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Leftist video game youtuber Hbomberguy just put out a remarkable two hour video. Ostensibly, all he set out to do at first was investigate the origin of the "Oof" death sound used in the obscenely popular video game Roblox. The basic story was not that difficult to piece together: a few years ago another guy noticed "Oof" in an older video game called Messiah where the sound effect credits listed Joey Kuras and Tommy Tallarico. Tallarico owns an audio company named after himself, and Kuras worked for that company. Kuras is a prolific sound effects designer who worked on a ton of video games over the years, and is still quietly plugging away in the sound effects industry.
Tallarico's personality is much more bombastic and showy in contrast to Kuras. While he has bona fide creative chops as a video game composer, he hasn't really worked on anything since his career peak in the 90s and 2000s. He seems content to ride the coattails of his past achievements, and recently used his semi-celebrity status to seek crowdfunding for a new home video game console called the Intellivision Amico. The Amico was announced by Tallarico way back in 2018 but its release has been repeatedly delayed with no sign that it's getting any closer to existing. Citing the delays, Tallarico turned to asking for money through crowdfunding campaigns and was successful, raising at least $18 million dollars. Tallarico launched at least four different funding campaigns, each one on a different crowdfunding platforms (curious!) before abandoning the final attempt after raising only $58k. During all these delays, leaked internal documents showed that the Amico was going to use some shitty obsolete hardware and Tallarico of course responded by threatening lawsuits and calling people "gaming racists".
Back to Roblox. They apparently got the "Oof" sound from some random sound library that included it without permission from Tallarico's company. When Tallarico found out his company's sound was being used by an obscenely lucrative video game corporation, he sprung to action and demanded a shitton of money from Roblox in licensing fees. The two kind of danced around this issue for a couple of years, working out a deal involving royalties before Roblox eventually stopped using the sound. Curiously however, when Tallarico talked about who exactly created the sound, he spoke vaguely and frequently alternated between "we" and "I" when discussing its progeny. Hbomberguy does some research and concludes (for many many reasons) that the evidence overwhelmingly favors crediting Joey Kuras as the sound's creator, not Tallarico. But if Tallarico is exaggerating about this for prestige points, is he lying about anything else? This is the part where the video goes completely off the rails. Hbomberguy was originally going to stop the video at this point, but curiosity got the better of him and he went down a deep deep rabbit hole and started fact-checking everything.
As an illustrative example, Tallarico repeatedly highlights how he is the recipient of the Guinness World Record for the "person who has worked on the most video games in their lifetime" with credits in at least 275 games, maybe even 350 games depending on how Tallarico tells it. At this point it's kind of a running joke that the world records Guinness bandies about are increasingly ludicrously specific (highest number of organic cherry pies eaten while bouncing on a pogo stick at sea level or whatever). Guinness makes money by selling its books but the organization also offers its services to anyone who has the $10,000 or so it costs to have an official Guinness world record adjudicator show up in person for your marketing stunt. So the organization is less an authoritative body and more of a novelty commercial business, but whatever. Tallarico's world record was apparently bestowed in 2008, but it only shows up in the off-brand "Gamer's Edition" book, and the source for this claim appears to be just something that Tallarico said during an interview. Setting aside the lack of verification for something so banal, can anyone charitably reach anything close to the
275350 total amount of games? Tallarico has a list of video games he has "worked on" on his official website and the list does have 295 entries. Close enough, right? Well until you realize that Tallarico inflates the number of entries in many ways, including listing games with "Special Thanks" credits, or listing the exact same game multiple times depending on how many systems it was released on. For example, Tallarico definitely did the music for Earthworm Jim and its sequel, but instead of having two mentions for Earthworm Jim, he has it eighteen times on his list. Guinness gave Tallarico a certificate for his "worked on the most video games in their lifetime" claim in 2008. For whatever reason, Guinness thereafter revised the language and gave him an updated record certificate for "most prolific composer of video game soundtracks" in 2014 instead. The coup de grâce is that Tallarico kept and displays both certificates in a bid to also inflate the number of total world records he holds.I don't know for sure if there's an overarching lesson here. Tallarico is quite clearly a flagrantly unapologetic fabulist, and Hbomberguy's video is deliciously entertaining solely for the sheer brazenness of it all. The biggest surprise in my opinion is that Tallarico managed to get away with this for so long, despite regularly interacting with a nerdy demographic I would assume would be especially fastidious about video game history claims. But no one seems to have bothered to check any of his claims, until now. There's still a lot of alpha in being skeptical and googling shit. Be safe out there.
Not surprising at all to me, someone who belongs to some "nerdy demographic"s.
Most people don't know shit. And by that I mean they know a fraction of a percentage of what the person who knows the most about said thing at that given time. Not some lofty ideal of knowledge.
My observation is that "nerdiness" is a signal of distance from the centre not a signal of proximity to the tail. The guy who solves it will be a nerd, but the overwhelming majority of the nerds will be incapable of even having the slightest of hopes of solving it.
It's imposter syndrome all the way down, because these "person who knows the most" don't know shit either.
If being an academic and working with the "world experts, 500 peer reviewed papers" has taught me anything, it's that the vast majority of """"expertise"""" alleged by anyone, anywhere, ever, is built on knowing just slightly more than the second best person who could otherwise call you out on your bullshit.
And this is hard physical science, not gender studies. Even the best know almost nothing, we are all doomed.
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I learned this around various DEI claims. Every single one I investigated more deeply fell apart (interruptions, benefits of diversity, women on the board, insignificant differences in interests, implicit bias test, growth mindset, pay gap, names on resumes) and sadly just about anything in relation to historical women in tech (Lovelace first algorithm, Hopper creating Cobol, women 'used to be the majority of computer scientists' ("programmers" in a historical, different sense, yes), Margaret Hamilton wrote all this code, etc. Most of the women involved were plenty awesome without inflating their claims to fame!)
It's sadly at the point that my first instinct is to disbelieve pretty much any psych or sociology 'study', especially if it points in a way the current narrative wants.
Can you elaborate on "interruptions"? I know about most of the things you mentioned but I don't know about that one.
There are claims that men interrupt women more than vice versa. The only 'study' I know was a self-reported single write-up, and the person didn't control for power, e.g. that it's likely the boss interrupts the intern more than vice versa. Even though, in the study, the person who interrupted most was a female vice president.
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Let's not forget Hedy Lamarr supposedly inventing Wi-Fi. (I mean the actual, also incorrect factoid is that she came up with the idea of frequency-hopping signals (with more advanced techniques of the same general category being used in modern telecommunications), but the legend has mutated so much through the telephone game that I've heard the unknowing credit her with Wi-Fi itself (which was officially introduced three years before her death, well into her known late life seclusion and when she was a woman in her 80s who I doubt was tinkering much with computers) many times.)
Are you making a point or just dropping a link? Don't do this.
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?
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What's the truth behind the frequency hopping?
The truth:
Frequency-hopping was an old idea by the 1940s stretching back even into the late 1890s, described by Tesla (including in regards to torpedo guidance) at a minimum among others, with a patent from 1929 (over 10 years before Hedy's) even containing the idea (and proposed for essentially the exact same reason of protecting the secrecy/security of wireless communications).
The idea might have been independently reconceived of (of course that's what everyone claims, but the idea is actually a simple enough concept fundamentally (making it even more ridiculous to declare it some grand achievement) that it might be true) in regards to applying it to enhancing the stealth of radio-based torpedo guidance communications during WW2 (which ended up being mostly irrelevant as the whole idea of radio-based torpedo guidance at all was fairly primordial at the time and thus whatever technology developed wasn't likely to be compatible with what might be adopted in the future, that is it was a solution for a mostly hypothetical problem) during a conversation between Hedy and George Antheil, with many tellings being intentionally vague at best in regards to who actually brought it up first (and obviously the side saying Hedy has a particularly fervent and well-known bias and a record of playing fast and loose with history, to say the least, if it means promoting "representation").
Even in the pro-Hedy telling, Antheil came up with all of the details for the exact mechanism of control (based on a piano, as Antheil was a pianist) beyond the initial suggestion.
Hedy then hired Caltech professor Samuel Mackeown to take Antheil's still idea guy-tier description of the technology and turn it into an actual working prototype (which was found to be far too bulky, even if it weren't otherwise pointless, to be used in any practical military context as it would vastly weigh down the ships and torpedoes too much).
Even at that it's suspected by many that the whole story above is still fake entirely and that Hedy's final patent (or even just the basic idea) was simply "acquired" from her ex-husband and armaments (like torpedoes? Hmmm...) dealer Friedrich Mandl. (Mandl was an ardent fascist... but unfortunately for him an ardent Austrofascist, putting him in a somewhat awkward position in both the Axis and Allied sides of the world post-Anschluss. (He tried to collaborate with the Nazis anyway but Göring didn't like him and he was a Jew so he ended up having much of his property expropriated and running off to Switzerland.) Having Hedy publish the patent instead could have benefited both of them.)
Their exact implementation was not used at all during WW2. Eventually the category of techniques frequency-hopping is in was applied to most telecommunications, but since your router or GPS device is obviously not a radio-controlled torpedo trying to avoid sabotage, the exact motivations are obviously entirely different and the exact details vastly more sophisticated in design and implementation (but closer to the designs of engineers prior and subsequent to Mackeown like Broertjes who imagined frequency hopping being applied to pure communications).
So even in the most pro-Hedy telling (in which she still didn't come up with the exact implementation), at best you can maybe give her credit for not knowing about an idea that had been around for decades prior and possibly thinking of it herself (if she really was the one who brought it up first) and applying it to torpedoes (though she still wasn't the first in that either). Obviously though you tend to not get credit for adding something to the technological canon if you're decades late to the conception of it and thus it's pretty ridiculous to credit Hedy with basically any real novel contribution to modern Wi-Fi, GPS, etc. (My criticism isn't solely sex-based either; I don't give Antheil much credit other than being somewhat more engineered-minded than you average pianist. He didn't come up with the idea either even if he independently thought of it.)
You see similar sorts of chicanery with basically every category of invention that was essentially inevitable based on prior technological developments but took time to popularize/commercialize/standardize (traffic signals, light bulbs, etc.): Find the figure most beneficial to woke ideology who dabbled in it in the early days, give them all the credit, and ignore the rest. It's not like the audience you're seeking is going to challenge you on it, as they've been programmed to believe that such a thing is inherently immoral.
Anyway, sorry for the delay. I was rechecking all of the details (which seem to check out) to make sure I didn't end up as one of those Reddit "Akshually" guys who gets the facts just as wrong as what they're "correcting".
It's commendable you put in so much effort in this reply. Well done.
Thank you. Glad you enjoyed it.
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I dislike jaded contrarian posts in the vein of "oh sweet summer child," but I guess it's my turn to wear that hat
I'm not surprised at all by this. The older I get and the further I progress in my career, the more I find that sheet brazeness and confidence are 80% of the game. It's an eye opening discovery. Hard workers don't always win, honesty doesn't pay. Casual cheaters never prosper, but calculated and/or shameless cheaters often prosper mightily. Stated thus it sounds like I was hopefully naïve, but I'd wager that most Mottizens reading this post subconsciously subscribe to this flavor of the just world fallacy at least a bit.
You begin to realize that there is a particular kind of person who is exceptionally skilled at sniffing out particularly naive/vulnerable communities and readily able and willing to exaggerate their own accomplishments in ways that are often hard to discredit without significant effort.
And they get away with it because only someone from outside the community might be willing to call them out, and usually an outsider sees no point to expending the effort necessary to help a community they have no ties to.
Straight-up cults are merely the most blatant version of this.
In part it is explained by simple charisma, but also a level of shamelessness and willingness to fight anyone who tried to challenge their claims and bluff them into backing down.
And this type of person runs almost everything.
The observation is much older than anyone wants to give it credit for; this isn't even the first time but at least it has a catchy name.
Note that this applies to any group, importantly when it comes to "society at large".
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I was pretty curious about the origin of that sound, I see it in meme videos occasionally but didn't know what it was called to find any info about it.
I actually didn't know it was used in Roblox, it was the oof sound in memes which usually works but was drawing a blank this time.
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I wouldn't be so sure. Look at the Billy Mitchell/Twil Galaxies drama. There was definitely an atmosphere of extreme credulity in the Spike TV era of gaming as well. I imagine a lot of lore that got laid down before the 10s may turn out to be less reliable than previously thought.
I think you have an extremely warped perception of the Twin Galaxies situation. Most people in high score/speedrun communities knew the site was a total joke for over a decade. Countless people tried to have clearly fraudulent scores/times removed, but most of the time the administration was unwilling to budge. There were a few successful cases where people got things corrected, but they largely gave up. Also, for them to even let you challenge any score you had to have one submitted yourself which meant you had to pay them money and send them a run recorded on VHS and only VHS when people had long since moved on to DVD recorders or a Dazzle.
Here is a SDA thread about TG from 2007
"When twin galaxies repeatedly goes out of its way to explain how they are the official authority on gaming records, they are definately attacking every other game records site. I think that alienates a lot of people (me included). And it annoys me that they have really really shitty records (some of their arcade/console score attacks are laughable), and empty tables of records."
"I wouldn't worry about TG. It seems people who know about speedrunning and high-scoring know better than to go to TG for anything "official.""
"The last time I looked at TG, they said the fastest time in Metroid Prime was 5 minutes. Doesn't sound that official to me." The current record is 44 minutes game time, 1 hour:4 minutes real time. These times have a decade's worth more of optimization and glitches found and the Twin Galaxies rulesets disallow all glitches.
The nerdy people did know it was bullshit.
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There's still some mythbusting (in particular, Ahoy's videos on the Polybius legend and his exploration of the possible first-ever video game).
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This whole thing is Marvel Cinematic Universe level of effort invested to shits I can give. Pettiness unbound.
I liked the Aaaah! montage, admittedly. Way to grip the viewer's attention.
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For anyone who is having trouble remembering how they know the name ‘Tommy Tallirico’, it might be from co-hosting Electric Playground on G4 way back in the day.
I remember him from Judgement Day too with Victor Lucas? I always enjoyed their competing perspectives, although i usually found Victor's conclusions more to my taste. Plus it got old hearing Tommy complain about the footstep sounds in every game.
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All I remember from G4 is "ADAM SESSLER AND MORGAAAAAAAN WEBB!!"
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