Episode 347 – Thankscrolling | Games At Work dot Biz

Thanks written on a rolling security door — Photo by Matt Jones on Unsplash

Gratitude, Thanksgiving parade balloon NFTs. Games: Cards Against Humanity, rats playing Doom, Kö-øp, Minecraft. Music: Rock Band in Fortnite, Ed Sheeran in Pokemon Go, sosumi and other sounds in MacOS that were definitely not music.

So many things to be thankful for in this episode! Andy, Michael and Michael get together on this US holiday week to talk technology, gaming and more. Let’s have an NFT parade to start things off for this episode. The Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade is a household tradition in many parts of the United States, and one of the innovations for this year is a charity auction of NFTs. Iconic balloons from past parades make the content for the NFTs, and the auction site is listed in the show notes below if you want to get in on the action. At the time of this writing, the auction amounts span from $14k for the fireman balloon to a whopping $310k for the dragon. Will be interesting to see how much these NFTs go for when the auctions close!

Black Friday, as the major shopping day immediately after Thanksgiving, drew quite a bit of attention from all the retailers. The team over at Cards Against Humanity had something else in mind, and they flipped the script, offering $5 (and more!) for people who gave them what they wanted for Black Friday. Check out the amazing and silly things people did for $5 via the link in the show notes.

Games, games and more games!

Doom is a favorite game for the Games At Work co-hosts, and this time around, it’s not played on something interesting, rather by something interesting: rats. And another fun game called Kö-øp is in the works via a Kickstarter campaign, based loosely on assembling furniture from a famous Swedish manufacturer. Next up is a significant update to Minecraft, allowing for much taller construction and deeper mines. This is followed by a story about Epic purchasing Harmonix, the makers of Rock Band in order to build more musical content into the Fortnite platform. Sticking with the music theme for a moment, the co-hosts discuss the Ed Sheeran crossover into Pokemon Go. Last up, Andy introduces the Microsoft Xbox Museum, as an online and personalized virtual world experience celebrating 20 years of Xbox. If only the consoles were more readily available, even more people could celebrate and give thanks for their digital accomplishments in the Microsoftverse.

After a quick martial arts visualization experience and discussion of network connectivity issues, the Games At Work team enjoy an article about the music connections in the Macverse, and stories about how the sounds in MacOS had to have nothing to do with music because of an appeasement between competing teams of lawyers. This resulted in one sound being named “Sousumi”, which according to the interview, was just to make fun of the lawyers.

Rounding out the show this week, includes such diverse topics as Windows 11 emojis (welcoming back Clippy, but apparently saying goodbye to Ninja Cat), a super-cool Rube Goldberg device and how Dodge will phase out the Charger & Challenger to make way for new EVs.

What have you been Thankscrolling this week? Bid on any NFTs yourself? Let us know over at @gamesatwork_biz !

Thanks for listening!

Selected Links

Wall Street Journal article: Macy’s Turns Thanksgiving Day Parade Balloons Into NFTs — https://www.wsj.com/articles/macys-turns-thanksgiving-day-parade-balloons-into-nfts-11637626701

Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade NFT auction — https://www.macys.com/social/macys-parade-nft/

Cards Against Humanity Pays You $5 Sale — https://getfivedollars.com

PC Gamer article: Rats named Carmack and Romero are playing Doom — https://www.pcgamer.com/uk/rats-named-carmack-and-romero-are-playing-doom/

Kickstarter: Kö-øp — https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/offcut/ko-p

The Washington Post article: The world of ‘Minecraft’ is getting taller (and deeper) with its latest update — https://www.washingtonpost.com/video-games/2021/11/17/minecraft-update-release-date/

Kotaku article: Epic Buys Rock Band Creators To Make ‘Musical Journeys’ For Fortnite — https://kotaku.com/epic-buys-rock-band-creators-to-make-musical-journeys-1848111406

The Gamer article: Ed Sheeran In Pokemon Go Is The Worst Type Of Crossover — https://www.thegamer.com/ed-sheeran-pokemon-go-ariana-grande-fortnite/

Screenrant article: Pokemon Go: How To Claim Free Ed Sheeran Avatar Item — https://screenrant.com/pokemon-go-free-ed-sheeran-avatar-item-guide/

Microsoft Xbox Museum — https://museum.xbox.com/en/map

This is really nicely done. Explore the history of Xbox (and, if you have an account, your personal history with the platform). Xbox 20th Anniversary #XboxMuseum https://t.co/NwvGEbJw9j
— Andy Piper (@andypiper) November 25, 2021