Hello everyone And welcome to the switch statement podcast It's a podcast for investigations into miscellaneous tech topics this is the fourth episode in our series on masters of doom by David Kushner. Chapter four. Pizza money. Hey John, how you doing?
Jon:Hey, Matt, I'm doing very well. How are you doing?
Matt:I'm doing alright. Ready to talk today about Id.
Jon:Id.
Matt:I feel like this is the first
Jon:the deep.
Matt:Ideas of the Deep. First time they've teased that name. Uh,
Jon:really is a superhero, like super group origin story. And this is when they're, you know, meeting at their headquarters for the first time they're naming themselves.
Matt:I wanna buy a lake house and just get a, get four or five engineers, artists together.
Jon:Yeah. Let's go to Shreveport.
Matt:Let's go to Shreveport!
Jon:Shreveport! is like the most evocative name. Like there was a part where they were talking about. But, you know, we gotta get out of Shreveport. And that just sounds like such a, it just sounds like a phrase that would be in a movie or something. Like, man, I gotta get out of Shreveport. Anyway.
Matt:Um, but we are, we are still in Shreveport when we start this chapter. And I have to say, I was pretty surprised. Like, they had this really dramatic ending for chapter three where it's like, Romare was like, let's blow this pop stand. And then it felt like we just took another, a whole, like, step back and then like, I don't know, I guess I kind of assumed that immediately they were going to be like, heading out on their own.
Jon:Yeah. No, this is definitely Kushner's storytelling. You know, ending his chapters with like some cliffhanger type thing.
Matt:This is an artificial cliffhanger I would say. But, um, but so, as impressed as Romero is, everybody else is just completely, like, they don't really care. Everybody at Softdisk, they're like,
Jon:Yeah. the side scrolling thing. So, right, like the last, and I'm like not remembering this very well, like the last chapter sort of ended with, uh, Carmack writing the side scrolling thing, you know, the copyright infringement game, and Romero thinking it was like the greatest thing since sliced bread, and this chapter starts With him sort of showing it to everyone at Softdisk, but I, I feel like Softdisk is portrayed like this, you know, everyone at the company is kind of these older, out of touch
Matt:It's like Inateck from, uh, freaking Office Space.
Jon:Yeah, exactly. Like, it's not portrayed very Uh, you know, positively and actually it's a kind of a sad story, which we'll get into, you know, towards the end of this, but, but anyway, no one cares about Carmack's side scrolling achievements.
Matt:right. Well, and I wonder if that's not because there's like a decent amount of jealousy. Because it sounds like there is a pretty tense relationship between these hotshot video game developers and the rest of the people who, You know, uh, they're doing their, just doing their day job and then like you have these people with like a beer fridge in the other room.
Jon:totally. I mean, that would annoy me if I was at a company and there was like people just having fun all day in a back room.
Matt:Yeah. So I wonder to what extent that was a little bit of just like sour grapes kind of at their, at their situation, which like rightly so I would say.
Jon:Uh, But, they got into um, a really interesting story that I think happened at the beginning of the chapter. At least in my notes, it's at the beginning. Is, there was a guy who was apparently like, kind of a creepy stan for John Romero. What was this guy's name? I didn't write it down.
Matt:Scott. Was it, uh, Scott? Uh, I forget what his last name is. Let me see if I can
Jon:But so he was totally creepily standing, uh, for John Romero. He was sending John Romero letters, and he was pretending he was different people. But they were all from the same address, so John Romero sort of put two and two together and he's like, who's this psychopath who's like, you know, texting
Matt:Yeah, Scott Miller. Scott Miller.
Jon:Scott Miller. Nice. So Romero responds to Scott Miller, and at first he writes this sort of screed, this like, you know, Who are you, psycho? Stop, stop talking to me. But then he collects himself, and he writes more of a composed letter. But he includes the crazy letter. In the composed letter and he referenced, this was like my favorite part of the chapter because I just love how John Romero, uh, handled this situation. Like he includes this crazy letter and he references it, but he says in the, in the new letter, like, okay, I collected my emotions, but I've included this crazy letter just to let you know how I initially felt. Uh, anyway,
Matt:an interesting move. I don't know. Do you think that is a good way to,
Jon:Oh, I, I love
Matt:this like gut reaction that you had. Um,
Jon:he kind of captures the human experience in like a weird way, where, I don't know, like if I received a letter like that, I mean, I don't think I would ever creepily stand like he was, but, uh, I feel like I would completely understand, like if I received that letter, like, with the two separate letters. Um, but anyway, what I wanted to get to was this Scott guy. Had already started using this shareware model to make a ton of money. Like I was re they mentioned that he made 90 cents on every dollar, which I knew shareware could be, you know, there was very little overhead. Like that's part of the whole purpose of shareware is that you don't have to like pay advertisers and stuff. It's all word of mouth, but I did not realize you could make 90 cents on the dollar. It just seems
Matt:Well, it's funny though, because you're making like 10 percent as many dollars though, right?
Jon:Right, right? Yeah. I mean, and shareware seems basically dead at, at this point in time. Like, is there any shareware still? I guess it doesn't even make sense. Cause it's just, Well,
Matt:Well, I would argue Blender operates in a very similar model because like the idea of shareware is like, or at least this is my understanding of it. Anyone can download your software for free. And people can share it with one another. And I guess that's the idea. And then you can, if you like it, there's a way there's some information in the app that would allow you to pay the original.
Jon:Yeah. I feel like there was also an element of like, a lot of times you weren't getting the complete game. in some cases you would basically get like the first three levels of a game. And then you'd have to pay for the remaining levels.
Matt:It sounds like in the realm of tools that on your day to day, they would just give you the whole thing. You would just get the whole thing. You can use it for free
Jon:Yeah.
Matt:and people would pay for that. But then with games, people found that, If you just gave them the whole thing, like, almost no one would pay you for it. So they had to move to this model where you could, you had to tease them, give them a couple of levels, get them hooked, and then they would pay for the rest.
Jon:Yeah, exactly. Which
Matt:so, but this guy was making games though, right? Scott was making games. Or was he just making shareware software?
Jon:Yeah, I thought he was making games. Cause he was, he, you know, was sending those creepy mails about a game that Romero had made. Like his pyramid exploration game or something.
Matt:Yeah. This was actually, so this was after though, when, when, like, so we talked about there that they built this perfect side scrolling clone of, uh, Super Mario,
Jon:Yeah,
Matt:but they actually at the very, like, just when they started to moonlight, and I don't know if we actually said that, like, so they were at, uh, Softdisk and then. Softix was clearly, like, didn't care about what they had built, so then they were like, Alright, we're just gonna do it ourselves, at night, in this other lake house. And, if I recall correctly, the first project they undertook was like, Alright, we're gonna go to Nintendo, and we're gonna create like a pixel perfect clone of Super Mario, on PC and take it to Nintendo and they were like, cool, cool, cool. But we don't care at all about this market, which like, does that seem bonkers?
Jon:is bonkers. Yeah, you know, Nintendo as a company has always impressed me because You don't think of them as this, like, super idealistic, sort of mission driven company, but they are. They absolutely are. There's been so many cases where they, like, left a huge amount of money sitting on the table in order to pursue, like, their own, you know, whatever. Like, and they've sort of always been that way, and it's interesting to read these little anecdotes about Nintendo, um, Because you just, you just realize that yeah, they've, they've sort of always stuck to their guns and it's been super profitable in some cases, but they're, they've probably lost out on a bunch of money as well.
Matt:It's what's, what's the ideal there
Jon:I think that, I think that they want total control over the form factor. Like they're, like Nintendo has always been all about the complete holistic experience. You know, that's why they're so inand this is totally my interpretation of Nintendo, by the way, but I have been sort of a lifelong adorer of Nintendo. But they, they have always, it's kind of like how Apple is, where, you know, you're, you have an Apple device in your hand, it's Apple software, you're, you know, you're dealing with Apple integrations, everything is Apple. I think Nintendo has a similar ideology, ideology about their games, where they want the whole entire experience to be a Nintendo experience that they have control, complete control over.
Matt:Wow. And I guess, I guess in that world, like even if you have a company that did a really good job of recreating your vision. It's almost like a slippery slope to losing that control.
Jon:Exactly,
Matt:now you need to support, like, it's like, all right, well, Pandora's box of systems you need to support has been opened and like, all right, there goes all of your ability to really control
Jon:And, and I can totally imagine the boardroom conversation at Nintendo was probably very similar to the boardroom conversation at Apple where, you know, Google had started licensing Android, the operating system, to like many, many phone manufacturers. I'm sure Apple considered doing a similar thing, but they were just so much more interested in like the vertical integration of sort of owning the whole process. Um, and it, it just feels to me like that was probably the calculus that Nintendo made. That's why it's so interesting that Nintendo did license, or I don't know if license is the right word, but like, companies did write Nintendo games. You know, like, Tengen is a famous example. Tengen wrote a bunch of Nintendo games. You know, these were like, not Nintendo employees, but they were creating Nintendo cartridges. Um, and those types of stories are really interesting, because they sort of were able to work within the Nintendo paradigm.
Matt:Right. And I guess like, if we're trying to understand their guiding principle. It's like, since they controlled the platform that it was on, they were willing to relinquish the direct control of the people writing it because they were able to, you know, control distribution if they, if it didn't meet their bar.
Jon:Exactly. Yeah, that's, that's my understanding.
Matt:Okay. But yeah, so, but that, that path didn't, didn't work out for them. And then they got their creepy, uh, Stan and actually like. How well is Stan? Like, this is like the Eminem song Stan, that you're referencing?
Jon:Oh, yeah, yeah. So I use that word to mean like a rabid fan, but I don't know. Yeah, borderline stalker, maybe even past the borderline of stalking. Uh, but I, yeah, I don't know how well understood that term is, so I'm glad that we're clarifying. Yeah,
Matt:that that's what you meant, but I wanted to, uh, double check my, my interpretation of that. Um. And so, um, yeah, so they start to make games, and I guess very quickly they come up with the idea for Commander Keen.
Jon:Billy Blaze. Dude, I played Commander Keen. That's how old I am.
Matt:It's so funny, because all of this is happening before I was born. You know, I was not even alive at this point. So, I have heard of Camp Commander Keen. I think there have been efforts to, like, revive it, I guess, recently. Uh, but, I have never played it. Is it good?
Jon:Yeah, so I was trying to figure out which Commander Keen I actually played because it was a whole series. Um, the one that I actually played is called Aliens Ate My Babysitter. Which is just an amazing, it's like such a John Romero title. Uh, and it was awesome. It was a cool game. Like it's kind of a side scrolly type thing. The graphics have sort of a, uh, like this chapter even mentions Ren and Stimpy, which was sort of a cultural phenomenon. Uh, it had sort of that Ren and Stimpy vibe where the artwork is all these. You know, nothing is a square. Everything is sort of trapezoidal and like absurd, with absurd dimensions and perspective. Um, it was awesome. I remember loving the game. I don't know if I played it at release, which would have been like 91. Because I would have been 6. So, I probably didn't play it right when it was released. I probably played it like, you know, 5 or 6 years later.
Matt:One, one detail that really, uh, stood out to me as interesting is they, there was almost a philosophy at id about like showing the results of your actions where they would like leave the carcasses of the aliens on screen.
Jon:Yeah. I wonder how much of that is just because they You know, they want to depict violence, so they have to come up with this, like, moralistic, you know, argument that enables them
Matt:interesting. It does sound so we've, we've touched on this guy, uh, Adrian Carmack,
Jon:hmm.
Matt:and he seemed to be the driving force behind a lot of those like more gruesome details. And there's a lot of hints that they're dropping about, like, they're just like laying the foundation of like. The forthcoming, extremely gratuitous, like, gruesome violence that is going to define Doom, and I guess Wolfenstein 3D. Um,
Jon:I, I was sort of laughing at that, you know, that interpretation of violence where it's like, Oh, you have to show the, like, you know, the, the actual outcome, like they were almost making the claim that having enemies immediately disappear. Is almost worse from like the moral standpoint, because you're sort of, you don't have to deal with the repercussions of your actions, whereas what they're doing is like, they're, you know, they're showing the repercussions of your actions. So you have to kind of, uh, emotionally deal with them. It's just kind of a hilarious, like, reasoning made me laugh a little bit. Yeah.
Matt:we were hypothesizing about a game where like, it's a war scene, and then like, you shoot someone, and then like, you're immediately like, Taken to their funeral or something like that. You are like a surgeon. You've become a surgeon like attempting to operate on them. Uh, or something.
Jon:And then you become their like seven year old kid and you have to like cry at their funeral and stuff.
Matt:I do think, I, I, I mean, That would really be leaning into that, That metaphor like trying to take like a triple A game that's like just, I guess it's like commoditizing violence or human life in a way. Um, which I, I think there is something to be said for that, although I'm not sure that there's like much moral high ground, uh, that the authors of Commander Keen have that, like, they're having some major impact on the awareness of, like, children's actions when they're playing Commander Keen.
Jon:Yeah. I feel like if anything, games, you know, just get more and more like, I feel like these days when you kill someone in a game, it's just like utterly, you know, you're sort of close up, like snapping their neck and like just these horrible ways. And it's, you know, obviously just gotten more and more gratuitous over time.
Matt:I think we've, I, I think we're at a point where it's like, at this point in time, They just were newly able to show this level of violence. So like, they like leaned like super hard into it. And I think generally we've kind of like, yeah, you could show as much gratuitous violence as you want these days. And now it's like, okay, well, I mean, certain games, yeah, they're still going there. But then it's most games, it's more of a balance because like, I don't know, that's not what most people are looking for, I think.
Jon:It is an interesting take on it because part of the reason those other games weren't showing dead bodies was a technological limitation, which you do come to, like, if you think about the history of games. It does seem like every time there's sort of these leaps in, in technology, like one of the first usages of those leaps is A, porn, but also B, you know, super gratuitous violence. Just basically these purient things. I remember there was a game called Soldier of Fortune when I was young, and I'm sure if anyone's listening to this, they have no idea what this game is. But basically what it was, was You know, there was this, uh, introduction of what was called ragdoll physics. I think maybe, you know, some of the Half Life games were one of the first people who would incorporate this into games. But what Soldier of Fortune had was ragdoll physics and sort of dismemberment physics. Where if you, like, shot someone in the arm or something with a shotgun, like, their arm would tear off and fly across the room or something. And I just remember that that game, like It became a hit, like it was kind of a sensation, you know, every kid I knew wanted to play it, and we'd sort of like, you know, be behind the bleachers talking about like, oh man, soldier of fortune. Um, but it was also just completely like, gratuitous and over the top.
Matt:It is interesting, and I guess, it's just a testament to the fact that we're still these monkeys that are, like, there, you don't want to get torn to smithereens and you want to have sex. And it's like, as much artifice as we build up in society, it's like, These are still these, like, fundamental things.
Jon:This is why I welcome our AI overlords. I mean, humans are just these highly flawed vessels.
Matt:very true. Very true. Um, yeah, so, I didn't have too many other things. One thing that was an interesting little nugget that they talked about was, like, patenting. Software that I wanted to raise, uh, Carmack, I guess, is just like vehemently opposed to the idea of patenting software. And I wanted to just like introduce that idea. I don't know if you have any thoughts about it.
Jon:I, I'm glad you mentioned this cause I actually wrote down a note in my notes, uh, where this is the type of thing that I'll get sanctimonious about. Like I'll actually annoy myself, uh, about this cause I'm totally aligned with Carmack. Like I've always wanted all software to be free. Just the very concept of like closed source annoys me. Uh, because really you are taking away the, the furtherance of science, and there's a, a very valid argument to be made that like, if companies are allowed to sort of, uh, control their ideas and sell them, then they're more incentivized to like, produce ideas. So, that argument is real, and it's very valid, but, um, I have always been on the other side, which is like, I think all software should be free and available and people should be able to, like, steal each other's code and build on top of it. And I've always wondered why I feel so just annoyingly strong about that. And I actually think it's in part due to John Carmack, you know, cause I, he was a hero of mine as a kid. And I did, I read this book a long, long time ago. I can't even remember when. Um, and I do remember reading about Carmack and I probably sort of picked up some of his. philosophies along the way, and yeah, so I, this is something I feel strongly about.
Matt:It's funny because Carmack is shaping up to be, and you've, you've talked about this before, but like this. Just like a single, singularly focused, like if he would not, he would not have a successful business by himself, you know what I mean? He would like, cause he would just program in his basement and then give every, like give everything away for free, basically. Or at least that seems to be his idealist position.
Jon:I, you know, as, as I examine myself while reading this book, I really do think like, You know, because my dream sort of conception of myself is that I am just a very strong programmer, you know, probably on some team where there's like an actual business person, because I suck at that, but I just do good work and the work speaks for itself. Like, I don't, I never have to like. Sell my own ideas, um, and I, yeah, I think a lot of that philosophy, which I actually think is highly flawed, by the way, in many, many ways, unless you are some programming god, maybe, but I do think a lot of that philosophy is, uh, comes from Carmack. Like, I've always wondered where it comes from, and now, now that we're sort of rereading this book, I'm realizing that it might, might have been informed from Carmack.
Matt:It's so funny because In a way, I do feel like so much of software, you know, modern software is built atop the, you know, built on the shoulders of giants who they were these people who were writing this software for its own sake. They weren't doing it for a financial gain. They were doing it because, because at a certain point, certain point, it takes so much effort that like, you couldn't motivate someone to want to do that with money, even if you wanted to. Uh, and like, it's basically just by happenstance that these people are creating software that is valuable to some mega corporation and they pay them enough money so that they can do that, but it's not the driving factor. And that's what's kind of this interesting relationship. And it's, this is the same, like, I think I'm thinking of, um, what, uh, Richie and Thompson, Ken Thompson and was
Jon:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Matt:you know, and, and it's, I think this pattern keeps on repeating, you know, you had Bell labs who were paying their salary, but again, like they were just intrinsically motivated,
Jon:Right.
Matt:know, uh, Uh, Thompson, Ken Thompson. He basically wrote Unix, like, not accidentally, but he like, he was just like intrinsically motivated to do this. He just, he realized that he could, and then he did it. Um,
Jon:Yeah. And, and they didn't have, you know, the way Bell Labs was structured, like they didn't have orders. They didn't have marching orders. Yeah. They were just people who were paid money so they could live and they were able to develop whatever they wanted to. And they developed some of the most fundamental like framework of our modern technological society.
Matt:Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's what I, that's what I want. I just want to find some wealthy benefactor who thinks I do interesting things and then. I can just spend my time doing interesting things.
Jon:yeah, I, we should do a episode on just motivation at some point because I do think you and I, I mean, not to like get on a high horse or anything, but something I've noticed about you and I is we're just not that motivated by money. And I don't know, I feel like I'm sounding ridiculous right now, but like. You look at history and these times where humans have been incredibly motivated and have produced these huge, huge breakthroughs. And, yeah, sure, a lot of those have come from big companies that were paying people a lot of money. But a lot of those huge breakthroughs came from things like, you know, number one, war, where people are literally afraid for their lives. Like, that's clearly a good motivator. Uh, but also things like what you're talking about, like Bell Labs, where people, you just bring a bunch of smart people together, you create some camaraderie there and you create a situation where they can do whatever they want and they produce amazing things or things like, you know, the space race, which is just this sort of like amazingly intellectually challenging, you know, mission where everyone is simply motivated by the like challenge of it. Um,
Matt:I, I recently heard, I think there's this mindset in a lot of people that's like, Oh, like we have so many problems on earth. Why are we trying to get to space? And I recently heard, like, the best kind of rebuttal to that. Because there's the, like, first order, which is like, Um, it's, it's good to, like, aspire to these things for their own sake. But, I heard that for every dollar that was invested in the, uh, in the Apollo program, There was like seven or eight dollars, like six or seven dollars that grew the GDP just because of how much technological advancement they needed to come up with that then propagated out through. And then you had these incredibly technically competent people go out into the society and then like do amazing things. And so it's like when you, when you attempt these. incredible challenges. Like you grow as a result.
Jon:exactly.
Matt:I, so I think like, it's just wrong to say that it's like, you know, it's not worth spending the money to, to develop these technologies.
Jon:absolutely. Yeah. And, and it's inspiring. I, I think it just has like an overall positive effect on society. Um, and yeah, it's, it's sort of sad that we don't do things like that as often anymore.
Matt:for all of Elon's faults, like I think the stuff that he's doing with SpaceX and, uh, Starlink and all of that stuff, like that feels like where we should be investing our energy as a civilization,
Jon:yeah. Now this is the great, um, Uh, sort of, like, conflict that I have with Elon, is that I just think he's such a terrible person. But I would agree that the things that he's pursuing are important goals for the human race. So it's, yeah, it just annoys me that he's such a, such a jackass.
Matt:a, yeah, edge lord. Uh, but like, It is unbelievable. Every time you, every time I look again at like the things that SpaceX has accomplished, it's just like mind boggling. Like, it's just like It just makes me wonder, like, how, why is there so much of a delta between and literally everybody else?
Jon:yeah, there's got to be a good like book on this or something because it's something I've noticed about Google too, like working at a huge company, I've always been interested in exploring this more, this concept of like incentive structures, because I've been a part of big companies where everyone's making a lot of money, but people just aren't accomplishing that much, but I've also been a part of like little tiny companies where people literally aren't making a dime, but every day they're churning out like amazing work and they're super motivated and they're gelling super strongly and it's, You know, it's completely fascinating to me. It's like, why, yeah, it's like, why does one work and the other doesn't and what's the secret sauce there? And I'm sure, I mean, obviously if people could figure that out, it would be a different world.
Matt:I think, I think there's a sweet spot. You know, I, I really do think that, and the more and more that I'm thinking about it, like, doing your own small thing, feels like the right thing to do. You know, obviously, like, you know, you need to, you need to make sure that you're keeping your eye on the ball in terms of, like, making sure you're not spending a bunch of time doing something that is not rewarding at all. But, like feels like that's the opportunity that you have, you know, where you're, you'll be able to invest for the long term. And like, you'll get, you know, to that shareware guys point, like 90 percent of the, you know, the returns. And so I don't know, that's feeling more and more like the, the better like long term play, I feel like, but
Jon:It's just more fun. Everyone who's listening, go start a small company and. You know, you'll thank us
Matt:Yes, you will thank later. Because even if it fails, and you do have to go crawling back to some megacorp, you're going to go back with a lot more knowledge than you had when you left,
Jon:Yeah, and I have done that twice now in my life and I still do not regret a single decision. There was actually one last, one final tidbit I wanted to talk about with the chapter just want to squeeze it in. I know this is getting long, but the story of Al, the, you know, this, I think he's the CEO of Softdisk.
Matt:Yeah.
Jon:It's just a completely depressing and sad story, like, and I find myself just really feeling very sympathetic for Al because, you know, he hired these hotshot kind of asshole programmers because they were really good and he's gave them so much, you know, he gave them this great gear, their own little room where they could like drink, you know, Coke all day and like watch porn or whatever. And they totally screwed him over. Like they formed this other, they used all of their equipment outside of work hours, even during work hours, they formed a relationship with other business partners, and then they ultimately just straight up, you know, tried to do a coup basically and like leave, you know, without performing their contractual obligations. So, you know, I think there's, there's an interpretation of this where it's like, you know, the, this is the Beatles and they're sort of on their way to fame and they have to sort of cut ties with these people that are holding them down, but then there's the alternate interpretation of it, which is the sad Al guy who's just trying to keep his company alive and pay his employees. And there's these like asshole kids who are undermining him at every turn. So just an interesting thing that I definitely did not pick up on this the first time I read this book.
Matt:definitely turned out, or like, looked way better, I think, by the end of this chapter. He seemed like this cigar smoking businessman, like, where, you know, you didn't really care about him. And like, I'm not sure that that picture of him is, like, completely wrong, but he definitely his humanity kind of shown through, like in this, in this chapter, I would say. And like, I mean, it's most essentially, uh, depicted in this little scene where he says, like, he's talking to Carmack and he's like, don't you care about like any of the other people here? And then like, Carmack's like, no, no, like, I don't care about them at all. Um,
Jon:Characteristic, brutal honesty from Carmack.
Matt:I know it was, it was funny, but yeah, I, I agree. I mean, I think, think it's hard and it's, it's surprising because like in the, in the story, he, he is going to offer them a, a job basically, like they're about to peace out. And then he's like, Hey, like, let's set up a new company and he's going to give them an olive branch. And I think like rightly so because he knew that these guys were hot shots, you know, he knew that they had this stuff and then um I don't know like when I was reading this section, I wasn't exactly clear on what happened, but it sounded like it sounded like they went to the rest of the softdisk team like they being um The id guys and were like hey, we're gonna set up a whole nother company with al And then the other programmers, the 30 other programmers were like, they were about to mutiny, you know, and just say like, we're, we're bouncing out of here.
Jon:Yeah, that was my interpretation. The other, the rest of the company sort of got wind of this very special deal that Al was offering, you know, to, to John. John.
Matt:yeah, yeah, yeah. Which it's funny because there's a world where that could have happened, you know what I mean? And
Jon:Yeah.
Matt:that was an interesting little touch of like humanity in this, like, otherwise. Like just, you know, rockstar story. Uh, so, um, but, but yeah, that was, that was all I had. Uh, was there anything else?
Jon:Now that's all I had. A really interesting chapter. Um, and I'm excited for the next one.
Matt:Oh yeah, no, now they're truly, truly on their own. We'll see what, what shenanigans they get up to next All right, see you, John.
Jon:See you, Matt.