Good evening. At last you are listening to three moves ahead. I'm your host, Rob Zakney, and with me tonight is Troy Old Reliable Goodfellow.

Old Reliable. Good Lord. I'm not old. No, why am that reliable, actually.

Yeah, but when you need to put together a 3M.A. at the last possible minute, or long after the last possible minute. You're the guy I go to.

I have so much experience doing that. That's why. We're also joined once again by our friend, Greg Tito, the Escapist. Greg, welcome back to the show. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having me back. I just want to call you Greg Taito, like Marshall Tido, but that's just wrong. it is wrong yeah but it's you know it's either that or tito that's what i get all the time yeah, I just, that's just, that's just, that's wrong, but it is wrong, yeah, but it's, you know, it's either that or tito. That's, that's, that's what I get all the time. Yeah, and that's just, that's just, that's just no good for anyone. Well, I mean, for some people. Tonight we're going to be talking about the game of Thrones, Genesis, the ongoing Napoleon and Europe death match currently underway at the escapist and matters of deception and trust among gamers and their games. So I wanted to start with the game we've all been playing a bit of lately, a Game

of Thrones. I think we're all in agreement the game has some big, big issues, but we're talking

about it anyway, because it has some interesting things going on with it. So, Greg, I wanted

to start with you. What's been your reaction to a Game of

Thrones, and what do you think about the core conceit of it, which is that units can basically

lie to you, right? The overall thing that I think about it is that it delivers on the intrigue that I

thought was really kind of important for a Game of Thrones game. You know, the RTS, I was a little bit scared because I thought it was going to be, you know, just a big army is clashing, and, you know, they'd have some dragons and, you know, slap the license on it, and that would be it. But they really did, I think, a really interesting way of dealing with the intrigue by using these non-combat units.

They don't necessarily lie to you, but you can, when playing, you know, seduce or buy off certain units

so that when you're playing, then they look like they are controlled by you, but in fact,

they're being controlled by the enemy.

Is that what the conceit that you're talking about?

Yeah, there's just a general lack of, it's a game where you really can't trust what you're saying. It's not just a matter of fog of war, but the game will happily feed you false information. And so there's a lot of, the game makes it necessary to verify a lot of things. Like, do I really have an alliance here alliance here do you know can I trust one of

that one of the niftier things I thought was that I'm if you infiltrate a spy

into the enemy base the next you know sort of intelligence unit the the enemy

unit the enemy creates will actually be an agent in your employ and And so he could be sending an emissary around

and striking all these alliances and they're all false flag operations. There are no alliances being

struck. Right. Yeah. And then also you can just send in a spy to make a secret alliance

and have the town be producing money for you,

although it will still look like it's producing money for the person who has it.

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