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Sept. 1, 2019 - Rubin Report - Dave Rubin

01:07:36

Video Game Console Wars & Wrongthink at Facebook | Blake Harris | TECH | Rubin Report

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blake harris ▲ ● ▼		I never considered myself a gamer.
		I was just a kid, and that's what you did.
		And it really was like the social lubricant of the time.
		Like, I wouldn't call you up and say, hey, Dave, you want to have a sleepover and talk about girls?
		I'd be like, hey, you want to play Mario?
		And then we'll talk about girls.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Hey, I'm Dave Rubin, and joining me on The Rubin Report today is the author of Console Wars and the History of the Future, Blake Harris.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Welcome to The Rubin Report.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Thank you for having me on, Dave.
		I have to say that it's nice to be here.
		It's always nice any place someone wants to talk about my books.
		They've both spent several years of my life, but I am a big fan of your show, and we'll get into it, I'm sure, but this most recent book is very difficult, and listening to your interviews was a comfort to me, seriously.
		I remember taking a lot of coffee walks and just having rational conversations.
		This is what I'm missing from my life, so thank you.
unidentified		Oh, wow.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, thank you very much.
		I appreciate that.
		I'm really happy that you're here.
		Now, first off, today, when we're taping this, although this will not air today, today is Hashtag National Video Game Day, so I feel it's a very fitting day to have a video game guy on, so I'm going to be my video game best self here.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and listeners and viewers should know that you have gamer cred.
		In the green room, you have a Genesis emulator and you have your childhood NES, so I was very impressed.
		Yeah, I came up with a high opinion, but there you go.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Even higher.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Wow, so I've got, yeah, so that's a, it's a fake, emulator just means fake, right?
unidentified		Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's just a fake one.
		It's not my original Sega Genesis, so I've got that thing.
		That is my childhood NES in there, which wasn't working for years, and I took it apart.
		I watched a YouTube video on how to take it apart and, you know, use rubbing alcohol, and apparently, technically, you're not supposed to blow in the cartridges.
		Did you know that?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but I still totally disagree.
		I'm somewhat of an expert on this, and every other expert has told me, no, you're not supposed to blow on it.
		But it works.
		It's like the people who say, don't restart your computer when you have a problem, and it just somehow works.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And it just works.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		I reject, which I guess is a very populist thing to do.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		No, trust the experts.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I know better.
		I went to this vintage video game store to get a couple of those old Sega Genesis games, and I made a joke to the guy about blowing in the games, and he freaked out.
		No, you're not supposed to do that!
		You gotta use rubbing alcohol and da-da-da-da-da-da!
		So I've got those two in there, old Sega Genesis, old Nintendo Entertainment System.
		I've got a PS4, which was given to me by former Rubin Report guest and your friend, video game all-star Colin Moriarty.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Great guy, good friend.
		I love seeing him go, initially just leaving IGN and flexing his entrepreneurial muscles and then starting his own thing.
		He's a good guy.
		He said good things about you.
		What made you get the NES and not the Genesis system, if you recall?
		Since I'm invested in Contours, I'm like, why did you pick this?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so, well this is exactly where I wanted to start.
		So your first book is Console Wars and it's basically about the battle between Sega and Nintendo really like early, mid to early 80s into, when would you say that war sort of shifted?
		Sure.
		And then I'll answer your question.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so my first book was Council Wars.
		It came out in May 2014.
		It was life-changing for me.
		Before that book, I was a commodities broker, trading sugar, coffee, and soybeans for Brazilian clients.
		And then I finally got to retire from that and do what I love for a living, and largely that was because Seth Rogen had optioned my book.
		And I mentioned that not just because to name-drop Seth Rogen is a wonderful opportunity, But because my book and this one as well, and everything I write, I always write with my grandma in mind.
		How can I get her to care about Sega and Nintendo?
		How can I get her to care about virtual reality?
		And it's the human story.
		Or as people tell me, it's like a literary movie.
		So that's how I write things.
		And the story of "Console Wars" is this battle between Sega and Nintendo.
		Nintendo resurrected the game industry with the NES that you have in 1985, and then Sega
		tried to beat them with the Master System and failed miserably.
		And then between 1990 and '96, Sega took on Nintendo, and when Nintendo were like 95%
		of the market, they surpassed them for a while, then they flamed out.
		And yeah, so it's this behind-the-scenes story.
		And so I'm always really curious, since those are the people that I wrote about in the boardroom
		thing, how can I get a young Dave Rubin to buy the system?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's exactly why I wanted to have you on, because...
		So first off, your next book, which is your new book, "The History of the Future," is
		That'll be the second half of this interview, and that'll get us sort of up to speed on what's going on with tech and sort of gaming and technology and virtual reality and all that.
		But the first half where I wanted to focus on these things, I mean, most of my audience knows, I consider myself sort of like a, I'm like a retired video gamer, because those old systems, well, hey, I just don't have that much time anymore, so that's one thing.
		But those old systems, there was a simplicity to it.
		You could usually just run one direction.
		You couldn't even run that way.
		You couldn't even run backwards.
		You know, Mario could run that way, but the more he ran that way,
		the less room you had this way.
		There was a certain simplicity to all of it that, to grow up with it, I mean, I remember,
		1985, I'm nine years old, I remember my buddy John getting Nintendo Entertainment System
		with Gyromite and Duck Hunt, and it had that ridiculous robot Gyromite.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Rob the Robot.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Rob the Robot, and I remember it just blew my mind.
		I could not believe anything could be this cool, the amount of hours that me and my friends spent
		sleepovers playing either Mario Brothers, or eventually we shifted mostly to the sports games.
		I love that stuff.
		in RBI baseball and double dribble and all those things.
unidentified		I'm 36.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I love that stuff.
		And all the games not working and blowing in the games and sometimes taking apart the controllers
		to get everything working and all that.
		Are we roughly, you're probably a couple years younger than me, I think.
		I'm 36.
		You're 36, so I'm 43, so I'm a little ahead of you on that.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		But I remember all that.
		I've obviously reflected on that era a lot.
		And video games, I never considered myself a gamer.
		I was just a kid, and that's what you did.
		And it really was like the social lubricant of the time.
		Like, I wouldn't call you up and say, hey, Dave, you want to have a sleepover and talk about girls?
		I'd be like, hey, you want to play Mario?
		And then we'll talk about girls or Yankees.
		And like, it was just this thing that you did.
		And I did pretty poorly.
		I've always been bad at video games.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Were you not a good gamer?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		No, it's kind of embarrassing because there's so few video game books, which is part of why I wanted to write one, and gamers are so disrespected.
		I've been so embraced by that community.
		I want there to be more books, but I'm terrible, and I've never tried to hide that, but I think that's a big part of why I, like you, if I have an hour, I'm probably going to be playing NBA Jam, or Madden 93, or something like that, instead of the latest games, because I'm just terrible at them, it's a little too complex for me, and I'm just a simple gamer at heart.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right, well it was one thing to only run this way, and not run this way, but now you're running this way, and you can run this way, and that's where, for me, for the tiny brief moments of time I have, I'm like, I'd rather just play Contra.
unidentified		Yeah.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Up, up, down, down, left, right, left, right, B, A, select, start, and, you know, have fun for ten minutes, and then try to play a game that's gonna basically give me a headache.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		One thing I found that's pretty interesting, and I'm curious to get your take on this, so, you know, I assume that the two reasons that we like playing these games is it's simple and fun, which is, like, what you look for in a game, and then also the nostalgia factor.
		These came at a time in our lives.
		But I've spoken to college students and high school students, and it's been so amazing that they play Mario games, the games from the 80s, games from the 90s, and I said, like, how come?
		Why are those interesting to you?
		And they say, oh, it's just so nostalgic.
		But it's not nostalgic to them.
		It's not reminding them.
		So what is it that...
		It's interesting.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I guess it's a two-pronged thing in a certain way where it's sort of like the simplicity and fun part, right?
		Because it was just two buttons, there was a limited amount of things you could do.
		I think the games generally focused maybe a little bit more on fun where they're now focused on challenges or something like that.
		And much more heavy on graphics and story, where you have to wait a lot.
		Every time I put on that PlayStation 4, it's mostly like I'm literally sleeping by the time we get to the next screen.
		But the nostalgia part is interesting, because now I have a 10-year-old nephew, and I'll play PlayStation with him, or I've even watched him play with some of his friends, and they're playing NBA 2K19 or something.
		And to be of a certain age and to be able to immerse yourself fully in something, that's really what I think it is.
		That if you can remember what that feeling is like for those little brief moments, and there are moments when I'm playing with him where I can suddenly feel that when you're completely immersed and I'm not thinking about politics or the fact that the world's spinning off its axis or, you know, whatever else is going on there.
		I think it's a few of those things.
		But alright, enough about me.
		I want to talk about these console wars.
		I remember being in arcades sort of before that.
		So Atari was the system before NES came out.
		That was the main one.
		There were a couple others.
		ColecoVision.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there was the Magnavox Odyssey.
		I mention that because the guy who invented video games, Ralph Baer, created that.
		I got to spend a lot of time with him before he passed away.
		And just a great guy who should always be mentioned because he's often forgotten.
		And then Nolan Bushnell at Atari got a lot of credit and did great things, ColecoVision, and television.
		And then the industry died.
		In 1983, there's this crash of video games that are sort of famously highlighted
		by the burial of millions of ET cartridges, because they actually made more ET cartridges
		than there were consoles.
		And it was a terrible game.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right, so I remember that game.
		I remember my friend Adam had it on Atari, and it was a horrible, stiff... Was he, like, willing to admit it was bad?
		No, nobody would admit it.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		It was, like, 50 bucks.
		You had to love these things.
		You pretend you love them, so it's like, oh, this is a great game.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		What were they possibly thinking, though?
		So Atari puts out a game with more copies than the system itself.
		This seems like... I'm not a great businessman, but this doesn't seem like great business to me.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Right, but it's almost like, it's just, it's the personification of what always happens, you know, when you have the success, you can't fail, and there's a hubris, and so they said, it's licensing, it's a popular movie, it's a game, you know, it was probably made by people who had lost touch with the audience, it worked, like, it's probably the best thing you could say about it.
		But it was made, I think, in six weeks.
		And really, that did just personify the fact that there was this oversaturation of games.
		Because for younger listeners and viewers out there, if you remember, this was before the internet, we didn't know what we were getting.
		I remember going to KB Toys with my parents, and it was this special time where they were just going to buy me and my brother a game.
		The first time, it wasn't for a birthday, Hanukkah, or whatever.
		And our entire criteria for choosing the game was just the box.
		Like, we had no idea what the gameplay was like.
		So people, I'm sure that E.T., I mean, it did sell well initially, because people were like, oh, it's E.T., it's Atari, can't miss.
		But it definitely missed.
		And then the industry essentially died.
		Like, you know, when Nintendo went out in 1985 and introduced the Famicom Which was the family computer in Japan, which here was the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System.
		You know, it's not an exaggeration to say, like, I talked to the guys who would go into Wiz and Radio Shack and try to sell these things, and they were not given the time of day.
		The vendors there, the buyers were just like, I don't want video games, we lost a lot of money on this.
		So, you know, I had those same memories as you with Nintendo, where it's just, you know, my eyes light up playing it again, and back then it was just amazing.
		But it wasn't about the quality, it was just about this baggage.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's so hard to believe that at some level because, you know, so I'm nine years old in 1985 and it just took over our world.
		But after that crash, what caused that two-year window from 83 to 85, what was it that Nintendo was able to do?
		Because it was a huge jump in graphics, it was a huge jump in music, but it wasn't just that.
		It was also the fun thing, like Super Mario, like that defined a generation and actually built an entire industry, basically.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		I mean, obviously, the easiest answer is good games, or better games than what came before.
		And that's certainly true.
		It was a step up in a way that hasn't really happened before.
		To go from, like, Frogger to Super Mario Bros.
		is a big jump.
		But as you learn going behind the scenes with both these books, so much of it is about the marketing, the promotion, and all that.
		And Nintendo just had a really unique approach to all of this.
		You probably fondly remember the Nintendo Power, the Nintendo Hotline.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I had Nintendo Power.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		He was like a, sort of like a cult in the best sense of the word.
		It was like, you know, getting kids involved in this thing.
		And I remember one quote from Minoru Arakawa, who was the president of Nintendo America,
		him saying that, they were suggesting like, you know, we need to put out like five games
		at the same time, and he's like, no, I want, I think it was Zelda to be out mostly,
		and no other game really for like six weeks, 'cause he wanted everyone playing the same thing
		He wanted this communal experience and I think that was a big part of it too.
		There was like a concerted effort behind it and I do remember being communal.
		I remember friendships being made and lost and it was like that was all we talked about at school.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I don't want to brag, but so sometime around, this has got to be around 87 or so, Zelda 2 came out, Adventure of Link, and I was at my grandma's in Jersey, and I think the store was called Kaldor.
		It was just like a Sears kind of store, and I remember, I knew when Zelda 2 was supposed to come out.
		It wasn't supposed to come out for like a couple weeks or something, and they had a copy of it there, and I begged and begged and begged, pleaded with my grandma, please, please, please, My grandma buys us this game, which was probably like 50 bucks, which was a lot of money at the time, you know?
		And my brother and I beat it in about two weeks.
		Now, it's thought of, I think, as one of the most complex, difficult... Yeah, I'm like Pharaoh Impress right now.
		It's thought of, yeah, it was really one of the most difficult Zelda games out there.
		But we took a picture of ourselves as we beat it, a black and white picture, that appeared in Nintendo Power magazine.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Really?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I could end the show right now, that's it.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		That's so cool.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So Nintendo really changes the game with this, and then at the same time now, Sega comes out with the Master System.
		I truly don't remember anyone that I know that had the Master System.
		It was like a joke to us.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, that's not unusual.
		Like, this wasn't like a Coke-Pepsi situation where Coke had like 65% of the market.
		Like, Nintendo actually had over 95% of the market.
		One of my favorite ads from that time was, it was an ad that said, it was a picture of Mario, and it says, there's no such thing as a Nintendo.
		Because that's, my mom still calls every video game a Nintendo.
		But they were worried about the trademark concerns of like, you know, the way Jacuzzi has come to represent hot tubs.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Or Kleenex or something, yeah.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		So like, Nintendo was at the point where they were so synonymous with video games that it was actually a synonym for video games, and so they were so dominant.
		And then Sega essentially realized that they couldn't win this 8-bit battle, so they tried to change the location of the war to 16 bits.
		You know, twice as good graphics, but as we sort of touched on earlier, you know, that doesn't make it more fun necessarily, it makes it flashier, and a lot of people think that the Genesis came in and started to eat into Nintendo's market share, but that's not actually what happened.
		The Genesis launched in the United States in 1989, and it struggled.
		The two big changes were the arrival of a guy named Sonic the Hedgehog, middle name's actually The, capital T, and then this guy, Tom Kalinske, who became the president and CEO of Sega of America in 1990, and led them from less than 5% over 55%.
		And he's the central protagonist of my story.
		And he's so important to point out, because I basically realized as I would do these interviews
		with him that other than my parents, he is the adult most responsible for my childhood.
		Back in the '60s, he had his first job at the advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson.
		He helped create the Flintstones Chewable Vitamins, and then he went to Mattel when they were thinking about retiring the Barbie line, and helped revive Barbie, and then did for boys what Barbie did for girls with He-Man, Master of the Universe, and he's just this guy who had this golden touch everywhere he went.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you know, I just watched that show on Netflix that I'm sure you've seen.
		It's the history of, well, it's like the history of toys.
		I forget what it's called.
		The Toys We Loved or something like that.
		And they talk about him in the He-Man line.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		He's an amazing guy.
		You know, usually when you're doing these interviews over years, you see different sides of people, but he really is just an incredible role model.
		He does things the right way.
		And it's not shocking that he seems to have this magic touch.
		Everyone has such nice things to say about him.
		He took SEGA out of the gutter.
		Famously, one of the big narrative turning points was he delivered this four-point plan to Japan.
		It's important to note that SEGA is a Japanese company, even though it was founded by an American.
		And then Tom was in charge of the American division.
		As is somewhat also the case today.
		The American sector is the biggest sector.
		But it was a weird situation where America was a subsidiary and Japan was the parent company.
		And Tom proposed four things.
		Among them was competitive head-to-head advertising against Nintendo, which was frowned upon in Japan.
		Bundling Sega's best game with the Genesis relaunch, which turned out to be Sonic the Hedgehog.
		And the Japanese board members thought that was crazy because that's how you make your money.
		It's a razor and razor blades business.
		We're just giving up this $50.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So that was a little bit after Sega had debuted, though, because Sonic wasn't on the original launch.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yes, Sonic didn't come out until 1991, so it was almost like a relaunch under Tom, and that's when they started to really carve into Nintendo's space.
		And also doing more sports games, 'cause Japan didn't really care that much
		about American baseball or football, and doing all these things that worked.
		And then a year later, Nintendo launched the Super Nintendo.
		And sort of the way I got into writing the book was, I remembered as a kid, I had the NES,
		it was the greatest thing in the world, and so naturally when I heard of the Super Nintendo,
		my brother and I wanted that, and we put together the childhood equivalent
		of a PowerPoint presentation where parents, We'll throw in, you know, two birthdays, a Hanukkah,
		Like, we need to get this.
		And I remember my dad saying, no, he wouldn't buy us the Super Nintendo.
		And my dad was awesome.
		He'd always, you know, try to figure out a way, like you say, about this.
		But he had no interest in getting us a Super Nintendo because it was not backwardly compatible.
		And parents felt like, oh, it's a library, and now it won't work.
		Even though, you know, you could absolutely just tie all the cords.
		But back then, the whole behind the television--
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Did they have a splitter back then?
		'Cause I remember doing that too.
		There was one audio, video out basically, or in, and I would have Genesis and Nintendo.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Well, you were like a precocious young lad.
		Like the rest of us, it was like, oh, I don't know what's going on.
		You can only have one system.
		But so my parents wouldn't get that for us, and we ended up getting a Genesis,
		and I became a Sega kid, and it's just interesting in sort of the context of how I wrote this book,
		'cause I like behind the scenes business stories, and looking back, because of a decision
		in the boardroom somewhere, we're like, no, we don't wanna make it back to the compatible,
		'cause that would add $35 to the system.
		My life changed, and I became a Sega kid, and then on the school year,
		and I was fighting for Team Sega.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and these were fights.
		I mean, I remember having fights in the lunchroom, probably, now I've got to be in eighth grade, fighting with kids over my friend Ari.
		He had, like, Super Nintendo.
		That bum.
		But I like Sega Genesis.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		But did you think that it was, like, civil?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Like, I remember it as, like, heated, but, like, still friendly.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Oh yeah, well, we all played games at the end of the day, but, like, we would be screaming at each other and, you know, yelling and all.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		What games did you like on Sega Genesis?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		I was always into the sports games.
		I guess those ones I was good at.
		The only game that I feel like I'm very good at is NHL 94, which is probably my favorite game of all time.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's in there.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Did you see it?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		No, I didn't.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's in there.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		That's amazing.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So yeah, I like the sports games, NBA Jam, and I also just really love, because there's, you know, not all games are two players, the sports games usually were, and I had this brother, or I have this brother, who's two years younger than me, and now he's my best friend, but back then I hated him, I despised him, he was so nice and I was so not nice, and that was like, you know, playing Genesis and Nintendo was like the one thing that we did where we were like friends, so that was a lot of my good memories from It's interesting that I can see that a good portion of this that excites you is the business part and the marketing part, because I remembered seeing Sega Genesis for the first time.
		My friend Josh had it.
		I went to his house, and he was playing Ghouls and Ghosts, which I think was in that original.
		They came out with maybe six or eight games.
		Altered Beast, I think, came with the system.
		Altered Beast was the package.
		But I remember seeing Ghouls and Ghosts, and my mind was blown.
		The graphics were so much better.
		The colors were so much richer.
		The music was incredible.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		It really was like arcade quality, which you mentioned, like that was kind of where we first saw a lot of these games.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		And it was a big step up.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		But you're saying that actually didn't have that much to do necessarily with the success, that it really was more on the marketing and the business and everything.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Or do you think that it was such an obvious jump?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Well, I would just say that the Genesis came out in 1989 exactly what you described with Altered Beast and Ghouls and Goblins and all that stuff, and it didn't do well.
		So it clearly had to be more than just the games.
		And you know, I think a good story that sort of sums up what this was all like and sort of the spirit at SEGA and why I was fascinated writing about it was, you know, as kids and even as adults, you sort of imagine there's this meritocracy to it, like the best consoles will have the most shelf space and sell the most amount.
		But that wasn't the case, especially because Nintendo had monopolistic practices they later faced.
		The FTC issues.
		So, I'm not really speaking out of school to say that.
		Where, you know, it would be a situation where they accounted for such a great deal of, say, like Walmart, I think they accounted for 10% of Walmart's business one year.
unidentified		Wow.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Just this one, you know, division of, you know, this 20 by 20 space in the store.
		And so, you know, if Walmart wanted to carry another console, Nintendo would say, oh, well then, you know, maybe the Mario Brothers 3 shipment's gonna not make it to you guys.
		We can't control what happens with these.
		And so they did a lot of stuff like that.
		And so, you know, I remember hearing stories from people at Sega that they'd go to Walmart
		and be like, "Here's our new console.
		It's better."
		Kids like Dave Rubin will say, "You know, look at these graphics.
		It's better."
		And Walmart's like, "Yeah, but, like, sorry.
		We have a relationship with Nintendo."
		And so what Sega ended up doing was, you know, they were down in Bentonville, Arkansas.
		That was the headquarters of Walmart.
		And across the street from the headquarters was this mall area, and there was a for rent sign.
		So they rented this area, and they opened the Sega Genesis store, which sold nothing, but it just encouraged people to come in and play the Genesis for free.
		And they also bought every billboard in Bentonville.
		They bought the seat cushions at the football games.
		They basically turned Bentonville into Sega-ville.
		And then you had all these people going into the flagship Walmart store being like, where can I get a Sega Genesis?
		Clever, cheap, guerrilla marketing, and that is what eventually got the Walmart VP to call up Tom Kalinske and say, alright, we raised the right flag, we're gonna carry Sega products.
		So, you know, I don't want to dismiss the importance of the games themselves.
		None of this would exist without the games themselves.
		If you were starting a game company, that would probably be the number one thing I'd tell you to focus on.
		But it's not enough, as with a lot of things.
		Good content is not enough.
		You have to figure out a way to get it to people, and especially when you're dealing with a competitor like Nintendo.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Is it mind-blowing for someone like you that knows the history of it and also played them to see what the video game world has become now?
		That it has become, it's not just, you know, you probably know the numbers on how much revenue games are bringing in and all that stuff, but it's not just about the numbers and the finances, that it's become a culture unto itself.
		I think there's a direct Connection between the culture war that we're fighting politically and having a lot to do with the video game world and gamer game all these things that that it the video game culture birthed out some other thing
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		No, it's so amazing that, like I said, I'm not very good at video games, and I don't really play much games nowadays.
		With most things like that, where I'm not good at, or I feel like the young kids are using Snapchat, I don't care.
		I kind of feel like a crotchety old man.
		With games, I almost feel like I'm smiling off the side and proud.
		I love that kids get it in a way that I don't, even though it makes me feel like I'm missing something.
		'Cause I love gaming, I love the culture around it, and I never would have expected this to happen.
		I remember, like I said, my father was awesome, so he would play Mario Brothers 1 with my brother and I,
		but he did it in the same way as a parent would go to a tea party with a child.
		It was like, he was not being condescending, but it was like, this is a kid thing that I'm doing.
		And Sega, I think the most important part of their legacy is how they transformed what video games were from childish playthings into consumer electronics.
		They're obviously not around in the same way anymore, but that is really the answer to, why does this time period matter?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And the other thing... So wait, let's stay with that for a second.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So there's the NES, and then Sega Genesis comes in, but what is that transition that you're talking about?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Wait, oh.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Where they got into consumer electronics.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Oh, sure.
		So basically, you know, when Tom Kalinske took over, he realized Nintendo had 95% of the market, and they were just so dominant with kids six to 14 that to use their, you know, it was kind of like a Moneyball story where they had, like, one-tenth the resources of Nintendo.
		So to try to get Nintendo's core audience didn't work.
		And so they figured, all right, well, zag.
		So, you know, you guys can have the kids.
		were gonna go after teenagers and adults, which, you know, like my dad,
		that was just not the audience.
		And so, Sega, instead of selling KB Toys, wanted to get into the back then version of Best Buy.
		Basically into places where you buy a cool Sony Walkman or something like that.
		Interesting.
		And then they also just changed, like the marketing around it was a big deal.
		What you described with Zelda II was not uncommon.
		There was not really release dates for these things.
		even though you knew it was coming out in a few weeks, like the fact that they were selling it ahead of time,
		it wouldn't come out the same day in the same places.
		And Sega, they wanted to make a model like the film industry,
		like to make a big deal out of like, this is coming, here's a trailer for it,
		here's all these months of hype, for better or for worse.
		But that is what gave us sort of the modern game industry and the culture around it.
		And I was just gonna say that, one of the things that was amazing to me was,
		I put together this book proposal for "Console Wars", and at that time, Seth Rogen had already optioned it
		He was going to produce a documentary for me and my buddy Jonah Tulis to direct, and Scott Rudin was involved, and he had adapted so many of my favorite books into movies, like The Accidental Billionaire, which became Social Network.
		So it was like this dream team package in which I'm the least important person, but I'm just so happy.
		And I thought, This should be a slam dunk.
		Of course we're gonna sell this, as Seth Rogen, Scott Rudin, Sega, Nintendo.
		And the proposal went to 25 publishers, and 22 of them passed because they said video game books don't sell.
		They said gamers don't read.
		And so, that's part of the reason I just feel such a kinship with the gaming audience.
		One, because they bought the book and proved the publisher wrong, and two, because they're talked down to all the time.
		They're underestimated all the time, and it's ridiculous.
unidentified		Had Ready Player One not already proven them wrong?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, I think Ready Player One had come out in 2012, so it had come out, but they would say, oh, my book's not fiction, that's a fiction sci-fi book, even though it clearly taps in that same audience.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		But I'm sure it wouldn't shock you to know that most publishers have a sort of older school business model that maybe could use some updating.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		As I'm in the midst of writing my first book at the moment, I've become acutely aware of this, yeah.
		Okay, so now Sega starts winning, basically.
		Now Super Nintendo comes out, the competitions again.
		Someone told me actually, but am I getting this right, did Super Nintendo actually outsell Sega at some point?
		Yeah, so we go from... Because that seems hard for me to believe, too, because what you're talking about, we all cordoned off in our own little worlds.
		I was in a Genesis world, so most of my friends had Genesis, so it's hard for me to believe that that could be true.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, Dave, we always live in our echo chambers.
		They weren't algorithmically giving to us back then.
		No, so okay, so in 1989, Sega strikes out with Genesis, 1990, some leeway, some headway.
		1991, they come out with Sonic, Tom's plans are executed, and they still, you know, Nintendo is Nintendo, so Nintendo still outsells them.
		At first, and then slowly but surely, Sega keeps gaining momentum, and then the big turning point was Mortal Kombat.
		You know, this was a game that, so back then, Arcade games are almost like the minor leagues of these consoles.
		I remember going to Pizza Pizazz, our local pizza place, and they had Mortal Kombat.
		It was a huge deal.
		I was like, this is coming to the consoles.
		And usually what would happen is one of the two console makers, Nintendo and Sega, would get the exclusive rights to it and it would come to that system, like Street Fighter II.
		Street Fighter II, at least initially, was only available on the Super Nintendo.
		That really helped Nintendo.
		That was a third-party game, and then they had first-party games like Mario Kart and Zelda and all that.
		That was against Nintendo's policies at the time, right?
		Didn't they get into some fight with Tekken, I think, about that?
		Because they were trying to release things on different systems or something?
		a great litmus test between, say, Nintendo.
		Like, for once, it would just be--
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And that was against Nintendo's policies at the time, right, didn't they get into some fight with Tekken,
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I think, about that, 'cause they were trying to release things on different systems or something?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, Nintendo was involved in all sorts of strong-arm tactics,
		some of them that ended up leading to court cases like the antitrust stuff, and also famously,
		they sued Galoob, the makers of Game Genie, because this was messing up their creative games
		by giving you extra lives.
		They also sued Blockbuster and the rental companies because they said you can't rent out our games.
		Nintendo didn't end up winning a lot of these things, but that was also good because Like, you notice, I love the behind-the-scenes stuff.
		That's where I think the drama is, and that's another big reason that Sega was successful, because these are... Galoob is a name, and it's a company, but it's also people.
		So, Sega decided that they were going to form a cartel of Nintendo's enemies, and be like, Nintendo's really strict with you guys.
		We want to work with you.
		Let's make this happen.
		And there's people at Galoob who are like, yes, let's go out of our way to actually be Nintendo.
		So you, you know, whether it's partnerships like that, or whether it's just small things.
		I remember talking to the buyer at the Wiz, and he said, you know, we couldn't explicitly
		do anything really early on, but he would always make sure that the Genesis had the
		prime real estate in the store.
		Even though it was a small space, he was like, "That's the one that would face the consumer."
		'Cause they all wanted to see Nintendo fall.
		And then Mortal Kombat comes along, and Mortal Kombat was a fighting game that was famous
		for its violence and gore, specifically the fatalities where you could rip someone's spine
		out.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Which now is hilariously comical.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		But back then, it was a big deal.
		Obviously, that was what us kids liked about it to a degree.
		And Nintendo went to Acclaim and said, because of their family-friendly image that Nintendo had, they said, we want you to tone down the violence and change the blood from red to grayish green.
		And the guy at Acclaim was like, all right, well, that's probably not going to work.
		Meanwhile, Sega was like, all right, we can amp up the violence.
		They had a version that was a little more tame, but you entered the blood code, which, you know, the cult of kids that play this game all knew right away.
		And that was a big turning point because the Sega version outsold Nintendo version like five to one.
		And it also, you know, what I always thought this was like a funny aside was Howard Lincoln, the senior vice president of Nintendo said, They knew that they were going to lose business, but they thought it was important to stick to their core values.
		And so he thought, well, at least we'd get a lot of parents saying, thank you, bless you, Nintendo, for doing the right thing.
		But instead, they got a lot of angry letters for censorship.
		How dare you censor the games?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but they were also under pressure.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there were politicians at the time that were saying these games were too violent.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's an interesting thing, because Nintendo had generally squeaky clean games.
		They really are like the Disney, the Pixar of gaming, and they've stayed that way, I think partly because Sega kind of put, you know, showed them that they can't go beyond, you know, Nintendo took advantage of that niche.
		But Nintendo felt like Sega was Doing inappropriate things, you know, what I came to realize is that it was just, you know, there was not necessarily a good guy or bad guy, it was just ideological differences.
		Whereas Nintendo is very much like Apple, closed system, they want to control every aspect of the chain, and while, you know, that's sort of totalitarian, it also leads to a really high consumer experience.
		And Sega was all about choice.
		So if you're a developer and you want to make a game with some adult themes, go for it.
		Whereas Nintendo would say, heck, you know, No, think of the children!"
		And Sega would say, like, no, think of the developers.
		Or children, don't have to buy it.
		So Nintendo made sort of the greatest hits VHS tape of the violence on Sega's system and started slipping that to people in Washington.
		So there were Senate Supreme Court hearings.
unidentified		Wow, it's incredible.
unidentified		It's incredible.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		In December 1983, led by Senator Lieberman.
		But that didn't happen by accident.
		You know, Nintendo was pretty psyched to make this happen.
		And so yeah, I love that behind the scenes drama.
		And one of my favorite things was, you know, when I first started writing this, I imagined like, oh, this is like a great rivalry, like Larry Bird and Magic Johnson, like these two great competitors who fight on the court, but like, you know, they respect each other.
		They push each other to greater levels.
		And you know, it's been 20 years or 25 years since this.
		I think every single person I interviewed from Nintendo still hates everyone at SEGA.
		They think they're a bunch of frauds and marketing hucksters, and everyone at SEGA hates people at Nintendo still.
		They think they're a bunch of bullies.
		And they're both right, which is the best part.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well that's what it's all about.
		That's what the competition is all about.
		It's interesting though, because if you think about it, at some level, in terms of keeping the core values of we're more of a Disney company, we don't go violent, maybe we focus a little more on fun instead of hardcore graphics or whatever, Nintendo has kept that core image, right?
		Even to now?
		Right, and I think... Even if behind the scenes they were doing all sorts of shady stuff and, you know, dealing with politicians and, you know... And that was like a really big deal, because remember, these are like adults running the companies.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Like, they think Mortal Kombat's cool, but it's against the image of the company.
		And again, these are also Japanese-owned companies, so, you know, a large part of the reason that my book focuses so much on SEGA is because that's where the action is.
		David versus Goliath story, but it's also they had a lot of autonomy.
		Nintendo was a lot more carrying out orders from Japan, and Japan didn't want to get more into adult content.
		Like one idea that I think actually would have worked was, I'm gonna botch this, but like, you know, Disney had subsidiary production companies, like Castle Rock, like basically stuff that did adult content that was made and financed by Disney, but it didn't feel Disney because it had a different name.
		And I think that Nintendo, it would have served them well to sort of be doing different sorts of content,
		but trying to distance themselves from it.
		But they couldn't get the green light to do those things.
		And I think that, you know, Nintendo's philosophy has always been very like,
		slow and steady wins the race.
		Sega did surpass them, but then Sega sort of bust in 1994,
		and for several years, Nintendo continued to sell SNES games.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		What caused that bust with Sega Genesis?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Well, a few things.
		I think one of the things I found really fascinating about the Council Wars is that Unlike actual wars, which are much more serious, of course, but whether you win or lose, something has changed, and you're in a position of strength or weakness going forward.
		In the console wars, you can kick ass one generation, and then that doesn't necessarily help you in any way when you start the next generation.
		So it's like every five years, it's a reset.
		And so that next generation console is such a big deal.
		And as a writer, I couldn't have asked for a more poetic ending than the fact that, you know, what happened was Sega of America was so successful.
		You know, we talk about this battle between Sega and Nintendo.
		It didn't happen in Japan.
		In Japan, Sega never surpassed, like, 15%.
		And that was a weird dynamic, where the people who were actually making most of the games were not succeeding.
		And part of it, I would say, is because they didn't have the risk appetite to go head-to-head, to do all these things that Sega of America was doing.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		And I remember, you couldn't use the Mega Drive cartridges in a Sega Genesis, because they designed them slightly differently.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Because they each wanted to do things their way, and the American way seemed to be working.
		But while Sega of America was hitting its stride, Sega of Japan was like, all right, let's go on to the next console.
		And there's maybe some merit to that.
		They were always working on the next consoles.
		But they came up with something that became the Sega Saturn, which, whether or not Whether or not you think the technical specs were great or not, it was very hard for developers to create content for, which is a real problem because they're really your main customer.
		So Tom Kalinske wanted to come up with a console that he thought would do a lot better.
		He initially approached Sony, who was working on a console of their own.
		They were presenting a joint partnership to Sony.
		Sony was on board.
		Sega rejected it.
		That became the Sony PlayStation.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So that basically could have been the Sega PlayStation.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		And then a similar thing happened with Silicon Graphics, the chip makers.
		They contacted Tom and showed what could be the foundation of a new system.
		Tom was like, this is great, this is cheaper.
		And then it got rejected by Sega of Japan and that ended up Not, you know, leading to N64.
		So basically, Sega had the chance to actually have put out the two competitors that destroyed it.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Which is interesting.
		Yeah, like, you know, writing a 500-page book, I remember that my grandma couldn't do it, so it's a Dan Brown-esque read.
		But writing a 500-page book about the battle between Sega and Nintendo, I assumed that the most important battle would be between Nintendo and Sega, but it actually was between Sega of America and Sega of Japan.
		There was a sort of a civil war that doomed the company.
		A lot of it was based on jealousy is the most simplistic way to put it.
		But I can be sympathetic to if you're actually making the games and you're not really getting the credit because you're not actually selling systems.
		So it was just a really interesting dynamic.
		And then I ended up actually being hired by Sega of America to shoot some documentaries for Sega of Japan.
		And this was 15, 20 years later.
		20 years later, so caveat that it's not the same people, you can't say that.
		But I totally experienced everything that people felt like.
		Like for example, we brought all this film equipment and every setup took like an hour.
		And we asked for just one room to do the interviews and they made us switch rooms for every interview.
		They did every little thing they could to undermine us, to try to make the experience worse.
		And it was like, dudes, we're making videos that's gonna help sell your games.
		We're supposed to be on the same team here.
		So, I felt like I experienced a little bit of what Sega of America experienced, and it's sad, but fortunately, like, you know, the other day I was on the subway, I live in New York, and I saw a kid, like an eight-year-old kid wearing a t-shirt of Sonic the Hedgehog.
		Well, there hasn't been a good Sonic the Hedgehog game in the past eight years.
		So, the reason, the fact that he's wearing it is because Sega of America did such a great job of creating that character that, you know, I always think of this idea of what's in a name?
		Mario's last name is what?
		Mario?
		He doesn't have a last name.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, nobody knows.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		He was just originally Jumpman, and then he became Mario.
		Whereas Sega thought all these things out.
		There was Sonic the Hedgehog, and the middle name was actually The.
		There was a whole Bible and backstory, and they did all this stuff that's a story that I love.
		They felt like these characters were real, and I think that's why it's successful.
		It's not... People almost take for granted the fact that Sonic is so successful, whereas if you think of other mascot characters like Pac-Man or Frogger or Crash Bandicoot, we still have fond memories of them and they'll pop up from time to time, but they're not a global icon like Sonic is.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it reminds me of in that same Netflix show that I wish I could remember what it was called.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		The Toys that Made Us.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		The Toys that Made Us, yeah.
		Where they talk about that the G.I.
		Joe was being sort of rebooted into R-80's G.I.
		Joe.
		Yeah, from the big ones.
		from the big ones down to the ones that we played with like this.
		But basically, Transformers was so hot, I think in 1984, that they shelved it for a year.
		But then what they did do in that year while they were waiting was they had the guy go in
		and write the backstory.
		So all the stuff that was on the back of the cartridges.
		So all the things that you're describing Sega was able to do, G.I. Joe basically had a year
		to come up with it, and that ended up sort of flourishing in so many other ways.
		And then cartoons and everything else.
		Okay, do we have anything else to say about consoles before we move to the current year?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		We should just say--
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I could do 10 shows on this.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		I basically feel like the last eight years of my life, I spent three years on Council Wars and four years on this new book, and at that point in my life, it's 2014, my book is being made into a movie, and now it's gonna be a TV show with all these people who I grew up loving their movies.
		My book is a bestseller.
		It's by far sold the most books of all time in the video game category, which we should remember is like A very small category.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Come on, come on now.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		But, you know, things are good, and then I ended up working on this book about Oculus, and as we'll get into, like, this experience was so different because of the political aspect and how it weaved into these areas that I never expected, and why I found listening to your show was such a comfort.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		On that note, you gave me the segue that I needed already.
		So the new book is The History of the Future.
		It's Oculus, Facebook, and the revolution that swept virtual reality for people that have no idea.
		I think a certain set of people of a certain age have a certain sense of what virtual reality is.
		Maybe their son or grandchild has, you know, PlayStation VR, which I just tested out for the first time with my nephews.
		It was pretty awesome.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they've done a good job for, like, unaffordable VR.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All I played was that first game that it comes with, which is sort of like a Mario Bros.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		knockoff, and I was like, this is pretty freakin' awesome.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		So yeah, so to explain just where it went, Virtual Reality, the concept, and even demos have been around since the 1960s.
		It's basically this idea of putting on glasses or goggles or a headset or whatever you want to call it, something that's covering your eyes.
		and all you see is a computer generated world.
		And so back in the 1960s, 1980s, even just the graphics of a PlayStation in the 90s,
		it's like very blocky polygon graphics.
		It doesn't really feel real.
		It doesn't even feel like an animated Pixar quality movie.
		But then nowadays, or I guess I should just begin by saying that virtual reality was considered dead
		and a waste of time back in 2012.
		It was really a technological punchline like flying cars or jetpacks.
		It was this thing that's like a sci-fi trope that we all thought was gonna happen and we were so Right, like the ship sailed.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		If it was going to happen, it should have.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because Nintendo did try to do that.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Virtual Boy.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, Virtual Boy, yeah.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Which was a very weird one, because it was actually like a red-colored thing, and you stick your head into it like this.
		But Sega actually had a VR headset that they were going to release, but then there was health concerns.
		So, you know, it's been in the ether of gaming, it's been in the periphery, and the reason it never worked is...
		Many fold, but largely because it just has never worked and you never can't go to VCs and say, oh, look, this is working.
		Like you basically are like, here, we have 50 years of failure.
		And then they would look at you like, all right, well, why do you think you're going to succeed?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Was it partly just purely cost?
		I mean, I know everything starts off expensive and then as more people adopt it, it gets cheaper.
		But I remember in 1992 going on a family vacation to Toronto.
		And they had like a Nintendo expose, I think it was called Nintendo World, and they had this offshoot VR thing where we put on, I remember doing it, we put on this giant helmet and we were in this like circle thing, and it was me and my brother and we had to shoot each other, and it was awesome, it was blocky and pixelated and all that, but it was cool as hell, like you kind of felt like you were gonna fall off a ledge and all that stuff, but it was, my point is that it was a lot of equipment, it was a lot of stuff that would have cost a ton of money when you're trying to get these into kids' homes when the system itself only cost 80 bucks.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		No, you're right.
		It's a problem.
		Well, one thing I would say, like, I described it as blocky and polygon-like, like a PlayStation game.
		So people look back and like, oh, of course it failed.
		And then it's like, no, we were playing games of that quality on PlayStation.
		That was cutting edge to us.
		So that wasn't why it failed.
		And I thought it was cool.
		Like, if you had pulled me aside in, like, 1994 and were like, hey, kid, I don't know, some creepy pedophile.
		No, if you're like, hey kid, I'm from the future.
		Virtual reality is going to be the biggest thing in the world.
		I'd be like, duh, of course.
		We all know that that's happening.
		And I wasn't particularly into it.
		It just seemed so obvious.
		There was movies like Lawnmower Man.
		It was just more and more seeming like a part of our lives.
		It was in the mall.
		And you're right, the at-home consumer console version was way too expensive.
		The way that it succeeded at first, or became sort of ubiquitous, was the location-based, like at malls.
		You'd pay $15, and you'd go play with your brother, and it was probably a good use of money, and your parents were happy to have you go in there.
		But that ended because the market just dried up.
		They were losing money on this, and VR was left for dead.
		And then in 2012, or between 2009 and 2012, A 16-year-old kid in 2009, 19-year-old kid in 2012 named Palmer Luckey was obsessed with VR.
		He was a self-taught engineer slash tinkerer who loved modifying old consoles and actually portabilizing old consoles.
		Him and his buddies would take your Nintendo and figure out, how can we make the smallest version that you can bring on the go with you?
		So he was almost uniquely talented to be dealing with retro consoles, but with You know, he is a genius-level talent, and so he spent three years.
		My book begins in 2012.
		He's living in a trailer in Long Beach, California.
		The trailer's parked in his parents' driveway, because they had kicked him out of the house, but he could at least stay in the driveway.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Got off the property, yeah.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		And I remember him telling me, like, tell me what the trailer looked like.
		And he had gutted the kitchen, and it was basically just this mad scientist laboratory of building VR headsets.
		And I was like, this sounds a lot like Walter White's meth band, but like, Curated for VR headsets instead of meth.
		And he's like, yeah, that's pretty much exactly it.
		So you got this image of this 19-year-old mad scientist, genius guy, working on this technology that no one cares about.
		Even his friends who love gaming are like, dude, VR died.
		But he loved it.
		And he created this prototype that could be made for a few hundred dollars.
		And even at that time, it's been 10, 20 years since what you were talking about, the best VR headsets would still cost $5,000 or $10,000.
		And he created something that was better than all that and cost a few hundred dollars.
		And then his sort of being discovered moment was this game maker named John Carmack, who's one of the most legendary game makers.
		He's responsible for Doom and Wolfenstein and Quake and all the id software.
		He had licensed those games in the 90s to VR companies that wanted to make location-based stuff, and it sucked.
		And John Carmack, he's probably even smarter than Palmer.
		He's a real genius.
		Whenever he finishes a game, he takes a little R&D period where he investigates some Unknown technology or, you know, unknown to him technology.
		One time this resulted in him starting an aerospace company because he's just like, oh, I spent a few weeks learning, you know, rocket science.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Why not?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Why not?
		So he learned rocket science and started a company.
		And so in 2012, or late 2011 after he finished this game called Rage, he was like, oh, virtual reality.
		Whatever happened to that?
		It's been so long.
		It must have progressed so much since I last looked at this.
		And he realized, like, No, it's just as bad.
		And it's such a karma thing to say.
		He told me, he's like, I was actually offended by how much had not progressed as a technologist, as an idealist.
		And then he was searching on the internet.
		He heard about this hardware hacker named Palmer Tech, Palmer Lucky.
		He got in touch with him.
		He asked to borrow his headset.
		And then he was really impressed.
		He ended up bringing it to the annual trade show E3 in 2012 and demoing it.
		And it was like, it won like so many awards.
		And it was this, you know, homemade thing competing against like the millions and billions of dollars, you know, the million dollar booths and billion dollar products from Nintendo and Sony and all that.
		And then that sort of, you know, is what led to the beginning of Oculus and Palmer Luckey bursting onto the scene.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		I can go in a lot of different directions there.
		So now VR has had this sort of rebirth, and people are using it again.
		And they're using it not only for gaming, but for all sorts of things.
unidentified		What's the Facebook part of this story?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Partly also to answer your question of, like, why didn't it work before?
		I mean, a lot of it is just technology.
		You know, Moore's Law, things get better.
		Palmer Luckey would be the first to say that if not for the advances in cell phone technology with tracking and the screens, like, he wouldn't have succeeded.
		If he had been born 20 years earlier, he wouldn't have been so lucky.
		Okay, there, I said, use the pun.
		It was really hard in the book to avoid using, like, Luckey.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		That must have been difficult.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I was proud to say I never did it.
		You know, the technology was such a big part of it, and really, like, everyone who is in the VR space is visionary.
		Very few people then, a lot of people now.
		They all, you know, it's all the same end goal, where you can put on a headset and potentially have an experience like the Matrix, and it would be like, you know, as thin as classes like this, and it would be as real as the Matrix.
		But it's really just a matter of how do we get there and how do we do it in a way where you can monetize it.
		And what I thought was so cool about Oculus and why I was interested in writing the book was
		they thought the video games were the way in.
		It wasn't like Palmer was like, oh, video games is the whole point of VR.
		It was actually, gamers tend to have a lot of disposable income and they're willing
		to spend it on higher end things.
		So we can sell these headsets for $300 and sell games.
		And it was like, this is the perfect market, this is the perfect stepping stone to get to
		where we want VR to go.
		This is how we grow the industry.
		And so they launched a Kickstarter on August 1st, 2012.
		They were trying to raise $400,000.
		They raised two and a half million.
		Their slogan, 'cause we know that the marketing and promotion is really important, was Step Into the Game.
		And that was created by Palmer's co-founders.
		They've sort of brought this business marketing savvy to the whole thing.
		You know, it was a great peanut butter and jelly combination, you know, with Palmer being the hardware maker and them being, they had background, you know, they were software makers and that.
		And so I was really fascinated by using gaming as the way into growing this technology.
		And then in a surprise to me and to most people, in 2014--
		so less than two years after the company was founded--
		they sold to Facebook for $3 billion.
		And one of the reasons they did that was just because the resources that Facebook would give
		them were basically like, we don't need
		to make money for the foreseeable future.
		And Facebook will make these investments.
		But Facebook also went away from gaming for probably reasons
		that we'll get into a little bit, which is the cultural gamer gate.
		Like, this is a toxic white male space that we don't want to be in.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Because only awful white male neo-Nazis play video games.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it was like--
		so obviously, that's not true.
		Also, that's just a really stupid business strategy, because, you know, one of the things, this is flashing forward a bit, but like, before, so I got incredible access for the book.
		Anyone who's read anything I've written, I like to tell character-driven stories, and I can't do it without access.
		I would never write a book about your life without some way that I was going to get a lot of energy from you, ideally,
		a lot of archival text and emails and all that.
		I'm still writing it independently, but I just couldn't imagine doing it without that.
		Because how else can I put readers in the room with you and in your head?
		And so I got this incredible access that lasted for 2 and 1/2 years and ended for reasons
		that we'll definitely get to.
		But my last visit to Facebook's campus in Menlo Park was February of 2018.
		And I remember talking to the two new heads of Oculus after the founders were no longer in charge.
		And one of them had presided over Android going from 25 million to a billion users.
		And the other was a guy who actually used to be Mark's TA back in college and had joined the company really early on
		and talked about how originally they had been so successful in colleges,
		and then they went mainstream.
		And both of them talked about, like, we're now at this point where we've already succeeded with gamers and now we're going mainstream.
		And it was like, It just reminded me of the E.T.
		thing, where it's like, no, you're putting the cart before the horse.
		You just assume success, and then you're moving on to the next thing.
		I know so many gamers who hate you, who think you guys are doing a terrible job.
		And fortunately, I think Facebook has actually gravitated back more towards the evil, toxic gamer space.
		But it was just interesting to look at it along that lens that I never would have thought.
		I never would have thought the cultural aspect would be a part of my story.
		And then, of course, it became a huge part of the story because Palmer Luckey got fired in the middle Well, by writing the book.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right, so okay, can you explain that, because that then sort of, that connects all of this for the average person that watches my show normally, that's like, this show is a little offbeat from what you normally do, which is completely fine, but this now is sort of what is going to link it to almost everything else.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so the story of my life the past few years.
		I mean, so Palmer was the founder, the visionary of Oculus.
		He was 19 years old.
		He was 21 when they sold it.
		He's a brilliant, charismatic guy.
		He was the face of the industry.
		Important character.
		And so, he also happened to be a Trump supporter.
		And originally, this was something that he was There's a video from February of 2016, there was a Trump rally, and he appeared on an NBC news piece and was at the Trump rally.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Let me get this straight.
		This man supports the President of the United States and expects to have a job and be a functioning member of society?
		Is that what you're telling me?
unidentified		Yes.
unidentified		Well, it's just interesting because... I can't believe we're even doing this show.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Of course there should be nothing wrong with openly, publicly supporting one of the two major candidates in a two-party system.
		But then I noticed he stopped publicly doing it, and what happened was the only other person in Silicon Valley who publicly supported Trump, and this is not my words, this is Marc Andreessen, the most famous VC, has talked about how he only actually knows two out Out Trump supporters Peter Thiel and Palmer Luckey.
		Peter Thiel spoke at the RNC and He's Peter Thiel's famous for PayPal, but also being the first investor in Facebook and being on the board of Facebook.
		And all across Facebook campus, people fought so hard to get him fired for the crime of supporting Trump and speaking at the RNC.
		And so Palmer's like, OK, well, I should probably not be so public about this because this is what will happen to me.
		And that was.
		Both foreshadowing and also important because what happened was in September of 2016, so this was two months before the election, Palmer donated a little bit less than $10,000 to an organization called Nimble America.
		Nimble America's goal was to put up billboards across the country.
		Really, really wild stuff.
		What ended up getting them into trouble was that they spoke in the parlance of the Donald subreddit and they said, you know, we have proved that meme magic is real.
		We're going to shitpost across America, which they just meant.
		So just to be clear, in case people are missing some of this because there's so much here, he gave $10,000 to this company.
		They were going to put up billboards that were going to just put memes up.
		a slightly characterized image of Hillary Clinton's face with the headline, "Too big to jail."
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		So just to be clear, in case people are missing some of this 'cause there's so much here,
		he gave $10,000 to this company, they were gonna put up billboards that were gonna
		just put memes up, so the memes that had been sort of bouncing all over the internet, that's all they were doing.
		Because the memes were the things that actually were fueling the Trump campaign, but a lot of them were just
		shit-posting kids coming up with funny things.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		And memes, to me, I think there's a very internet aspect to it.
		When you're actually putting up physical billboards, they're just called advertisements.
		I mean, they might look like memes or whatever, but I guess we'd say modern You can't share that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		you lose some of the mean magic, let's say.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but like, and then also, talking to the founders of Nimble America,
		because this would become an issue in a second I'll get to, but like,
		the way, okay, well, let's just say what happens next.
		So, on September 22nd, 2016, the Daily Beast comes out with an article about Palmer, and the headline is, Facebook Billionaire Secretly Funding Trump's Meme Machine.
		And the insinuation was that every terrible meme that you'd seen online during this past election season, everything transphobic, concentration camps, anti-Semitic, all this stuff, Palmer Luckey was the guy funding it all.
		And if you didn't get that from the headline and the article, This tech blogger named Anil Dash explicitly said... Ah, that guy!
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		He's no fan of mine.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Oh, he's no fan of mine.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, because I was tweeting about Apu, that I think Apu should be allowed to be in The Simpsons, and he told me I'm racist.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Well, he was kinder to you than to me.
		My job as a journalist is to speak with all the people involved in this, so I wanted to hear his side of the story, because he did post that Facebook, that Palmer was using his billions, remember $10,000, but the money thing is irrelevant.
		The fact is that this organization, whether Palmer gave one dollar or a million dollars, they weren't doing Anything inappropriate.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Right.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		And he said that Palmer was responsible for every white supremacist meme that you'd seen, and then of course... Wait, we've got to pause for a second.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You're telling me Daily Beast did something that didn't have great journalist integrity?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Speaking of integrity, here's an interesting thing, and I tried to handle it... Next you're gonna tell me BuzzFeed's up to the same thing.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		HuffPoVox, I can't believe it!
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		So what happened, actually, the way that it all played out was...
		Palmer donated to Nimble America.
		Because he was doing it anonymously after learning from the Peter Thiel situation, his moniker there was Nimble Rich Man.
		They said, we have a wealthy benefactor that they thought this would give legitimacy to the organization.
		People on Reddit said, oh, you don't really have a wealthy backer.
		They got Milo Yiannopoulos, who was a moderator popular on the Donald, to verify that Palmer existed, not say his name, but basically be like, I have confirmed that there is a wealthy person.
		So, the Nimble Market thing launched on September 17th.
		A few days later, Gideon Resnick from the Daily Beast emails Milo, and I always just found it funny because, you know, he writes these hit pieces on Milo, fair or not, but just, he's so friendly.
		He's like, hey buddy, like, how's it going?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, but that's what they always do.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		I know, but I don't think most people know that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they always do that.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		But yeah, because I included the emails in the book.
		So he contacts Milo and says, what's the deal with this Nimble America thing?
		The previous month, Gideon Resnick had written an article about how Milo's privileged scholarship thing was a scam.
		I have no idea whether it was or not, but Milo interpreted it as a hit piece and assumed that Gideon was going to write another hit piece.
		Milo said, I have no affiliation with this thing other than I verified that there was a wealthy person.
		Gideon keeps pressing.
		Milo asks Palmer if he could reveal his name so that Milo is off the hot seat.
		Palmer, uh, they end up basically agreeing that Palmer will, like, reveal himself as long as there's no article written or if there's an article written his identity is kept Jesus Christ, this is like talking about Batman and Bruce Wayne, okay?
		But anyway, that agreement was struck, the Gideon Resnick from the Daily Beast said sure, he would do this anonymously, he ended up revealing Pollard's name.
		Now, like I said, it was difficult for me to handle the book because I think at the end of the day, all that someone like my mom or most viewers should care about is what happened, not fruit from the forbidden tree.
		Procedural stuff that you and I as journalists and storytellers can care about but like the average person should just care about what did Palmer actually do?
		What did he donate to this organization?
		So I don't want to focus too much on that, but I just was like disgusted by the Daily Beast Not surprising and then of course within a matter of hours after the article claim that Palmer's responsible for this stuff every single tech press you know every It was really just that game of telephone that we all know happens, but it was like, to actually look at the headlines.
		I once lined them up.
		You know, you have this Palmer Luckey secretly funding Trump's meme machine.
		Then Ars Technica a few hours later.
		Palmer Luckey secretly funding Trump's racist meme machine.
		Same exact headline, but let's throw in the word racist.
		And it just escalates like that.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's so funny, because just as you're saying this, what popped into my head was, so our friend Colin Moriarty, who's been on the show many times, and when he got into hot water over his tweet, which was, you know, International Women's Day, finally a little peace and quiet, Business Insider wrote, the headline was, Colin Moriarty of, what was his old company?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Kind of Funny.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Kind of Funny, his racist tweet.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Which is so funny because like... But it had nothing to do with racism!
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Racism and sexism are real problems and...
		But I'll identify myself as a liberal here.
		And they are just used as synonymous buzzwords.
		Like, oh, you did something bad.
		That was a racist comment.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You can acknowledge that they are real things, but that doesn't mean they're the same thing.
		They're still different things, yeah.
		But this sort of thing, then, where the media then catches on and it spreads like wildfire and they just replicate headlines and the rest of it.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		And we can get into that and the fake news and all of that, because that is important.
		But here's the real.
		Fucked up part of the story.
		So, all of this is happening.
		I would, you know, the next day, you know, the press culminates the next day with WIRED.
		I would have thought the most venerable.
		Tech press out there, they have a headline, Palmer Luckey's the worst, but he doesn't represent Silicon Valley.
		Like, that's not news.
		He's the worst?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		For supporting Trump.
		But anyway, you can imagine the firestorm on Facebook.
		This is a public figure, this is your young, charismatic, chosen one, and he is being called a racist, he's being called the worst person on the internet, people are saying boycott Oculus, all this stuff.
		Real PR disasters, and I'm sympathetic to that.
		But so what happened was, you know, Palmer, one of the biggest influences in his life is debate.
		And so he, one of the things I really like about him is that he's always willing to talk things out.
		He doesn't just have his opinion and say, well, that's my way or that way.
		So his response was to write a public statement and explain, like, most of the stuff is not true.
		Here's what is true.
		Here's what's not true.
		Like, it's a very Palmer, like, way of dealing with this and he described that this
		organization Nimble America, he donated them because of the principles of like,
		you know, he wanted to put an end to America's like never-ending wars and the
		millions of people dying, which also becomes relevant with the company
		started after this, but like, you know, it certainly didn't persuade me to vote for
		Trump, but it was at least like, he wasn't just like, you know, let's drink
		liberal tears, like he had a reason...
		He had his reasoning for this and explained why he supported Trump.
		Facebook would not let him put that message up.
		This news all hit at 6 p.m.
		Pacific time on a Thursday, I think.
		Palmer wrote a statement almost right away and wanted to put it up.
		Facebook wouldn't let him say he supported Trump.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Unbelievable.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		I mean, that's crazy.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Again, at that point, Trump is one of two people in a two-party system who I personally despise, but I also more importantly think everyone should be able to support any candidate they want, especially a non-Virg candidate.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Wait, I hate to do this, but our schedule is so nuts today, so we have to somehow, can we do this all in five minutes?
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Is that even remotely possible?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, let's try to do this in five minutes.
		The next, Palmer's dying to get the statement out, you know, every hour a new article is coming out.
		And then finally he gets a statement that he is told to post.
		And this statement comes directly from Mark Zuckerberg.
		Mark wrote the statement and it says that Palmer's going to post and it says, I'm supporting Gary Johnson.
		So Palmer is being told to lie about his politics and say that he's supporting Gary Johnson.
		And Palmer, of course, doesn't want to do this, but he's told he'll be fired if he doesn't do it.
		So he does that, and that's illegal in California, also really unethical.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Wait, what's illegal?
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		To force someone to lie about their political beliefs in a public statement.
		Then Palmer is put on suspension for the next six months, and then he ends up being fired.
		But I just could not believe that Mark personally wrote a statement That, you know, it was so intolerable to support Trump that he had to say that he was supporting Gary Johnson.
		And then that also was terrible for his reputation and what was left of it because, yeah, the liberal mainstream press went after him with the racist bullshit.
		But then all the MAGA people who, he got a lot of messages like, oh, I'm gonna buy a headset because I wanna support you.
		They're all like, oh, he's either a coward or he really isn't Gary Johnson's supporter and I think he's an idiot.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		You must have talked to him about why he didn't just take whatever money he had gotten already and just walked.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Well, I had to be very careful with things I talked with him, and obviously he signed agreements, but I have a very close relationship.
		I've spoken with him almost every day for the past three years.
		And fortunately, people on Facebook thought what happened was so messed up, they were really helpful to getting me internal documents.
		So I was able to piece together the story, get Mark's actual email, forcing Palmer to lie about his political beliefs.
		But the short answer is your question, that I have never been able to actually ask him, but it's because he would have done anything to stay at Oculus.
		It was his baby.
		Yeah, it was his baby.
		At one point after they tried to fire him and give him none of his remaining investing money, basically it was a back-loaded deal, he said, OK, I'll work there for free.
		But they wouldn't let him continue to work there.
		It was everything.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		It's like Silicon Valley on HBO.
		It's bananas.
		There's so much more here.
		There's such a connection between this.
		I will gladly have you back.
		This last 15 minutes especially, it's so connective to so many of the things I talk about related to the tech world and free speech and politics and the mob and all of these things.
		It's fascinating.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		And then I'll do a very quick thing.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		Yes, do something quick.
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		I'll start by saying console war is like, I was the darling of the tech press world.
		I wrote this book that was being turned into a movie.
		Most people liked the book because I think it was very well written, but just because it was a Sega Nintendo thing.
		It is now July.
		The book's been out for four months.
		There still has not been a single review of the book.
		Not a single person in the tech or gaming community has acknowledged my book.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		God, these evil freaks!
blake harris ▲ ● ▼		Fortunately, our friend Glenn Beck has promoted the hell out of it, had me on a few times, and the book went up to number two on all of Amazon, which totally kicked the butt of my first book.
		So this book has outsold my first book, which was the best-selling video game book of all time, and there still has not been a single review.
		I wonder why.
dave rubin ▲ ● ▼		All right, well, I don't write book reviews, but we will link to, should we link to Amazon?
		Is that where you want us to link?
		We will link to Amazon for this book.
		We'll do this again, because there's so much more here, and it's so connected to some of those other things.
		We'll stream some video games or something, because especially if you're not very good, it would be a pleasure to beat you in something, you know?
		All right, it's been fun.
		There's a lot more here, obviously.

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