with you as you like move into the environment if that makes sense you sorry i was gonna say so much literacy for video games in general comes from your uh like predetermined knowledge of video you have to like i don't think somebody could pick up like the last of us two for example having never played a video game before and be like this is easy to me because there's so many things you sort of do you have to know that the left joystick moves your person and then the right joystick moves your field of vision.

18:48And that's like you're sort of learning to sort of pat your head and rub your tummy at the same time kind of with some of these things. Totally. But if you know how to play a video game, chances are you're going to know how to play a different video game pretty easily. Yeah. There's also a lot of vestigial stuff that has just become the vocabulary of games. like, for example, there's ammo in barrels. And it used to be... But if you look at like... Which is not real life, by the way. That's not how that works in real life. The skeuomorphism there is... But it comes from a time when you're playing these side-scrolling fighting games and there isn't a lot of information on screen and perhaps you're walking through a city and there are trash cans rendered in pixels on the screen.

19:35And so, you know, oh, I can punch those trash cans. And when you punch the trash cans, sometimes you'll get a food item that will help your character get their life back. And so you'll punch a trash can and a turkey will come out and you'll be like, oh, I can now I can get better. But all of that legacy has then gone all the way to effectively Last of Us Part 2 where you're like smashing shit in the environment to try and find ammunition for your character. Oh, good medicine. In a way that you absolutely never would interact with reality. No. And all of that is sort of an assumed knowledge on part of the developers that is then, you know, like you can't.

20:18Like people can watch any movie as their first movie. Like generally. Yeah. Some that probably shouldn't be your first movie. Right. But you can, you don't have to, like there's not a ton. Like dogs watch movies now. There's all the TikToks of like people, like dogs watching the Lion King and under and following it. And I'm like, how are they following it? Yeah, because they they're like getting the they're getting Simba's arc. They are definitely getting Simba's arc because when when who's the scar scar scars on screen, they'll bark at scar because he's hurt somebody earlier. So the dog is following it.

20:53And I'm like, how does the dog understand what an edit is? How is it like the lion is over there and then the lion's over? Anyway, all this is a digression to say that. Nine out of ten dogs hate Scar. That is true. That is true. They don't. I got lost. Scar a cat. Scar's a cat. Yeah, they all hate. Dogs don't like that. They hate all the lions.

21:20Let's get into your histories with gaming in general. We got a little bit of Ben's there. But let's get into it just a little bit deeper. Where are you guys at with games like today? I guess is a, is a good jumping off point. Yeah. What's your rank in Fortnite?

21:37Man, barely, barely, barely survives five. I mean, Fortnite, my, my experience in Fortnite, Fortnite's one of those games where I can, I, I think it's gotten better at matching, right? Like I used it when I first started playing Fortnite and maybe I've gotten better too, hopefully. But when I first started playing, it was like two minutes of me screaming and then starting over. Do you know what I mean? Like I was just like running and hiding and then starting over. Um, I, I will say that I put, you know, really my, my gaming, um, is, is these days about connection. I really like talking to, uh, my good friends across the country who I, who I don't see anymore.

22:15Um, you know, they have their own lives. I have my own life. They, you know, they're parents, I'm a parent. So one of the ways that I connect with them is we play games together and, um, and we learn the lore together and we, you know, we spend a couple hours every week doing that. And that's really wonderful. Um, and, and it's really, it's really less about the grind and more about, um, talking to each other. And, you know, we've basically had group therapy sessions, you know, talking to each other as we've gone through life challenges. And, and, um, a lot of what we do these days is a sort of second screen activity, or you're doing a couple of things at the same time.

22:50And, and I don't know if that's bad or good, but I just know that like my buddies and I, we talk every week and that's, that's meaningful to me. And so I play hell divers. I play, um, uh, we just started playing Diablo four. Uh, I, um, we played like every sniper elite because one of my buddies is just obsessed with sniping and that's what he loves to do. Um, I, uh, I played a generation Z. I liked that game a lot because of the crafting and just like moving through that sort of post-apocalyptic fighting robots world, which is, you know, that's a classic trope and it works. But mostly I just do it for fun.

23:30I mean, we've tried to play weirder, odder games, but we have a kind of split. Half of the group is like, I just want to shoot guns. And half of the group is like, no, let's do something weird and interesting with games. And so sometimes we fight about that. But generally, for me, it's just a place to connect and a way to connect and blow off steam. Yeah. And Roman, am I correct? You're a bit of a lapsed gamer, would you say? Yeah, I don't know if I was ever really a gamer as such. I mean, I don't do much gaming today. I kind of do passive like tower defense type games when I'm listening. I have to listen to a lot of audio for my job.

24:07And so I need something that doesn't really require good timing. You know, that is something I can do while I'm doing something else. And so I love tower defense games. and I play some fitness games like on an Oculus because I like to box and stuff like this. And I injured my back boxing for real when I punched stuff, like solid things. And so trash can, were you trying to find a turkey in a trash can? No, I wish, but there are no turkeys anywhere. I've tried. Just wait a couple of months. There's going to be turkeys everywhere. That's true, that's true. So I love like Supernatural. I love like doing stuff like that.

24:43It's pretty fun for me. But my history is strange. I was involved in the development of some of the first voice chat in gaming in the 90s. And so I had a friend who I went to college with and he developed this app called Roger Wilco. It was a standalone application that was behind your Baldur's Gate or your Doom or your tribes. and it ran on a 28-8 modem. It was super clean and beautifully done. And I was the first QA tester for the company. And so I played a lot of early multiplayer games like that. And in fact, selling that, it was funny, it was like selling that company is what paid for my three-year internship in public radio that led me into being a podcaster.