As Rich and I discuss on our last episode of the Playcast, technology can be pretty amazing. It has allowed people from all around the world to connect and communicate in real time, for better and for worse. As someone who works for a massive company with global reach, it never ceases to amaze me that my coworkers and I are in daily communication with people around the world. Similarly, it is astonishing to think that one could form a friendship with another person who lives about a thousand miles away simply by working together on a podcast for the better part of six years.



Until recently, Rich and I have never met in person. A few months ago he let me know that he would be visiting my current home city of Austin, Texas with his wife and that he would like to get together for an in-person recording and some hanging out. For months, anticipation built. I have had countless hours of conversation with Rich both on and off the air as well as volumes of messages in text and email. Still, you can only get to know someone so well without things like eye contact and non-verbal communication like facial expressions and body language.

We decided to devote and entire Sunday to an in-person podcast recording and whatever other fun activities we could come up with. When Rich pulled up to my house, any anxiety I had about our meeting dissolved almost instantly. I felt like I was seeing a family member after a long absence.


I gave him a quick tour of my house. Actually, it wasn't that quick because I wanted to give him as much time as he wanted to peruse my game collection. In all my years of collecting, I've put a lot of value on curating an interesting library of games. I'm happy when people want to look around and play or borrow games out of my collection, but it is very rare for the depth of appreciation for what is there to go beyond "Wow, so many games! Do you have Mario Kart?" It was very gratifying to let an expert like Rich poke around my collection. I even had a game or two that he had never heard of!

Eventually, we made our way into my computer room to record our Detroit: Become Human episode for the show. Recording face to face makes an absolute world of difference and it made the episode very special. You don't have to be in podcasting to understand why this is. It is simply the same as the difference between talking on the phone with someone and talking to him face to face. I know we knocked out a great episode and I was so excited for our audience to hear it.

After recording, we headed to an arcade known as Pinballz. Their main location is here in Austin, but we decided to visit their Buda, Texas location known as Pinballz Kingdom. I hadn't been there yet and I thought it would be cool for it to be new to both of us. Pinballz Kingdom was pretty great. For a Sunday afternoon it wasn't crowded at all, and checking out everything they had was a real treat. One of my favorite things about Pinballz was watching Rich play some pinball and explaining some trivia about the games and commentating on his tactics. I was aware that pinball had objectives, but my playstyle has always been to ignore them and just try to keep the ball in play. Rich could actually narrate what was going on in the game and then aim at and hit his targets with high reliability.


From Pinballz we hit a few local stores for some old-fashioned game hunting. We started at a store called Gamefellas, which is a densely packed, slightly disorganized store with a lot to browse over. It was cool to see Rich pore over the offerings, checking his phone for variants he needed. He ended up with a few nice scores and I grabbed some cheap DVDs for my wife. We also hit up another local game store, Game Over Video Games, which in contrast to Gamefellas is cleanly laid out and way less cluttered. Rich was very happy to see Atari 2600 games displayed in a case right in the front of the store! He was able to pick up a few more variants for his collection and I even bought a game; a very clean copy of Oddworld: Stranger's Wrath for the original Xbox.

We concluded our day together by having dinner at my favorite local restaurant, Kerbey Lane Cafe, joined by Rich's wife. Great food and conversation were had by all. After dinner they drove me home and we parted ways.

Hanging out with someone whom I've been conversing with for a number of years was an interesting but awesome experience. I hope Rich and I can see each other in person again soon. Our day together went by very fast, and I wish we could have done even more together. If you missed it, please go back and check out the Playcast episode for Detroit: Become Human. It's a great one!

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