BackSlash WhoAmI

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Morning Folks! Yesterday Wilhelm Arcturus aka The Ancient Gaming Noob aka TAGN ran a bit of a thought experiment on his blog. He asked the three most common Large Language Models for Chat who he was, and got some less-than-stellar results. However, eventually, Microsoft CoPilot managed to get the correct answer at which point it led to a whole series of questions asked… some of which were given reasonable answers. This of course made me curious what my results would look like, and within minutes I was looking up the pages for the models from Microsoft, Open AI, and Google and asking it a simple question.

Who Is Belghast?

Open AI / Chat GPT

I figured we would start with the most mature of the three, ChatGPT by Open AI. It was simple enough to get into the tool through a web browser and type my simple query. For the most part, it nailed it in one. It indicated that I wrote a blog called Tales of the Aggronaut that is focused on MMORPGs… but that is essentially something you could get from the short description of my website. The bit about the significant following through that feels like freestyle and not exactly something I would agree with considering my dwindling readership over the years. It got a little less on the nose as I asked it additional questions like what games I play… which admittedly it did specifically call out World of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XIV. However given that the model is using data from 2022… it is completely missing my obsession over Path of Exile, Last Epoch, New World, Guild Wars 2, or even Diablo IV.

All in all, it was a good effort: B+

Microsoft CoPilot

Since this is the service that Microsoft desperately wants me to give access to my computer… I figured I would turn next to CoPilot. The key difference between CoPolit versus ChatGPT is that Microsoft has decided to give its AI monster direct access to the internet. So when I ran this query again this morning it specifically called out my weekend podcast where I talked about the New World Aeternum debacle. All in all, I like the summary thought and it specifically name-drops Blaugust with a short explanation of what it is. The Twitch bit is a little off the mark because while I technically do have a channel there it has been three or four years since I last streamed to it. The thing I like the most about this is that it specifically links a bunch of relevant things including Aggronaut main page, the Blaugust Announcement from last year, AggroChat and my Twitch page. Where it fell apart was on follow-up questions where it essentially regurgitated back the above paragraph when I asked it what games I played.

Another pretty solid effort thought, but I am giving it a B+ only because I liked its formatting and mentioning Blaugust. The follow-through needs some work. What is weird is that CoPilot seemed to work the best for Wilhelm but it absolutely did not for me.

Google Gemini/Bard

Next up we try Google Gemini which I believe until recently was referred to as Bard. This is the thing that is gobbling up all of our content and serving it up to web browsers without ever sending readers to our websites. The first strike against this is that I could not run it in an anonymous browser session, and had to log in with a Google account… which gave it a headstart in knowing this information. I am apparently a “multi-faceted online personality” and honestly I am not sure how I feel about that. It goes on to break down the things I do… which again everyone seems to be leaning hard into Streaming when I did it enough to get Twitch Affiliate while Elder Scrolls Online was launching and then basically never did it again with any regularity. The weird text formatting is I believe Grammarly complaining about something because it only happened the first time I tried to use it. When I dug down a bit further about what games I play, it gave me some pretty generic answers: MMO Gamer, Variety Gamer, and RPGs.

I think this is the one that I liked the least of the three so I am giving it a straight-up B or maybe even a C+.

Personality and Branding

I was curious about something. I know that I am way more widely known as “Belghast” than I am as the title of my blog “Tales of the Aggronaut”, and as such I think the Large Language Models had a bit easier time honing in on who exactly I was given that I use the same name on pretty much every platform and said the name is not exactly commonplace. While I know Wilhelm by the name Wilhelm Arcturus, I only do so because I have read his content for years. If I were going to tell someone about something he wrote I would probably use TAGN or The Ancient Gaming Noob instead because that is the “brand” that I associate most strongly with him. So Chat GPT was one of the LLMs that struck out horrifically and I decided to give it a test run by asking it who “The Ancient Gaming Noob” is.

Sure enough, it nailed it on the first attempt, because LLMs are ultimately just search engines. They are way more complicated search engines, but at the end of the day, all they are doing is sifting through harvested data and then trying to extrapolate something that looks like an answer based on that data. When you search “Wilhelm Arcturus” you don’t get the blog until the fourth link down. However when you search “The Ancient Gaming Noob” you land on the WordPress blog in one hit. With me, if you search for my name or my blog title you get essentially the same results every time. This is not necessarily an intended effect or something that I spent years of SEO nonsense trying to accomplish, but just something that happened over time. I just figure Wilhelm would have had better results had he started with TAGN rather than his pen name.

Anyways! It was a fun experiment and I figure at some point Wilhelm will read this post so thanks for the idea. It was definitely an interesting journey.

AggroChat #481 – Off Meta Fun

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Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, and Kodra

Hey Folks! We are down a few folks who are traveling this week.  Happy Father’s day to all the Dads out there.  We start off with Bel talking about the recent controversies surrounding New World Aeternum and the general marketing self-own of that announcement and seemingly ignoring the current player base.  We roll into a discussion about Steam Next Fest and a few games we have played, namely: Flintlock, Dungeon Clawler, and Beastie Ball.  From there we talk a bit about Guild Wars 2 releasing information about the new spear attacks for three more jobs and how fun some of the general off-meta weapons can be.  Bel talks about getting his confidence back and tanking once more for the first time in a few years in Final Fantasy XIV.  Ash and Kodra talk about their recent experiences playing Pokemon Mystery Dungeon as a Tabletop Roleplaying Game.  Finally, we talk a bit about the influx of monster collection games including some more discussion about Beastie Ball.

Topics Discussed:

  • New World Aeternum
    • Marketing Self-Own
  • Steam Next Fest
    • Flintlock Siege at Dawn
    • Dungeon Clawler
    • Beastie Ball
  • Guild Wars 2
    • More Spears Released
    • Fun with Off-Meta Weapons
  • Final Fantasy XIV
    • Bel Got His Groove Back
  • PokeRole
    • Pokemon Mystery Dungeon as TTRPG
  • Monster Collection Games
    • More Beastie Ball

Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Bad Week Is Bad

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Friends… it has been kind of a shit week. First, there was the whole crisis with my left eye that started on Saturday, continued through Sunday, and got some minor resolution on Monday. I still have trouble seeing out my eye but at least I know with some measure of certainty that I am not going blind in an immediate timeframe. Then on Tuesday, we lost power for about four hours, which thankfully happened after we had both gotten ready for the day so we did not have to do all of that in the dark. Then last night around 7 pm I was chilling out and working on the Nayos story quest and got disconnected. We lost internet and it has been out for almost 14 hours at this point. I was a dumbass and decided to just go ahead and go to bed around 7:30 since everything I wanted to do required internet access.

This caused me to wake up around 12:30 with no sign of being able to get back to sleep. Normally in this case I would go upstairs and fuck around in some game for 30 mins to an hour until I got tired again, but without internet that was off the table. Then at 2:30, I got a call that there was an issue with one of the applications my team supports… which kept me on the call until 3:30 at which point I attempted to get some sleep. I struggled to get back to sleep but managed to do so around 4 am and then the alarm went off at 5:30. I decided to ignore getting up and walking and ignore my normal routine and sleep in until 7 am. Only to wake up to find that we still did not have internet.

Right now I am tethered to my phone, which I am thankful is an option. We’ve always bought carrier-unlocked phones so that they do not come with any of the “disableware” and bloat that carrier phones have on them. One of the things that gets disabled is the ability to Tether and then you have to pay your provider to sell that default functionality back to you. Buying unlocked phones allows you to tether with impunity and there is nothing that your provider can really do to stop you. Anyway were it not for this functionality I would be in considerably worse shape because I can function fairly well running off a cellular connection.

Today is the start of a five-day weekend… and I need things to stop being awful for a while. I need to start being able to see normally again and I need to have power and internet function like they are supposed to during that break. Next Tuesday is my Birthday and then Wednesday we are off for Juneteenth so I opted to just take Monday as well because it seemed silly to work that one day before having two more off. Anyway… not going to syndicate this one since it is mostly just me ranting about first-world problems.

I hope you have had a better week than I have. I also hope you have an amazing weekend.

NostalgiaTube

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Morning Folks! I’ve loved toys and assorted video game/nerd culture kitsch for my entire life. The problem that I have run into is that I just don’t really have any more room for anything… and I am not exactly displaying what I do have in a reasonable manner. This has deeply curbed my desire to pick up things that I otherwise think would be cool. Don’t get me wrong… my office is stacked full of nonsense that I could not pass up and that I have not had a chance to deal with. For example… the pile of “mini” consoles behind me that I got on closeout but never really did anything with. Thing is… there is a specific brand of YouTube material targetting folks just like me. I’ve been collectively referring to this as NostalgiaTube which is centered around Toy Stores, Video Game Stores, and assorted Garage Sale and Flea Market pickers. This morning I am going to share some of my favorites in this relatively broad genre.

Toy Federation

This is probably my favorite channel of the bunch because it is also potentially the most professionally run. Essentially this is the marketing wing of a very popular toy store of the same name in Greer, South Carolina. The channel is sort of a “day in the life” type view of running the store and evaluating trade-ins and collections that come through. This style reminds me quite a bit of the way that Alpha Investments felt when I got heavily into that channel during the “Rudy owns a Store” phase of that channel. As a result of folks bringing in a non-stop chain of collections, you end up getting to see so many items that summon forth “member berries”.

Would I love to have a showroom full of complete collections of all of the things I remember fondly? Hell yes. Will I ever actually collect this stuff? Very unlikely. Also of note, this store and team are behind Retro-Toy Convention which also lends its way to seeing a bunch of behind-the-scenes stuff of setting up a convention. Probably the best aspect of this is it is part of a “Saturday Morning Cartoons” block of channels that tend to release content each week on Saturday mornings and I often watch the latest video while eating my breakfast.

Eternia Dreams

Eternia Dreams is another channel that is based out of a Toy Store that has a location in Gettysburg Pennsylvania and another in Westminster Maryland. In addition to two storefronts… one of which that is located in a still functional mall, there is a lot of footage as the team goes and sets up as vendors at toy conventions. As the name would indicate, the channel focuses a lot on the Masters of the Universe toy line but largely covers pretty much everything else that is out there. I’ve seen way more focus on newer toylines on this channel than say Toy Federation, which is sort of cool. Mythic Legions for example is a hot property targetting these independent toy sellers. Again however probably the most interesting aspects are the “day in the life” stuff focused on what it takes to keep the stores and convention business running.

Pixel Dan

This is a channel that I found through some of the other channels and tends to be focused on a lot of stuff that was coming out when I was in high school or college, so a bit younger than me. I think Pixel Dan is probably most widely known for his work as an archivist on a Masters of the Universe photo reference guide, or at least that is where I first heard his name. There are a number of tomes that have been created featuring some of the best reference photos for various figures and equipment along with assorted variants, which end up getting used by the various toy stores to “complete” disparate parts of figures. The channel itself tends to focus on his trips out to find various stuff with his family and is edited in a sort of montage style where he talks about things from his studio/office and then shows examples. Worth watching, especially if it looks like it is going to be something interesting. He also visits a lot of other toy stores around the country giving you a glimpse into what each of them is like.

Froggy Flips

Froggy Flips similarly gets a lot of traction but instead of visiting stores he largely visits big regional toy and vintage shows. He is based out of Greenfield Indiana and tends to cover a lot of the upper Midwest area as he roams around. What I dig about him is his focus on Madballs and assorted early Horror and Monster toys. He also seems like a genuinely cool dude and comes off as very respectful towards everyone he meets. I appreciate that he has a following but his videos are peppered with moments of him stopping to have a chat with a viewer. He also seems to genuinely get to know all of the vendors that he interacts with, but I guess if you are making a lot of regional shows you are going to see a lot of the same faces over and over. I remember when I worked at a card and comic shop in high school, we saw the same vendors time and time again when we worked shows. I often have videos like this on in the background while I am doing something else and it is cool to see the various stuff that he finds.

Little BIG Robots

This one is a bit of a departure from the rest, mostly because it is less a show about acquiring vintage toys and instead about what is new or interesting that is currently on the market. Some of you who have been around the MMORPG blogging world for a while will know Beau Hindman and Little Big Robots is what he is up to these days. He takes a less holistic approach towards toy collecting and instead focuses on the things that he really likes for one reason or another. I don’t watch every video that comes out but if something interests me like the D&D remake line for example that I linked above, it is well worth a watch.

Retro Rick

Shifting from Toy Collecting to Video Games I thought I would throw in a few different channels that are similarly feeling. Retro Rick is effectively a picking channel that sort of branched out into a bunch of different things. Last year he purchased a game store in his area and as such has branched out into another channel called Retro Rick’s Game Point and from that point on… the two channels have sort of blended a bit where they are part “day in the life” of running a video game store and part going out into the field and hunting for stuff either for personal collection or to restock the shelves. Mostly a large chunk of why I dig this channel is because he exists in my area. It is not out of the realm of possibility to go up to Conway Arkansas at some point to visit the store. Additionally, he has hit a bunch of stuff in the Bentonville>Rogers>Fayetteville sprawl which is an area I am in way more often.

Arkansas Picker

Lastly, there is the Arkansas Picker which I found through Retro Rick, and I am mostly including it because the above video is from a show in my area that I did not even know existed. I would have potentially gone to it just to look around. As the name would indicate the channel is way more about going out and “picking” for items but there is also a little bit of running a booth in a flea market. He had some issues where folks stole from his booth and there was a whole saga of trying to secure it better while also tracking down the thief. I’ve just started watching the channel and again don’t watch every single video but given he operates in my neck of the woods it is interesting to see places I have been before.

Do You Watch NostalgiaTube?

Do you partake of NostalgiaTube? Are there any really cool channels that I am missing? The other thing that I really dig are found footage from the 80s/90s of folks walking around toy stores or just stores in general. I miss the existence of the Toy Store. When Toys R Us was a thing, I went there probably once a month at a minimum just to roam around and see what was there. I dig that there are independent stores that are stepping into that niche, but I do miss the existence of giant walls of toys in physical stores. Nothing used to be as magical as getting to roam around one of those stores and spend your birthday money. Anyways different post from my normal posts but thought someone out there might enjoy it.