- Greetings, and welcome to an LGR Q and A thing!

And yeah, this is a reward tier

on the LGR Patreon page.

So people that have signed up for that

get to ask me questions

and I'm gonna answer them,

or at least the best of my ability

and the ones that I can answer,

not like 'yes or no' ones.

This is also the computer

that I recently put together,

that we're gonna be using.

This is the NuXT Turbo clone PC thing,

which is really awesome, and I don't know,

I just wanted to use it,

so that's what we're gonna be doing here.

And yeah, first question,

let's just go ahead and get to it.

This is from Greg Thomson.

"Over the course of 10 years,

"has the process of creating videos become easier

"with regards to script writing, filming,

"editing, and overall workflow?"

No. [confident chuckle]

It's gotten harder.

Absolutely, because I keep upping my game, so to speak.

Better cameras, microphones, lighting,

editing, and all sorts of effects and stuff

that I didn't normally do.

And really, just the whole thing

is way harder than it ever was before,

and that's totally my own fault.

But, I think the results are worth it.

13Cubed asks, "What's involved in the production

"of a typical LGR episode?

"How much time is spent writing scripts,

filming, editing, et cetera?"

Well, all those things you just mentioned

are involved in the production.

Other than that, I mean, yeah,

I could probably do like a making of video at some point.

I kinda did awhile back, and it was just like a time lapse.

It wasn't too involved, and I also might

want to do a video about equipment,

'cause people ask me about that all the time.

But yeah, how much time is spent?

It depends, you know, anywhere from 20 hours

for a really easy video,

or even less for something like this,

all the way up to 60, 70, 80, who knows how many hours

because sometimes videos are just spread out

over a course of months or years, or who knows?

Alon Eiton asks, "How do you come up

"with the topics for your videos?"

A mixture of stumbling around the rabbit holes

of the internet, and late night eBay searches.

And yeah, just whatever I'm feeling

on any given day of the week.

It changes week to week, you know.

Sometimes I'm feeling like an Oddware episode,

or putting together a Tech Tales,

or maybe I've got something I want to build or repair

and that's just been sitting around for awhile,

or enough footage comes together for Thrifts

and it's like okay, I may as well edit that this week.

It just depends.

Honestly, I have no system. No system whatsoever.

Starkindler Studio asks,

"What is your favorite segment/content to make?

"The stuff that makes you feel super accomplished

"getting done, regardless of views or revenue?"

Definitely "LGR Tech Tales", no question there.

It's just that has the most research and the most detail,

and a lot of little things that have to come together

to make a cohesive-looking video.

Finding the right imagery and newspaper articles,

and magazines, and screenshots, and video.

Yeah, it's just a really rewarding thing to put together,

and I wish that I had more time to do more of them.

Logan King asks, "A lot of your videos

"seem to have really long lead times nowadays,

"where you have to track down a specific version

"of some software from 25 years ago

"to even see if the hardware you bought works.

"How do you keep track of all the things?"

Lists, mostly.

Writing things down, putting it in calendars,

setting reminders for myself on my phone

or computer or whatever.

Yeah, just basic organizational stuff.

And also I have a shelving unit over there

full of other LGR projects that are in the works.

So every time I see it, I feel shame and pressure.

[shameful pressurize silence]

That helps.

Putte H asks,

"Which of your computers are you most proud of?"

Well, recently, I'm really proud of the NuXT here,

or the "NuXT Cube," as you all have started calling it,

which is actually quite clever. I wish I had thought of that.

But anyway, yeah, the NuXT Cube.

I like this, but I also like, you know,

the Woodgrain 486, and things that I've done repairs on,

and augmented with other parts.

You know, any time there's like blood, sweat,

and tears going into a project,

it makes it more special, so yeah.

Generally I guess I'm most proud of whatever

I've worked on most recently.

Chris asks, "Why woodgrain?

"Or more specifically, what originally made you

"interested in that aesthetic?"

I guess it probably comes from growing up around it.

I had a lot of wood paneling and stuff at home,

and grandparents, and everybody's houses had it.

There was woodgrain everywhere.

So anyway, there's a nostalgia factor.

But beyond that, I don't know,

I just like the way it looks.

I like natural textures on things.

I love original, natural wood, that actually comes from trees.

As much as I like veneers and vinyls and stuff,

those tend to have repeating patterns,

but when you don't see that so obviously,

and it's cut from different parts of the tree,

that looks really cool.

[laughs]

I don't know, I just like woodgrain.

However, I don't like it on everything.

You know, that's another thing that some people

seem to get sort of misconstrued.

I just like it on certain things.

Mostly electronics, especially up against brushed metals.

Brushed nickel and wood look great,

or a nice walnut with a flat matte black

kind of textured finish look great.

I like certain things. I like woodgrain.

That's how it goes.

Here's a question from a bunch of people.

It was all kind of similar, so I put it together.

From JoeBoxr, Adult Sword Owner, Rob Caporetto,

and Dave Langley, "What's your collecting holy grail?

"What hardware have you sought out but just can't find?

"If money, space, availability were no object,

"what would you get?"

Well, if nothing at all was any object,

I'd probably get something crazy, huge, historical

monstrosity, like a '60s IBM mainframe or something.

But, I don't even know if I'd really want that,

because what would I do with it, and what in the world?

[laughs]

But yeah, actual personal holy grails

or machines that I had as a kid,

more specifically the machine that I had as a kid,

like an old Packard Bell or the Acer or something.

But they're long gone, you know.

They were either trashed or just gotten rid of in some way,

and I can never find them again

'cause that was an exact machine.

Even if I find the exact same model,

it'll never be the same computer.

My goal holy grail are machines

that genuinely no longer exist.

Will Herrman asks, "What do you think

"is the future of Edutainment software,

"especially considering how most children

"use phones and tablets instead of PCs?"

I don't know, I'd say I'm pretty hopeful

about the future of Edutainment.

I mean, admittedly I'm not in that world,

I don't have kids,

I'm not lookin' up tablet Edutainment software.

But I do know that kids nowadays

are way more tech savvy than I was

at earlier ages than ever

and they've got access to more and more stuff.

So hopefully that means

there's more Edutainment opportunities.

I'd say overall, I'm hopeful,

although I'm just not too familiar

with the current state of Edutainment.

Bryan Walker asks, "Do you think more modern tech

"will offer as much nostalgia factor in the future

"as the stuff you feature now?"

Of course! I mean, nostalgia is

gonna affect everybody at some point.

And as you get older and you start thinking about your past,

then that feeling comes up

and you get all warm and fuzzy inside

when you see some piece of technology

that you used to use as a kid or whatever.

So yeah, people nowadays are gonna be nostalgic

for the Xbox One and the Switch

and all that kinda stuff eventually.

That's just how it goes.

There's a study talking about the age ranges

that you're really most nostalgic for.

It's like, 6 to 14 or something

and everybody is just sort of stuck

in that period in their heard, in terms of the things

that they wanna go back to in their 30s.

I don't remember what the specifics were,

but nostalgia seems to pretty universal.

Andrew Davenport asks, "If you could only have one computer

"and two games for the rest of your life,

"what would they be?"

How much can I cheat on this question?

Like, a modern machine that can just emulate everything,

but I don't think that's really what you're asking.

So, if I had to pick just one,

it'd probably be a late '90s

Pentium 3 Windows 98 machine or something

so I could run Duke 3D and other Dos games.

So yeah, my two games, it'd be Duke 3D...

[contemplation of steel]

[chuckles] and Duke 3D: Atomic Edition.

[laughs at redundancy]

Zikes asks, "What's your all-time favorite Sims expansion?"

That would be have to be the Sims Hot Date, without question

because that's the one that really opened my brain

into the possibilities of a Sims series.

It brought Sims out of the house

and off their home lot and gave them a world to explore.

That was super cool and it just made me super optimistic

about the future of the Sims.

And every iteration has got to be better

than the last one, right.

And I really wish that was true.

[ponders Sims 4 stuff packs]

Tristan Waddington asks,

"What's your life like outside of LGR?

"Can we get a tour of your neighborhood

"and favorite coffee shop?"

Probably not, at least not until I leave this area

because I don't wanna show my neighborhood

or anything like that.

That's just too personal, I don't like doing that.

I don't even like showing my house, I've never even really shown my house.

But, my life outside of LGR is pretty normal, I don't know.

I go around and do life things, like a person.

Margaret Ramsdell-Green asks,

"What modern games are you currently playing?"

Let's see, right now, well I'm working on a review

for Ion -- I almost said Ion Maiden,

it's called Ion Fury now, 'cause lawsuits or whatever.

And also, something else

that was affected by legal junk, Jupiter Hell,

which is actually a sequel of sorts to Doom RL,

which that was Zenimax threatened to cease and desist.

Man, all these legal trouble games.

And I'm also playing through Judgment on the PS4.

So it's in the Yakuza universe,