- If you've consumed any media in the last 70 years,
there's a good chance you've heard this voice.
[Wilhelm scream]
- This sound--"man being eaten by alligator--"
was recorded for "Distant Drums" in 1951
for a scene where a guy randomly drowns
all by himself.
- [screams]
- This recording then became part
of the library of sound effects people
at Super Warnier Brothers used.
Another scream from that recording
then appeared in 1953's
"The Charge at Feather River" where
a certain Private Wilhelm gets shot by an arrow.
[arrow whistles] - [screams]
- They also use it, like, two more times
in the same movie.
[gunshot] - [screams]
- Sound designer Ben Burtt
noticed this reuse and started reusing it himself
in student films because he thought it was funny.
As a silly little joke,
he hid it in the background of a B-movie he
was hired to work on.
[John Williams' "Main Title"]
- Oops, looks like culture's been changed forever.
[lasers blasting] - [screaming]
- Burtt had accidentally started a career-long running joke.
- [screams]
[crashing] - [screams]
- [screams]
[lightsaber whirring]
- [screams] [blasting]
- [screams]
- In his big cameo in "Jedi,"
he does an impression of the scream
when he gets killed by an OSHA-violating guardrail.
- [grunts] - [screams]
- Then other people started using it, too,
and now it's everywhere.
- [screams] - [screams]
[all screaming]
- Wilhelm!
[clattering] - [screams]
- Getting in on someone else's in-joke kind
of risks ruining it,
but I wouldn't know anything about that.
- [screams] - And there's a bunch
of other iconic screams like this.
- [Howie scream] - [Howie scream]
[birds chirping]
[mouse clicks]
[beeps] - [Howie scream pitched up]
- Oh, Jesus Christ!
- Like with Wilhelm,
the source of these sounds
are usually well documented.
That scream comes
from a popular sound effects library,
and while we're ruining things,
those sheep-slash-goats screaming like a human videos
you love so much? - [screams]
- Yeah, they're all fakes. That's just a sound
that comes free with Apple's software.
- [screams]
- But for over a decade,
one sound's original source was unknown; this one.
- [child grunting]
- This is all over internet video nowadays,
but where's it from?
Most people under a certain age are yelling "Roblox"
at the screen right now.
"Roblox" is a free online game-slash-platform people
can make additional content and games for
and they can even monetize what they make for, uh, a pittance.
According to YouTube journalists People Make Games,
Roblox developers receive less than 25% of the money from sales
of content they make. This has led
to the Roblox Corporation attaining a net worth
of roughly seven quadspillion dollars,
and one of if not the most iconic things about
this game is its death sound effect,
also known as the "Roblox Oof."
Videos of just this sound
get millions upon millions of views.
It has its own separate existence
as a meme across thousands of videos
and one video claiming to be its origin
has 117 million views,
shockingly close to the lifetime views
of my entire channel.
- Oof! - This sound effect
is a phenomenon,
but it's not from "Roblox," and this child is a liar.
[sound pitched down] - Oof!
[multiple Wilhelm screams synched with intro music]
- Now, I-- [coughing]
I haven't played "Roblox."
I play mature games for grownups like "Fortnite."
[gun cocks]
[gunshot] [all cheering]
When I was the age "Roblox" would
have definitely controlled my life,
it was instead being controlled by stop-motion animation
and then later by "Garry's Mod--"
a game which did not monetize its content
in increasingly horrifying ways,
transforming its community into a digital sweatshop,
but I'm sure the new way is fine, too.
So, no, I haven't played "Roblox,"
but I have played "Messiah."
[upbeat rock music]
♪ ♪
- [shouting]
- "Messiah" was released in the year 2000
and developed by Shiny Entertainment.
They made "Path of Neo" so they're insane
and I love them.
You play as a cute little cherub
named Bob who gets blasted down to Earth to help out.
This is the best opening cut scene ever.
Bob has no combat abilities whatsoever.
- [grunts] - Instead, though,
he can possess other people.
- You know, in real life,
a huge portion of the angels
who come to Earth end up in the bodies
of police officers. It's true!
Google "40% cops."
Bob can possess basically any living thing,
including rats when the developers feel
like making you save scum.
The player is constantly switching bodies
using their different abilities, credentials, and weapons.
The pacing is breakneck because doing so doesn't slow you down.
I played "Messiah" in the mid-2000s
when I found it in a Christian charity shop.
I assume they didn't see the words,
"Sex, religion, possession, death," on the cover,
and then I threw it away.
I bought this copy on eBay to use as a prop.
I have to get this out for the rest of the video now.
Then a decade passes and in a random YouTube video,
I hear a familiar sound. - [child grunts]
- People tell me it's from "Roblox"
but I swear I've heard it somewhere else.
Obviously I immediately forgot about it
and moved on with my life until 2019
when someone else figured it out.
User "plasma-node" on reddit was watching
the ending cinematic on YouTube for some reason
and noticed a very familiar sound.
- [screaming] Oof!
Ah!
- He posted his discovery on reddit along
with a clip from the ending,
someone stole and reposted his clip on Twitter,
a large "Roblox" YouTuber made a video about that tweet,
and then journalists started picking up on it,
although the articles do credit the wrong person
with the discovery because their one source
is a video that got it wrong.
Why did the sound get so popular, anyway?
Well, if TV has taught me anything,
children being injured is just universally funny.
Let's not think about what that says about us.
Here's an interesting fact which I hope justifies
me playing the entire game in preparation for this video.
Everyone involved seems to think the sound effect
is specifically in the ending,
but it's actually all over the game.
You can fly around
and flap your little wings to float,
and whenever you slam into a wall,
Bob makes a noise, and that's one of the noises.
It's also in the opening cut scene, too.
- What?
[screeching]
- It's kind of funny it
was discovered in the ending--
the last possible place you would hear it
if you played the game.
Interestingly enough,
there was proof in "Roblox"
the sound was from "Messiah" all along
and no one thought to check.
You see, sound files have this thing in them
called "metadata."
It's extra information that comes with a file.
You know, album art, lists of the artists,
and people who worked on it, and so on.
You know those pirated Weird Al Yankovic albums
your friend gave you when you were 14?
Uh, that's why the album art was in there.
It was in the metadata.
I think that anecdote might be
a bit too specific.
The "oof" sound
in "Roblox's" game files--
"uuhhh.wav--"
has metadata in it saying it was made in 1999
while "Messiah" was being made with the engineer listed
as Joey Kuras."
Joey Kuras is an extremely prolific
video game sound designer.
He's worked on "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater,"
"Spider-Man," "Gears of War,"
and even "Fortnite."
That clip I showed earlier,
that wasn't just me showing off my sick skills.
That was a clever setup for this bit.
No, it wasn't, actually.
I wrote a "Fortnite" joke and then it turned out
he'd worked on "Fortnite," but still--
and here's Joey on page ex ex ex vee eye
of "Messiah's" manual as one of the sound effects guys.
S--See? Look. See?
I--I don't have a camera person this time
so I--I'll have to cut to a close-up that I shot later.
Uh, Rachel stopped responding when she found out what
the video was about. So there we go.
We know where the sound effect was from.
We even have a good idea who might have made it.
Mystery solved.
We can all go home to our families.
Just kidding. There's more.
That's only the beginning of the story, you worm!
[laughing]
I can't--can't say-- I can't say that.
We haven't even talked about who owns the sound effect yet!
It doesn't belong to Joey.
It belongs to the company he was working for
when it was made-- Tommy Tallarico Studios--
along with its owner Tommy T--
I don't need to say his name. [stammers]
He named his studio after himself.
- Are you--are you-- are you ready?
[synth music]
Yeah!
♪ ♪
Ooh! - Tommy Tallarico
is a veritable video game industry icon,
according to the first line of his biography
on his web site.
I wouldn't personally go that far
but he was a fairly well-known musician
and composer for video games in the '90s and 2000s.
His most notable soundtracks include "Earthworm Jim,"
"MDK," and "Advent Rising."
His company was involved with the sound effects
on lots of other games from this period, too.
That's why if you're my age or older,
this is burned into your brain.
[exciting music]
- Tommy Tallarico Studios.
- He was also on TV on the shows "Electric Playground"
and "Judgment Day--"
some of the earliest shows about video games,
reviewing new releases and interviewing developers.
If you were around for a certain era
of game history,
you remember Tommy from TV or played something
his company worked on.
He also co-founded "Video Games Live"
which produced symphony performances
of popular video game soundtracks.
"VGL" is universally recognized among gamers
as a thing they think they remember hearing about
that seems nice.
Through royalties from his company's work over
the years, Tommy's doing pretty well
for himself and he spent his money on living in
a very interesting house.
It has themed rooms,
a Spider-Man room full of all the original comics--
- Probably have about $50,000 in your hand right there.
- Giant statues of Lara Croft and "The Fifth Element" lady,
an ancient Egypt-themed dining room--
the list goes on.
- The first thing I--I built
in my house when I bought this was a seven-foot waterfall,
but it--it kinda sucks because at night sometimes
I--I have to go to the bathroom.
- And Tommy is proud of his insane mansion.
That's why I've got so much footage of it.
He's given numerous tours of the place over the years
and it was even on MTV's "Cribs."
He's so proud of that,
he re-uploaded it
to his own YouTube channel years later.
He's very happy about the fact he was specifically
on MTV's "Cribs."
He says it a lot in interviews and that's what he calls
the video he uploaded onto his own channel,
and there's no way he would tell an obvious lie like that.
Would he?
Foreshadowing is a literary device in whi--
he also re-uploaded an old UK show where
the presenter clearly hates his house.
- This is absolutely hideous.
You've gotta sort yourself out, Tommy.
You've got too much money. - [laughs]
- This is silly.
It's not right, Tommy. - It's--no, but it is.
- There's children starving.
- And if you're the sort of person who's impressed
by Guinness world records,
Tommy has a huge stack of them leaning up against
a cabinet in the corner
of his awards-slash- Indiana Jones nook.
The big one is "Person Who has Worked on
the Most Video Games in Their Lifetime."
- I actually have the Guinness world record
for the person who's worked on the most video games
in their lifetime.
- He's such a big deal,
he was handpicked by Shigeru Miyamoto
to work on "Metroid Prime."
- "Metroid Prime" with Shigeru Miyamoto.
I worked with him for, uh, many years.
- And he was also the first American
to work on the "Sonic the Hedgehog" franchise.
- I was the first American ever hired, uh,
to work on the "Sonic" franchise.
- Can you believe that?
Can you believe that?
Do you really believe that?
Tommy's been kind of resting on his laurels
doing "Video Games Live" for a while now.
He hasn't done much new music for games since the late 2000s.
One of the last things he did was donate music
to "Super Tofu Boy--" a game made by PETA.
It's a really bad "Super Meat Boy" clone
interspersed with quite good music
and interesting meat facts.
Listen, Peter, I've eaten a lot of tofu,
but meat doesn't scream, either.
If it did, people would probably stop eating it.
Tommy is a vocal PETA supporter,
doing an interview for them in the Egyptian wing
of his house about cruelty to animals
and put out a statement on Facebook responding
to criticism of his involvement with "Tofu Boy."
It's the only press release I've ever read
that has emoticons in it.
[tense music]
We can't really talk about Tommy without talking about what he
was doing while the oof was being discovered.
Tommy is most well known nowadays
for what has become known as "The Amico Disaster."
In 2018 Tommy acquired the rights to Intellivision--
a game company from the '70s and '80s--
and announced he was making a brand new console:
the Intellivision Amico.
Amico aimed to be a truly family friendly games console
with low age ratings on its games
and the bonus selling point of, uh, not having online play,
apparently to get people playing in the same room together?
"Together again." Ah.
Some people would tell you online play is one
of the best features of modern gaming
and a nice option for people who can't easily
be physically next to each other,
and to that, Tommy's reply was, "No."
- When I was growin' up in the '70s, '80s,
and even when I was working in the game industries
in the '90s, you know,
we didn't have the internet, right?
- With this pitch in hand, how did the Amico do?
It didn't. It was delayed,
supposedly due to the global pandemic,
but then it was delayed many more times
and it still isn't out two years after
the intended launch.
It seems less like unfortunate supply chain issues
and more like management underestimated
how hard it is to make a new game console from scratch.
As CEO, Tommy made the decision to open two company offices
in Irvine, California and Salt Lake City, Utah--
two really expensive places to open offices--
in the middle of the pandemic.
In his video tours, the large,
expensive spaces are mostly empty and unused
with the money guy in the back looking like
he's working overtime trying to keep
this operation afloat without a finished product.
- This is where the magic happens.
- [laughs] - Tommy wants money.
This is--this is-- in this box
is where it all happens.
- As the money started to run out,
they turned to crowdfunding investment web site Fig.
Tommy produced a video in his Spider-Man room
with other company leadership in his Egypt room
and "Tomb Raider" themed movie theater room claiming
the console just needs a bit more money
to get going and release is just around the corner.
- The rocket ship has been built,
we are on the launchpad,
and we just need the fuel to take off.
So strap yourself in because
it's gonna be one hell of a ride.
- They raised 7 million more dollars
and the Amico still didn't come out.
[booming] So they tried again,
turning to second crowdfunding investment web site Republic.
They even used the same pitch video.
Come on, guys! The rocket ship just needs
a couple more million dollars!
[pitched down] - Strap yourself in.
- They raised over 11 and a half million more dollars
so they could continue to not release a console.
[booming] They tried a third time on
a weird, shady investor web site that pretends to be
a live stream but is clearly prerecorded.
- The rocket ship is built, folks.
We are on the launchpad. We just need a little more fuel.
- And then they turned to yet another
crowdfunding web site for more and canceled it part way through
when it became clear there's no one left to invest.
When internal documents leaked revealing
the console's internal hardware was cheap, old, and rubbish,
Tommy threatened people who reported on it
with legal action,
and when another journalist asked what
the reporters had done wrong
reporting publicly available information,
he deleted all the tweets.
The Amico's difficult non-launch,
gleeful tossing of investor money
into two large holes--
- There's not too many people here
in the office, uh, yet.
- And its CEO's increasingly aggressive behavior
towards people trying to report what
was happening netted the company and Tommy some criticisms.
Tommy did the responsible thing and started messaging people
to call them names.
He defended the Amico on internet forums,
calling detractors "morons," "idiots," "mentally unstable,"
"narcissists and cowards,"
comparing criticism
of his business decisions to racism,
eventually settling on calling
his detractors "gaming racists--"
the funniest term I've ever heard.
- But these elitist-- they're racists.
They're literally gaming racists.
- He did this while following a bunch of actual racists,
white supremacists,
and far right personalities on Twitter.
This caused people to check for his other hot takes
and discover his opinion on people who kneel
for the national anthem.
Apparently racism is bad,
but protesting it is for douche bags.
- Hey, somebody just said I sound like
a social justice warrior.
Uh, you couldn't be farther from the truth,
and I'm the most un-politically correct person on the planet.
- Don't call me an SJW! You have no idea how racist I--
- People are saying I got triggered?
No, I'm just havin' fun and bein' passionate.
The folks in there that are-- that are--
that are peein' their pants right now--
- Things just got worse from there.
It hit the point where Tommy--
the CEO of a family friendly games console company
in desperate need of investment--
would only give interviews with an ever-dwindling group
of die hard fans who completely agreed
with this behavior-- the kind of normal person
who'll wear a serial killer mask while they interview you.
- My wife told me to cancel my Amico,
and I still did not.
- This is one of the last people Tommy
was willing to speak to.
- And then if you want to hear me, um,
uh, pwn some noobs and, um-- and--and punch back
at some haters, follow me on Twitter--
tommytallarico, and, uh, you know,
I don't mind punchin' back to some of these losers.
- He has since stepped down as CEO
with his replacement announcing the company's entering
a "quiet period,"
which is a hell of a subtweet if I've ever seen one.
The Amico still isn't out and a lot
of people want their money back.
In the middle of all this,
right before the first big delay before things got super bad,
back when Tommy had a reputation to burn,
the "oof" discovery was made.
Due to his contract with Shiny Entertainment,
Tommy Tallarico Studios owns all the sound effects he
and his employees made for the game.
Shiny could use them in "Messiah"
but they belong to Tommy and he can use them again
or sell them if he wishes,
and when Tommy found out a sound effect he owned
was being used in "Roblox,"
oh, boy, did the butter begin to churn.
Tommy stepped up to the plate and did a stream on YouTube
called "Talking about the Roblox 'Oof' sound and controversy."
It's hard going back to this stream
because he spends a good chunk of it pitching
a soon-to-be-released game console
that still doesn't exist.
- We're actually coming out
with a brand new video game machine.
It's called the Intellivision Amico.
We actually don't allow online play.
- It's weirdly anxiety-inducing watching a man in January 2020
right before a global pandemic pitching
a console whose central feature is trapping people
in a room togethe--
- Everybody can kinda come together
and play in the same room together.
[unsettling string music]
- But when he wasn't pitching
his scam-adjacent business venture,
Tommy was demanding "Roblox" give him $100,000,000.
[techno music]
- Tommy wants money.
♪ ♪
- Okay, for legal reasons,
I'd like to specify that was a joke.
He didn't ask for that much.
Probably.
He didn't say how much he wanted.
Almost like he was embarrassed to.
Tommy made it clear he didn't want "Roblox"
to remove the sound.
He wanted them to keep using it but to pay him for it,
and if they didn't, things were going to court.
- They may think that, um, you know,
I'm trying to get the sound taken out
of the game. I'm not.
They may think that I'm currently suing "Roblox."
I'm not. Currently.
But it's also not fair to me
that I don't get compensated for--for this.
- This situation is-- legally speaking--
very funny.
Allow me to pretend I understand it
for a few minutes.
A key point here is--
at least as far as I can tell, so probably wrong--
Tommy isn't owed any compensation.
According to "Roblox,"
the "oof" came on a CD of sound effects
the original creators purchased when they were making
the game in the mid-2000s.
If this is true,
they used the sound with the reasonable belief
they had the right to do so at the time.
Whoever took the sound out of "Messiah"
and sold it on a CD could be in trouble,
but the two guys who started "Roblox"
in 2006 didn't do anything wrong,
apart from create "Roblox." [rattling]
Okay, I've spoken to a couple
of lawyers after filming this bit--
should have done beforehand, really--
and they clarified something I think I should add here
about them not doing anything wrong.
They did still technically do copyright infringement.
If you use a sound effect you bought from someone
and it turns out they stole it and lied to you,
you're still guilty of copyright infringement.
However, if this actually went to court,
there is something called
the "innocent infringer" defense.
If an infringer can demonstrate they had no reason
to believe they had committed copyright infringement--
and it looks like "Roblox" might be able to do that--
the court can reduce the statutory damages
to as low as $200 per infringement.
There are other types of damages like actual damages,
the losses suffered by the owner as a result
of the infringement, but that's something
that could only be answered in a court room.
As you're about to see, however,
"Roblox" directly told Tommy they don't think
they owe him anything,
so it sounds like they think
they have a good defense if things go to court.
[clicks] In these tweets
a few days before the stream,
Tommy seems a bit annoyed that no one owes him money,
although in his version,
"Roblox" "feel like" they don't owe him anything,
which is a strange way
of describing a large corporation.
I think what Tommy means is "Roblox's" lawyers know what
the law is but he still would like to have some money.
All "Roblox" are required to do in this situation
is remove the sound,
and Tommy could send a cease and desist
and trigger that happening whenever he wanted.
- I could have sent a letter very easy.
Cease and desist, stop using the sound,
it's mine,
you don't have permission to use it,
take it out of your game.
- But Tommy isn't doing that,
because he doesn't want it taken out.
- Tommy wants money.
- If he can get them to keep it in
and pay him a license fee to use it
or just buy the sound off him outright,
he could make a lot of money.
- I'd rather them just, uh, pay me
and them own the sound forever so that it stays in the game.
- Tommy cannot stress enough
how much he doesn't want "Roblox"
to remove the sound,
because that's how he makes money from this.
- Uh, I never asked "Roblox" to remove the sound.
I don't want it to be removed.
I haven't told them to take the sound out of the game.
I wanna keep the sound in the game, so--
- And "Roblox" probably want to keep
the immensely popular sound in their game.
However, they are a business.
Their ultimate goal is to keep as much
of their money as possible.
A majority of "Roblox's" income comes
from underpaying the people who actually make
the game's content.
How much do you think they're willing to pay
for .3 seconds of a child saying, "ow?"
Especially when they could replace it for free.
- Uh, "Roblox" could remove the sound tomorrow
if they wanted to.
- So when Tommy approached them asking for money,
"Roblox" offered him less.
- We approached "Roblox."
We said, "Hey, there's a situation,
and we're gonna ask for this much."
"Roblox" said, "Eh,
we think you should get this much."
[laughs] So--so, you know,
"This much is what we think."
- Just to put it in plain English,
the purpose of this stream is for Tommy to complain
that "Roblox" will not off him enough money
to buy a sound effect they don't need.
- I think they're--they're nuts and disrespectful to me.
- This is an all-time classic Tallarico moment right here,
complaining about respect while calling someone nuts,
and asking them for more money.
It's just incredible.
- I'm hoping that we can come together,
I don't know, maybe somewhere in the middle,
uh, to make everyone happy. [claps quietly]
- One question really starts to stand out
in this 90-minute stream.
He's very careful to never say how much he thinks
the sound effect is worth, how much he asked for,
or how much they offered him.
- [stammering]
People are gonna say,
"Well, how much did you ask for, huh?"
Look, you have to understand that is--
that it is not professional of me to go around stating
how much money I'm asking and how much they are offering.
- Just to be clear,
unless there's some kind
of non-disclosure agreement,
which he probably would have said if there was,
there isn't anything actually stopping Tommy
from saying how much he wants for the sound effect.
The Amico saga has proven irrefutably
that Tommy does not care in the slightest
about appearing professional.
That excuse doesn't work.
He's choosing not to say it
and getting increasingly defensive
as viewers keep asking and he runs out of explanations.
- To be honest, none of your damn business.
No, no, I did-- [laughing]
How much did you say for them
to pay for the "oof" sound?
Okay, well, I've--I've already--
I've already gone over that, that I--
I can't talk about that.
- To an outside observer
and the chat whose questions he was dodging,
it started to feel like Tommy just wanted
a embarrassingly large amount of money
for a single sound effect and knew that it
would make him look really greedy if he said it.
- People are never gonna know, you know,
what it is and-- and there doesn't need
to be, uh, that knowledge.
- He's in the fascinatingly awkward position
of not being able to say how much he wants
even though that's what the stream is about.
- It would be unprofessional to talk about that.
Um, but I think I did describe that it's, um,
a lot more than what, you know,
they were offering which was...
Barely anything at all.
- I think it's worth asking
how much "barely anything" is
to a millionaire with a dedicated Spider-Man room
and an indoor waterfall in his mansion.
- Everyone should have a seven-foot waterfall,
I think, installed in your room,
but the thing that's kind of bad about it
is that at night I always have to go to the bathroom.
- Wait a minute.
Didn't he already make that joke?
Later in the stream
he started taking questions,
and someone asked him to give
the ratio how different the counter offer was.
- Tommy, percentage-wise,
how far is "Roblox's" offer compared
to what you asked for?
At least 100 times...
Less.
So that, you know--
if they offered me one dollar,
I'm asking for $100.
So, you know-- [laughs]
If they offered me $1,000,
that means I'm asking for $100,000, right?
So that's how far it is off.
- I find it very curious that he will say
how much he asked for
but only in the form of a riddle.
Even more curiously,
he uses very small amounts
of money as examples.
He chooses not to say, for example,
"If they offered me 50 grand,
"that means I asked for $5 million,
"or if they offered me 100 grand--"
okay, I can see why he didn't.
- And I hope they come to their senses.
And--and I know they're-- they're probably watching.
I don't know. Maybe they're not.
It's Saturday morning.
- So that was the situation in January 2020.
"Roblox" were offering to buy the sound,
Tommy wanted 100 times more money than they were offering,
and if things didn't go his way,
he was threatening to take things to court.
- You know, I have attorneys, uh, that--I have--
I have teams of attorneys.
I easily have about 20 different lawyers.
We--it's just a difference of opinion on whether
or not I help to bring millions of people to their game,
uh, or not and what that is worth.
- That last thing is I think why Tommy thinks he
can ask for whatever massive amount
of money he won't say. In his mind,
this one sound effect single-handedly launched
the "Roblox" franchise.
- But the idea is-- is that this is a sound...
That helped to create the franchise, right?
Some may say, then, that the reason "Roblox"
is as popular as it is now may be because
of the fact that so many people shared
this "oof" sound, so--
- Tommy, you don't need to launder
your arguments like that.
You are the one saying that, right now!
- This is something that helped to create the franchise itself.
It's made the game "Roblox" go supersonic.
It was part of the reason.
How many millions of people found out about
the game "Roblox" because of a meme that had--
that used-- because of the sound, right?
We think we're asking for something extremely fair
considering what it has done for the franchise.
- These claims are hilarious, exaggerated,
but most of all, wrong.
Take the sound effects from "Minecraft"
that are really popular and people use a lot
in videos, too. - [grunts]
- They have a huge presence online as well
but they didn't make "Minecraft" popular.
They're popular because they're in a game millions
of children have played.
The "Roblox" "oof" took off in mid-2017
when "Roblox" was already a pretty mainstream thing.
The cause and effect is completely backwards here.
While it might not be entirely impossible
for a single sound effect to make a game very popular,
I would like to remind everyone that this sound effect
was already in a game and that game was such
a massive critical and commercial failure
that no one noticed a sound effect had been stolen
for 20 fucking years. Come on, bud.
"Roblox" didn't become a multi-billion dollar company
because of a sound effect.
They got there by being evil.
Speaking of evil,
"Roblox" eventually worked with Tommy to turn all
of this into a whole new way
of monetizing their empire of nightmares.
Instead of paying Tommy for the sound,
they're making the players pay for it!
In November 2020,
"Roblox" announced the "oof" sound
was going to be removed but they were updating
their developer marketplace so players could purchase sounds
to use in their games,
and once this update was complete,
the "oof" sound could be purchased
and used through there.
I assume Tommy would get a cut from this.
Simultaneously, Tommy announced he
had produced a sound effects pack
for creators to use in their "Roblox" games,
including the "oof."
- I have done a brand new
sound design library just for "Roblox."
- Creators could buy a range of sound effects packs costing
from 10 to $250 and use these in the games they make.
"Roblox" and Tommy agreed to keep the sound in the game
as is for a while so the sound marketplace had time
to get up and running and no one had to go oofless
in the meantime.
But this functionality still hasn't
been added a year and a half later.
Eventually in July this year,
"Roblox--" citing a licensing issue--
removed the sound and replaced it with this one.
- [high pitched grunt] - Which is rubbish, frankly.
But it might be bad on purpose to incentivize paying
to replace it once they get the marketplace up.
So, clever move, I guess.
You bags of scum.
Tommy also got to make some official "oof" merch
so that was nice for him, I suppose.
- I've created an "oof" T-Shirt.
- It doesn't look like he got the massive pay day he wanted,
especially since the audio marketplace
hasn't manifested yet,
but at least he got something out of it.
So, there we go.
Wasn't that an interesting story?
That's the end of the video essay.
Don't look at the run time. D--Don't worry about it.
Don't worry about it. Ju--
if you came here to find the origins
of a sound effect, you can go.
Subscribe on the way out if you'd like, but take care.
Go play "Roblox" or something.
And, uh, Tommy, I know you're watching.
I've seen you arguing with people in the comments
of videos with 100 views.
You can go as well.
Go do whatever it is you do in your fun house.
I'm just chilling out. See ya.
[relaxing piano music]
♪ ♪
Okay, I think they're gone.
This video is being filmed in an undisclosed location
to avoid being traced.
Also, Mom went on holiday and she locked the garage
so I can't get to my set. And no,
I have no idea why the back wall of this room
is also green.
The last guy who lived here had terrible taste.
Anyway, I think he's gone.
Okay, we need to talk about Tommy.
This was where the video was supposed to finish.
So I was writing up the script and doing a bit more research
and then I rewatched Tommy's E3 2021 pitch for the Amico
and I realized something.
He takes credit for creating the "oof"
in a very particular way.
- I'm even the guy who did the "oof" sound for "Roblox."
- Oof! - He made the sound
for "Roblox?"
I thought I misheard him or maybe he misspoke,
but no, that's how he says it.
- The thing that you might know me the most from
is the guy who created the beloved "oof" sound
for "Roblox." That's right.
- The sound wasn't made for "Roblox."
It was made for another game and reused by mistake.
That's what this whole thing was about, Tommy.
He said that one in the commercial
for his sound design kits he's selling to put
it back in the game.
Why is he saying it like that?
Well, obviously the idea he made it for "Roblox--"
this massive, important corporation--
is slightly more prestigious than the truth, isn't it?
So he's slightly altering the story to give himself
a bit more credit, and that's fine.
Like, whatever. Who cares?
But then I though, "You know,
for a sound with another guy's name on it,
he seems pretty happy to say he personally made it.
From an outsider's perspective,
it looks a bit like Tommy is taking credit
for something someone who worked for him did decades later,
and yeah, sure, my script was almost done,
but I couldn't let that possibility sit unexplored.
So I tried to figure out who actually made the sound,
and what I discovered was interesting.
And then a bunch more other shit happened
and now the video is this long.
I'm so sorry.
[suspenseful music]
♪ ♪
Yes, Joey's name is on the file,
but that doesn't necessarily mean he created it.
If he did the final exporting
of the sounds Tallarico Studios made for "Messiah,"
his audio program would put his name on them regardless
of who recorded, edited, or mastered them.
Instead, let's look at how Tommy talks about who made it.
Let's rewind the clock a little.
Back in 2019,
Tommy quote tweeted that one video
that was a repost of the thing plasma-node put on reddit.
He indicates that his company created
and owns the sounds used for "Messiah"
and that the sound effect "was created
by my lead sound designer Joey Kuras."
Notice that he specifically doesn't say that he made it.
He said his company created and owns it,
and then specifically credits Joey,
implying little to no direct personal involvement.
I believe this version of Tommy's story is true.
However, soon after writing this,
to put it bluntly,
it looks like Tommy realized
how popular the sound was.
He said in many places including the live stream
that he didn't really know that much about "Roblox"
until he found out one of his sounds was in it.
So on a timeline,
it looks like he wrote that tweet,
and then started looking at the sound's presence online.
In his next tweet he says he's surprised
to discover the sound has tens of millions of views online
and then all of a sudden it's a sound "we" created,
and then--and he adds this in parenthesis like he's trying
to sneak it into the story at the last minute--
"and I myself recorded."
This is a bit of a change, isn't it?
It's also just a weird way
of talking about something you created.
Like, if you found out something you had made--you--
was in a huge game, you would go,
"Hey, I made that."
You wouldn't go, "As you can see,
"my company created and owns that.
It was made by someone who worked for me decades ago."
Oh, wait, the sound's really popular.
"I mean 'we' made it, and I myself recorded it!"
And to his credit,
I think Tommy noticed how this sounds, too,
because 30 minutes later he tried again.
He started a second thread where this time
it's a sound he created, Joey edited,
and he owns.
Note that he specifically used the word "created" again.
So he got his story straight in the end at least.
Good for him.
But that does mean this first tweet
is a bit embarrassing, isn't it?
Now, you tell me:
what one thing would make Tommy look more like he was trying
to rewrite the history after the fact here?
Deleting the tweet, right?
From my perspective,
that would be a very stupid thing to do,
but I must be missing something because he did delete it.
It's gone. I am not accusing famous
industry veteran Tommy Tallarico
of lying about who made a sound here.
I don't know for sure who did what on this sound.
But Tommy should.
And if he's telling the truth,
why did the truth change when he was surprised by how popular
the sound was?
In a very short span of time,
Tommy's version of history went from Joey created it
to we created it to I created it
and then later an attempt to delete
the fact he said Joey created it.
I know how it sounds.
It would be weird to assume someone just wants
to brag about making
this one sound effect this badly,
but he does brag about it!
He put it in his Twitter handle,
it's part of his pitch for the Amico--
it seems very important to Tommy
that he doesn't just own the sound;
that he personally created it.
To most people younger than me,
that sound effect could be the most well known thing
on his resume,
which is a bit depressing, really.
And when he tries to describe the process
of creating the sound,
things get even weirder.
In the "oof" live stream,
Tommy's happy to say he made the sound
but then he tries to go into detail
about how it was made.
- I thought what-- first I would do
is talk about how the "oof" sound was created.
- When he talks about the work that went into making the sound,
he doesn't say he did anything.
He says "we."
- Then what we did is we went through, you know,
all the different lines.
We did a whole bunch of other stuff to it as well
so after we pitch shifted it down and then--
- Sometimes he accidentally says "I"
and then corrects himself.
- I wanted to let folks know, uh, how I created the sound,
how we created the sound-- myself and, uh,
my sound designer, uh, Joey Kuras.
- It just keeps going like this.
- We start to tweak the sound, each individual sound
so again in--in "oof" we might have spent, you know,
a half hour trying to figure out exactly which way we should
have pitched it down and what thing we would
have taken and this and that.
- Oof!
- This is a strange way
to describe something you did.
Far from being a sound he created
and Joey merely edited,
whenever he has to describe any specifics,
all of a sudden it was done by committee.
Tommy isn't lying about who did what here.
Quite the opposite, really.
He's specifically avoiding lying by being as vague as possible
about something that would be easy to talk about
if he actually made the sound himself.
- So I--I--I took this little girl's, uh--
we took the clip, right?
And, um--and then what we did is we edited it
and we--we--we kept the length of the sound.
- He struggles to come up with anything he actually did.
Like his knowledge helped?
- And, um, we'll say, uh, um--
I wanna say this right.
I mean, it took a lot of, uh, my knowledge of audio
to create this sound and make it sound, uh, unique.
Now that people know about me,
they know about how I created the "Roblox" sound--
- After seeing a guy specifically avoid saying "I"
and say "we" dozens of times and then finish
the story by saying,
"So that's how I made the sound,"
it just comes off really disingenuous.
One quick indicator of what he could mean by "we"
is at one point he uses it to describe the act
of exporting the sound out of the program.
- You know, compressing it and making it all,
EQing it and doing all these crazy things to it,
uh, before we ended up saving it out, so--
- When he says "we" here, he just means Joey.
It only takes one person to hit "save" on a file,
and that's the one thing we know for sure Joey did.
Like with the money situation,
it's hard not to read into why Tommy's talking strangely.
It starts to sound like Joey did most of the work
but then that would mean someone else deserves
the credit for creating the sound
so all of a sudden this .3 second sound effect becomes
a team effort.
That's Tommy's version of how
the sound was made.
He says "we" but sometimes when he says "we"
he just means Joey. So, what's Joey's version?
Joey's been pretty quiet about all this,
and good for him.
His career's still going strong, unlike some people's,
and I'm sure he has better things
to do than litigate who made an ancient sound effect,
unlike me who apparently
has plenty of time for that shit.
However, Kuras does have a web site
where he maintains credits for every game he's worked on
since 1993 and he's still updating it today.
Next to "Messiah,"
Joey puts "design of all sound effects."
After witnessing someone claim Joey did it,
change their mind, delete the story,
and then talk in very vague terms
about who did what-- - Um--
- Seeing someone just say,
"I designed all the sound effects,"
is like a breath of fresh air.
This is another reason why I find Tommy's first version
of the story more believable.
Not only is it untainted by his later discovery
how popular the sound was,
it's also what the other person who worked on the game said,
but this really makes it look like Tommy's stealing credit
from someone else who worked for him now.
It was just a hunch before but now I dunno.
And here's when the fun, easy video about
the "Roblox" "oof" I was trying to make ended
and the horror of my new life began,
because while I was on Joey's page,
I noticed something else--
designer of all sound effects for "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater."
This was very confusing to read because Tommy's spent
the last several decades say he worked on "Pro Skater."
- "Tony Hawk Pro Skater." "Tony Hawk Pro Skater."
Uh, I was on the original "Tony Hawk Pro Skater," uh, team.
I was on the original "Tony Hawk Pro Skater" team.
- I'm not saying Tommy didn't work on it.
It's just some places seem to disagree with him.
Places like the credits of "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater."
[funky music]
According to them, someone else did
the in-game sound effects.
I'll give you three guesses-- it was--it was Joey.
It was Joey, although the company he
was at is credited as well.
It's like they're saying sound effects done by this guy
from this company,
but Tommy's acting like he personally did it again.
I'm starting to feel a bit bad for Joey.
Just to kind of add to the mystery,
he talks about how small the development team was
at the time to kind of add
to the exclusivity of it, I guess.
- You know, being a part of the original, uh,
"Tony Hawk Pro Skater" team, you know,
there was only about maybe 10 or 12 of us.
- This means very few people exist
who could possibly contradict him.
How convenient. [laughs]
It does make it even weirder, though,
for such a small team to leave his name out
of the credits.
I guess Tommy could say his name is in there
but only because his company
is named Tommy Tallarico Studios.
So, who is responsible for the sounds in "Pro Skater;"
the guy credited for it,
or his boss who says he did it now?
In an older interview-slash-house tour,
Tommy got a bit more specific.
He said he'd buy skateboards-- oh, sorry.
I mean, "we'd" by skateboards.
- And then Tommy would help
this mysterious other person record the sounds.
He says one of the pain sound effects--
ironically also a kind of oof--
is his actual voice.
- The actual sound in "Tony Hawk" that you hear
when the guy falls off the skateboard
and cracks his head open– - [shouting]
- That's me falling off, cracking my head.
- [groaning repeatedly]
- So Tommy might have helped with some of the sounds,
or at least at some point Joey recorded him falling off
a skateboard. Strangely, though,
while he says he was on the "Pro Skater" team nowadays,
at the time things were very different.
You see, as I mentioned earlier,
Tommy was on a TV show about games while "Pro Skater"
was being made.
The thing about journalism
is it's usually frowned upon
to cover or review a product you helped create
without disclosing you worked on it,
and to his credit, Tommy's very good at this.
When he and co-host Victor cover games he
was involved with, they make sure to say it.
Take "Advent Rising,"
a game he composed a ton of music for.
- "Advent Rising." - I'm not gonna--
I'm not gonna comment on any
of the music in the game 'cause
I am completely biased.
- This is-- and I mean this unironically--
ethical gaming journalism.
Also, you might have noticed but Tommy kind of likes
to brag about games he's worked on.
One time they reviewed an "Aladdin" game
and they brought up that Tommy worked
on a different "Aladdin" game's music
eight years before.
- It was a great throwback
to the 16-bit platformer days
and I know you worked on the original "Aladdin" game,
so you must have felt like you were coming home a little bit.
- Deja vu! - Yeah.
- [laughs]
- Tommy not only understands disclosure,
he loves doing it.
If Tommy worked on a game or a game similar
to the one being reviewed, you hear about it on this show.
So what does it mean when Tommy doesn't say he worked on a game?
While "Tony Hawk's Pro Skater" was being made,
it was featured on the show.
Tommy interviewed one of the developers.
Later when it came out,
Tommy and Victor reviewed it
and both gave it a 9.5 out of 10.
If Tommy worked on this game's sound effects,
he would have said so, wouldn't he?
Well, he doesn't.
At no point whatsoever in the coverage
does Tommy disclose he worked on the game.
Tommy behaves like a TV guy interviewing
a game developer,
which would be a bit weird if he
was also on that development team, right?
I can only think of a few reasons
why Tommy wouldn't mention he worked on the game
when he goes out of his way to do so normally.
One is he randomly decided not to take credit for something
which seems out of character and pretty dishonest considering
how hard he promoted the game,
and he seems to know better than that.
The alternative is,
while he had helped Joey out a little,
Tommy at the time didn't consider whatever input
he gave big enough to justify telling people
he was involved, which is fascinating to me.
There is potentially a past version of Tommy who--
if he honestly thought about it--
would choose not to say he worked on "Pro Skater,"
which is cool of him.
However, then "Pro Skater" went on to be
a really famous franchise and it became very cool
to say you worked on it.
- I was on the original "Tony Hawk Pro Skater" team.
- And over the years Tommy's story has grown a bit
from helping with some of the sounds
to, uh, doing all of them.
- I was on the original "Tony Hawk Pro Skater Team"
so I did all those, uh, sounds.
Audio director on that. Uh--
- Wait, now he's saying he was the audio director?
He--he's not even in the credit--
Let's quickly look at who did what
on games Tallarico Studios worked on.
On the vast majority,
Tommy is often credited for music
but he doesn't do sound effects much.
Sound effects--or sound design as it was later called--
is usually done by Joey.
A game Tallarico Studios worked on almost always
has music by Tommy,
sound effects by Joey in the credits.
Basically, when Tommy and Joey work on games together,
it's pretty clear who did what.
In fact, in the early 2000s,
Tallarico Studios put out a sound effects library
you could buy and use in your own projects
with over 19 and a half thousand sound effects in it.
Tommy's the executive producer so I'm sure he was involved
in some capacity,
but three other recorders and editors are credited,
along with the sound designer. I wonder who it could be--
it's Joey. It's always Joey.
Joey credits himself as the lead sound designer
at Tallarico Studios for 13 years.
The thing he did was sound effects.
Even on "Electric Playground--" Tommy's show--
Joey is credited for additional sound effects,
so maybe Tommy didn't say he did the sound effects
on "Pro Skater" because he knew Joey would see it.
Given Tommy's tendency to take games
his sound effects guy is credited for
and say he did all the sounds,
what does that sort of thing mean
for his later claims about "Messiah"
and making the "oof?"
Well, wouldn't it be funny if Tommy also reviewed "Messiah"
on TV, and when he did,
he again did not mention he worked on the game?
Wouldn't that be very, very funny?
Yeah, it is funny. That is what happened.
Even funnier, on that same episode,
they also reviewed the Dreamcast version
of "Pro Skater,"
giving Tommy yet another opportunity
to say he worked on it, which he didn't.
There's starting to be a precedent
for Joey doing things, being the one credited for it,
Tommy reviewing it
and not mentioning he worked on it,
and then years later deciding he did.
Coming back to how he talks on the stream,
"we" could mean, "We both worked on this sound,"
but to be cynical,
it can also mean,
"Joey did it while working for me."
"Messiah" is one of the two or so games I could find
that Tallarico Studios made where they are both credited
for the sound effects at once,
so potentially Tommy might have been more involved
with the sound effects on this than normal.
So our candidates are a guy who mostly did music
and not sound effects,
reviewed the game on television and chose not
to say he worked on it,
and when he later decided he did
and he made this sound,
carefully avoided taking credit for anything specific--
- Um-- - Or the guy credited
for sound effects on almost every other game
who says he did it,
who Tommy said did it before he changed his mind
the first time, and whose name is on the file.
In conclusion, who knows?
Could have been either of them. Maybe it was both.
Art is really a collaborative proce--
okay, that was written as a joke about how heavily
the deck is stacked here, but let's be serious.
I haven't found any definitive proof here.
I think it's interesting just how much Joey is credited
for sound effects everywhere else
and I think it's weird that
Tommy didn't really have any specifics
to say about what he did on the sound,
and I think if he did work on the game that closely,
he should have said so when he reviewed the game on television,
but none of that is specific proof
of who recorded or mastered a specific sound effect.
However, given all of this additional context
and information,
I can say at least for myself
that I have some trouble believing Tommy
when he says he made the sound,
but when you decide something a well-known industry figure
like him has said is suspect,
you start to ask, "Well..."
"What else has he said?"
This guy's been around for decades
and he's said a lot of things.
I started investigating some of his other claims.
I did it mostly to prove to myself I was just being silly
so I could believe him when he said that he made the sound.
I wanted to be able to put this to bed
and move on with my life.
I just couldn't accept that the first American
to ever work on "Sonic" would lie like that.
Hey, wait a second!
[drum roll]
[percussive music]
Yes, Tommy has repeatedly said he's
the first American to ever work on "Sonic."
- In fact, I was the very first American
to ever be hired by the "Sonic" team.
Back in the day. - [exhales sharply]
Are you serious? - Very first Amer--yeah.
Very first American to be-- to be hired.
I'm one of the first Americans to ever, uh,
be hired, uh, by Sega of Japan, uh, for the "Sonic" team.
Uh, I was the first American to ever be hired
to work on the "Sonic, uh, the Hedgehog" series.
- But if you don't take Tommy's word for it
and do your own research,
by which I mean basically Google "Sonic" for two seconds,
you start to see red flags.
"Sonic" was being developed in America
as early as 1992 when "Sonic 2" was being made in California.
[glass shattering] Americans are all over
"Sonic's" game development since almost the beginning.
Which game did Tommy work on, anyway?
- "Sonic," uh--some of the, uh-- one of the "Sonic" games.
"Black Knight," that might have been in the 2000s.
- So Tommy was about 20 years late
to the party of Americans working on "Sonic."
Okay, let's be charitable.
Maybe he means first American to do music for the series,
but if he thinks that,
Tommy's been crushing too many 40s.
That was terrible.
I promise to live and learn from the--oh, fu--
but this "first American" stuff gets even deeper.
There are layers to this shit.
One particular American musician--
Michael Jackson--was rumored for decades to have worked
on "Sonic 3."
This was seemingly confirmed by Yuji Naka
earlier this year, actually.
This would make Jackson the first American
to do a "Sonic" soundtrack.
Maybe there are some Americans who worked on one earlier.
I'm not sure. I'm not deep into "Sonic" lore.
I'm no Harrington Splinby.
Now, you could say, "Well, sure,
"maybe that means Tommy is wrong about being
"the first American,
"but there's no way he could have known that.
We only found out for sure recently."
And, yeah, to be fair, that would be true.
Were it not for the fact Tommy has also been bragging
about knowing back in the '90s
that Jackson worked on "Sonic."
- So I was really close with the, uh--
the Sega folks back in the early '90s.
I don't know if it was ever confirmed or not
but, uh--but I can tell you that he did do the music
for "Sonic 3."
- This was at a con in 2014,
before he started saying he was the first American.
So either he knew he was lying when he started saying that,
or he made this shit up, too.
Which one is the lie?
At this point, why not both?
I don't trust this story about knowing
about Jackson either, frankly.
I think he just made up a story to seem involved
with another important piece of history.
That seems to be his M.O. at this point.
This is just one example
of what we could charitably call exaggeration,
but realistically we call lies.
The more I tried to check things Tommy said
to prove to myself that any of it was true,
the more it all came apart.
Okay, so what about the "Metroid Prime" thing?
He said in a bunch of places including
the "oof" stream that he worked on "Metroid Prime."
- Uh, "Metroid Prime" with Shigeru Miyamoto.
Uh, worked on that for, uh-- for a couple years.
And I worked with him on Metroid.
Uh, "Prime," the first one. - Mm-hmm.
- And we worked together for about--gosh,
I wanna say four or five years.
"Metroid Prime," I worked with that with, uh,
Shigeru Miyamoto for five years.
I worked with Shigeru Miyamoto,
the creator of "Mario" and "Zelda."
Worked with him for five years on, uh, "Metroid Prime."
- He doesn't just say he worked on it, actually.
He says Shigeru Miyamoto was a personal huge fan
of his work and always wanted to work on a game with him.
- We always talked about working together.
Like, "Oh, man, I really love all your 'Mario' stuff,"
and he'd say, "Oh, man, I love all your--
your stuff that you do."
Like, "Oh, we gotta work together sometime," you know?
- I don't know if that part of the story is true,
but Tallarico Studios was contracted
to work on "Prime." Not music, by the way.
"Prime" already had a composer. They just did sound effects.
That might turn out to be important later.
But early in development Retro canceled all
their other projects to focus on "Prime"
and suddenly didn't need outside help
to get the audio done, and his contract wasn't renewed.
Tommy will confirm this part of the story himself.
- My contract was coming to an end,
was around the same time that-- that Retro's projects
were all getting canceled except for "Metroid"
and they had an internal audio department.
- So he did work on it briefly, but again with the exaggeration.
For him to be dropped so easily implies Miyamoto wasn't
as invested in working with Tommy as he says.
Tommy doesn't just say he worked on "Prime's" sound effects
for a bit and Miyamoto was a huge fan, though.
His story gets way more exotic.
He tells people Miyamoto didn't give him any direction
or visuals or animations to make sound effects to.
He told him to just make what he thought was cool
and the development team designed
the weapons and animations around his sounds.
- "Give us a bunch of epic weapon sounds
"and then what we're gonna do is I'm gonna give those
to my artists and then they are gonna be inspired
"by the sounds that you make and we're gonna inspire
the art and the thing."
Wow, so cool!
- This is an unprecedented amount
of control for an external audio contractor
to have over a project.
Plus it just doesn't mix very well
with the fact he left really early in development.
Did Miyamoto change his mind?
Why didn't he make Retro keep him on board
if he had such an important job?
It also doesn't mix with other stories
from Retro Studios' actual audio department.
He did an interview for Shinesparkers
where he told this story about Miyamoto letting him design
the weapon sounds first.
However, Shinesparkers then went on
to interview Clark Wen, "Prime's" audio lead,
who came on board after the other games were canceled
and Tommy was gone.
Wen is well-respected
in the game audio industry.
He's worked on a bunch of stuff
including "Tony Hawk" games, interestingly enough.
According to him,
they did sound effects the normal way,
basing their work off the art and animations.
There's something amazing about reading an interview
with Tommy where Miyamoto blessed
the project with a radical new technique
where the sound designer
had massive creative control over the game
and then going to the interview with Wen where they say,
"We interviewed Tommy and he said you did this,"
and he goes, "That sounds cool, but no!"
Wen says one or two weapon sound effects
were done when he got there
and he left them mostly untouched.
So a few of the sounds in the game are done
by Tallarico Studios and they might have been done
the way Tommy said,
but his overall involvement
with the game was very small. How small?
He left so early in development,
they forgot he had worked on it by the time the game was done
and forgot to put his name in the credits.
A bunch of other audio contractors made it in, though.
They must have kept contracting people after he left
and not got him back.
Weird. I wonder why.
After seeing Tommy repeatedly take credit
for the work of people under him,
it's kind of cathartic seeing a bunch of other people
get credited and for him to be forgotten.
However, he's not the only one.
Someone's missing from Tommy's version
of the story again. Can you guess--
in a now-deleted page on his web site accessible via
The Internet Archive,
Tommy wrote about leaving early in development,
although he still claims he did
a lot of the main sound design somehow.
Funnily enough, he doesn't say "I" too much.
He says "we." I wonder who the other per--
it's Joey! It's always Joey!
He shared a recent e-mail from Retro's new audio manager
to prove he worked on it and he compliments
the work Tallarico Studios did,
but he says it like this.
"My hat is off to you Tommy and Joey!"
What makes this story even funnier
is how, you know, Tommy was on a TV show that reviewed games
when "Prime" came out.
Tommy didn't mention he worked on it,
which makes sense. He was barely involved.
But one fascinating thing that hasn't come up yet
is Tommy just has terrible taste.
- "JoJo's Bizarre Adventure?"
The characters are incredibly stupid.
- He complained about "Prime's" backtracking
and scanning system--
stuff people love about the game--
and absolutely refused to let Victor get
a word in edgewise.
- I had to scan every little thing in every room.
- There's a great story in there as well.
I mean-- - And that's a problem for me,
but the worst-- - I enjoyed all of that.
- The worst problem about this game--
- Yes. - Is the--
- He gave it a 7.5 which, according to Metacritic,
would be the absolute lowest score
any remotely professional critic gave it at the time,
even less than the eight the guy who wrote
the text reviews for "EP" gave it.
Tommy was not the biggest fan of this game,
but now it's universally recognized
as a masterpiece he can't wait to tell you he
was a huge part of it.
It's kind of fascinating how these two supposed
industry professionals each talk about their work.
Joey doesn't mention "Prime" at all on his site.
Presumably he doesn't consider his work a large enough part
of the finished game to go on a resume.
Meanwhile, Tommy talks like he worked hand in hand
with Shigeru Miyamoto for five years
on "Metroid Prime."
"Oh, come on, hbomb. Be reasonable.
He doesn't say it like that." - No, he says it like that.
- But he said on his own web site he left early.
He left so early they forgot to put him in the credits.
He knows he's not telling the truth when he says this.
Okay, look, maybe I'm just a gaming racist
but is it okay at this point to call this an obvious lie?
- It must be very difficult to work hand in hand
with someone on a game
they famously did not work on very much.
Retro Studios is based in Texas.
Miyamoto was a distant producer who occasionally gave notes.
Several former Retro employees have even suggested
he gave "Metroid" to a new company in America
that hadn't made any games yet
because he didn't like "Metroid" that much,
some insinuating he didn't really get "Metroid's" type
of game play.
Miyamoto pawned off IPs
like this repeatedly, actually.
He visited Rare one day and made them turn a game they
were making into a "Star Fox" game
because he had no idea what else to do with "Star Fox,"
and we all know how that turned out.
It's actually pretty good. People are just mean.
"Prime" is great but it happened because Miyamoto outsourced
an IP he didn't like to a bunch of Americans
so he didn't have to think about it,
which gives very different implications
to Miyamoto asking Tommy to do the sound effects.
So now almost every game he's bragged about working on
has turned out to be a gross exaggeration.
The only other games he talks about
are "Earthworm Jim" and "Aladdin."
I guess there's one more. Uh, "Guitar Hero."
- "Guitar Hero."
"Guitar Hero," uh, franchise.
Uh, did some work on, uh, some of the, uh--
the first three "Guitar Hero" games.
You know, like some of the games I've worked on.
"Disney's Aladdin," "Earthworm Jim,"
"Guitar Hero."
- Are any of his songs on the soundtrack?
Uh, no. Did he do sound effects?
It doesn't look like it.
Is he credited on any of the games?
On one of them, yeah.
According to a Joystick interview--
rest in peace, comrade--
he helped them get an Aerosmith song
on two because his cousin is Steven Tyler of Aerosmith.
He's in the credits of "Guitar Hero 2"
in the industry thanks section.
His involvement seems-- I dunno--kinda small.
It's mostly people who championed
the first "Guitar Hero" when it came out.
You know, game journalists and celebrities.
And Wil Wheaton.
Interestingly, alongside Brad Shoemaker,
Ryan Davis, and of course Jeff Gershman,
also in these credits is Patrick Klepek
who 15 years later would go on to make him delete
a legal threat by asking him a basic question.
This is the total extent I can find
of Tommy's involvement with the "Guitar Hero" games
but I must be missing something.
The way he brings it up,
you'd think he was massively involved.
- I worked on the "Guitar Hero" games--
the--the first three.
Um, the third one was "Guitar Hero: Aerosmith."
Um, now you know why.
- I want to assume Tommy was joking there
but at this point I don't know.
The more you look at Tommy's weird exaggerations,
overstatements of credit,
his use of "we" to mean Joey, the more you see it.
It starts to take over your mind.
You start to ask yourself if even the stuff
he couldn't possibly be lying about
is a lie. Like, okay.
Are those Guinness world records real?
I assumed even if everything else was fake,
they would be real, at least.
There's no way anyone could get away with such
an obvious lie. It would be too easy to check.
But it turns out if something is easy to check,
no one actually doe--
[techno music]
♪ ♪
Let's start with the big one.
That's what he calls it, at least.
I--that's--I hold the Guinness world record
for the person who's worked on
the most video games in their life.
My--my mother's very proud.
The person who's worked on the most video games
in their lifetime.
My mother's very proud.
For the person who's worked on the most video games
in a lifetime, so that-- that was pretty cool.
My mother's very proud.
For the person who's worked on
the most video games in their lifetime,
which is kinda--kinda crazy.
Kind of a cool honor. My mother's very proud.
The person who's worked on
the most video games in their life.
[cheers and applause] But, yeah.
My, uh...
My mother is very proud.
- There's several problems with this one.
Let's start with how the number of games he's worked on
keeps expanding, and not in the sexy way.
By the time of his first Guinness world record in 2008,
he'd worked on the production of 272 games.
Around this time he stopped doing music for games
and started focusing on Video Games Live.
- Video Games Live is-- takes up such a huge part
of your-- - Yeah.
- Your time and your career-- - Yeah.
- So have you ever considered going back to, like,
full time video game composing? - No.
[laughs]
- There was this period in the early 2010s where
the last game he'd officially worked on outside
of "Super Tofu Boy"
was "Sonic and the Black Knight."
- The last game I composed for was actually a "Sonic" game
and that was a couple years ago, yeah.
- But somehow two years later he had a record
with over 300 games on it.
In October 2017 he said he'd worked
on over 300 games.
- In fact I have a Guinness world record
for the person who's worked on the most video games
in their lifetime-- over 300 games.
- But by the time of the "oof" stream
in January 2020-- just over two years later--
it was over 350.
- And, uh, I've worked on over 350, uh, video games.
- He had a busy couple of years there.
- I read today, uh, 300 video games
you've had your hands in.
Th--That can't be a real number.
- That--that's actually 350, yeah.
- Wow. - It's up to 350 now.
That I know a lot of people in the industry.
I've worked on two-hundred and fif--
uh, 350 games in my career.
- Okay, Tommy seems a little confused himself
how many he's done so, you know, just for his sake,
we should probably double check how many.
So, uh, is there a list somewhere?
His Wikipedia page lists far less games than he says
he's worked on. Fewer--goddamn it--
I used Wikipedia for that visual earlier showing
the games he'd worked on in the early 2010s.
Let's show everything else he did afterwards.
Nothing.
He cameoed in "Retro City Rampage"
and that's it, according to Wikipedia.
His IMDb splits his credits into a dozen different categories
but not games, television, and movies because it's
a horrible web site,
and the composer and sound department credits
have a bunch of games repeated in both.
[clicking]
Wow, he's credited for some
of them three times.
Even "Messiah's" in there twice.
[clicks] "Earthworm Jim 2's"
in there four times?
But even adding literally all
the video game credits together including all the duplicates,
you get less than half the number he said he'd done
15 years ago. What the fuck is happening?
His MobyGames page lists about 100.
Uh, it's 6:13 a.m. right now and my eyes went
a bit blurry while I was counting.
It could be, like, 98. Either way,
it's a lot less than 350
and I'm not recounting this shit.
And that's counting a bunch he's just in the thanks for
like "Guitar Hero 2."
It doesn't list "Pro Skater" because he's not in
the credits for that even though MobyGames appear
to have copy-pasted the official biography
from his web site which claims he did.
They somehow managed to get "Pro Skater" to link
to the correct game page
but not to get the spelling right.
Okay, none of these web sites can be trusted.
Thankfully, Tommy has taken it upon himself
to make his own list of games on his web site.
This list is larger,
and I mean a lot larger than the others,
and since Tommy wrote it,
there's some dubious names on here.
"Pro Skater" and "Guitar Hero" are on there
and so is "Metroid Prime."
Obviously, he personally held hands with
the development team while they made it.
But so is "Prime 2,"
a game I've never seen any mention
of him touching anyone's hands on.
Did they reuse some sounds him-slash-Joey made,
so that counts as working on both?
- And I guess I can now add "Roblox"
to that list off games.
- If Tommy thinks he can put "Roblox" on
the list of games he has "worked on..."
Imagine what justifications other games
are on this list for.
One of Tommy's actually interesting contributions
to game history is early PlayStation One
models came with a demo disc to show what
the console could do,
and some of his music
is in the menus and titles.
The first sounds ever made by some early PlayStations
would be music made by Tommy.
This is kind of neat and cool,
and it's also weird seeing "PlayStation Demo Disk"
in a list of games composed for.
In general, this list has quite a bit of what we call "padding."
Tallarico Studios did additional music
for the first "BloodRayne" so that's one game
worked on, right?
Well, it's on Tommy's list five times
as each console version along with PC and Mac.
I'm not sure why you'd want to give "BloodRayne" such
a strong presence on your resume,
but each to their own.
He also did the music for "Earthworm Jim 1" and "2."
An "Earthworm Jim" game is on his list 18 times.
"Super Tofu Boy--" a free flash game PETA made
he donated music to-- is on here twice.
You can run flash games on the Mac, too?
Wow, that's an extra game worked on.
Fuck you, Tommy.
But even counting all of this--
all the games he wasn't credited for but still puts on his list,
the multiple times the same game
is counted across many different consoles
or computers or demo disks as specific games worked on
is still a lot less than the number he says.
If you decide to be a bit mean and remove all the repeat games
you get around 175,
almost 100 less than his first Guinness world record said
15 years ago.
So either he stopped updating his web site
and IMDb, MobyGames, Wikipedia,
and everywhere else also stopped tracking
the games he worked on,
or--Bob forgive me--
the first American to ever work
on "Sonic" is exaggerating again.
In an interview in 2010,
he said he worked on 280 video games,
which is a Guinness world record.
"Actually inside the Guinness book
"as the person who worked on
the most video games in their life."
This sentence almost made me cut my fucking head o--
Tommy isn't "actually inside"
the "Guinness Book of World Records"
he's talking about here.
Trust me. I checked.
He is, however, inside that year's
"Guinness Book of World Records: Gamer's Edition."
The "Gamer's Edition" is full of more game-centric records.
Notice that it's also much smaller
and the print quality's much worse,
and generally it's a lot less prestigious
than being in the actual book.
My producer, Kat, left a comment on that line in the script
saying, "it's a bit like saying you gave a TED Talk
when really you just gave a TEDx talk,"
not realizing how fucking funny she was being
because Tommy has done a TEDx Talk.
My mother's very proud.
- When his biography on his web site calls
it a TED talk. He is exactly that guy.
She is so cool. I love her.
Tommy is at least featured in the "Gamer's Edition."
It's a two-page interview about his career
and Video Games Live.
At the beginning of the interview,
the author claims Tommy has worked
on more game soundtracks than anyone else.
They don't say how they verified this
or provide the list of games.
It seems a bit like Tommy just told
the interviewer this in the interview
and they repeated it as a factoid assuming
it was true because why would someone tell such
an obvious lie?
Whatever evidence he has backing up his claim
is becoming difficult to find.
Luckily this wasn't too expensive on eBay.
Uh, supplies are quite low
but the demand is just me, basically.
I mentioned how surprisingly cheap
these were to MandaloreGaming and he started bulk buying them
to leave in Airbnbs he stays in like
a sort of Gamerdean Bible,
so if they seem more expensive now
it's because he's artificially inflated the price.
Speaking of artificial inflation,
even if the amount of games Tommy says
he's worked on was completely true,
there are still people who've worked on way more games.
The record is just wrong.
Even Guinness at some point recognized this.
They actually changed the wording of the record
at some point after he first got it.
It's not "person who has worked on the most games
in a lifetime," anymore.
It's "most prolific composer of game soundtracks."
The Guinness web site says that now
and the updated versions
of Tommy's plaques say that, too.
So Guinness have done their best
to correct this mistake.
Tommy, however, has continued using
the original name anyway for over a decade.
In fact, I own the Guinness world record
for the person who's worked on the most video games
in their lifetime.
- Another one of those sweet
little lies we've become accustomed
to Tommy using.
Although I can kind of understand this one,
because the new name is even more obviously a lie.
I know for a fact Tommy
has not made 280 video game soundtracks.
We need to acknowledge just how bonkers this clip is.
He's saying "most video games in a lifetime"
while showing footage of the new record
with a different name.
Bonus points for the fact the record says,
"more than 300 games,"
but then it cuts to a list he wrote
with less than 300 games on it,
and just in case it needs to be said, no,
Guinness are not
a real record-keeping organization.
They're a novelty book company.
It's already a pretty common joke
that most of their records
are just silly stuff someone made up so they
can have a record,
like, "most baseball bats broken in one minute."
That's a silly one I just made up now.
Just kidding. It's real.
I don't really mind if Guinness track a bunch
of silly records. It's just a bit of fun, really.
But they are an utterly for-profit organization,
not just in terms of sales of books
but also sales of records.
Guinness has an entire subsection
on their website dedicated to business marketing solutions,
promising they can help with PR and marketing campaigns complete
with a case study section showing over a dozen pages
of companies they got attention for
by helping them come up with a new record to break
like Canon with its "longest digitally printed photograph."
If you have the money,
you can pay them to help you break a record.
I have my suspicions a lot of the silly record holders
are independently wealthy people.
You know, some people just want a record to call their own
to give their empty lives a sense of meaning.
Guinness aren't purposefully keeping track
of who's broken the most bats or wasted the most money
on a "Pokemon" card.
Having a Guinness adjudicator on site to verify
and give out the award on the day is super expensive;
at minimum $10,000 plus transport and hotel costs.
This stuff gets expensive fast.
They aren't a neutral party tracking human achievements.
They are a paid service and many of their record holders
are basically just customers.
You'll notice that when it became clear
someone else should have the record for most games made
in a lifetime,
they didn't give someone else the record.
They changed it to one Tommy was more likely to have.
I'm curious how much they charge for their service.
Guinness's records search function claims Tommy
is involved with two more.
These are for Video Games Live.
What great marketing these must have been.
They are "most video game concerts performed"
and "largest audience
for a live video game music concert."
Let's quickly appreciate how sneaky these records are.
VGL haven't come close to performing the most concerts,
but most video game concerts-- now that's a record,
and it's highly specific so no one can challenge it.
In fact, you literally can't challenge it.
The Guinness web site says these records
are not accepting active submissions.
This is a special record only Tommy can get.
And wouldn't you believe it?
At his 357th concert,
one of those prohibitively expensive adjudicators turned up
to hand him the latest version of these two records.
But let's look closer at "largest audience
for a live video game music concert for a second.
Uh, the biggest symphony show ever seen live,
over 752,000 people watching us live
in Beijing, China.
- This would be pretty impressive.
Would you be shocked if I told you
Tommy's story is inaccurate?
Not all of those 752,000 people
were watching in person in Beijing.
Some of them were watching it digitally
on a live stream on a Chinese video web site.
- Biggest symphony show ever seen live,
752,000 people watching me live on stage.
That was in Beijing.
- It's a bit deceptive to say they were watching you
live on stage when they were nowhere near the stage.
How many people were actually there?
- Uh, the--the--the famous, um,
uh, Bird's Nest National Olympic Stadium.
We played there.
- I love that he says "outside" when he means,
"were watching a live stream."
Like, is he trying to imply hundreds of thousands
of people stood outside just to hear his show?
But 100k people attending a concert is still a lot.
Still a lie, though!
You know, I couldn't help but overhear what venue
he said this took place at.
Bird's Nest National Olympic Stadium.
- The Bird's Nest is a beautiful stadium
and it must be amazing to play in front
of 130,000 people there.
In case you're not familiar with the Bird's Nest,
allow me to read you the beginning
of its Wikipedia page.
You're an hour deep into a video about the "Roblox" "oof."
You don't have anything better to do.
[clears throat] "The National Stadium,
"also known as the Bird's Nest,
is an 80,000-capacity stadium in Beijing."
[chuckling]
I think I might have noticed
a very small discrepenc--
during the 2008 Olympics it hit its record attendance
of 89,000 people.
Tommy is claiming he got better attendance
than the Olympics and can fold space,
but because it's Tommy,
there are layers of mistruth happening here.
You see, Tommy has the name of the venue wrong.
Guinness has an article about this record,
and they say it was set
at the Beijing Exhibition Theatre which
is a different place.
At first I thought this was just a one-off mistake.
VGL have played both venues, but the thing is, though,
he always says it's the Bird's Nest.
- Uh, there was the Bird's Nest in China--
Beijing National Olympic Stadium,
750,000 people.
- Now, maybe he just has the names really mixed up
in his head.
They are both in Beijing, after all.
Although it is a bit weird to forget where you set
your Guinness world record, but whatever.
But is there maybe a reason he says the name
of this theater while claiming he played to hundreds
of thousands of people? Well, there's one.
It would be even more impossible to play to 130,000 people
at a theatre with only 2,700 seats.
The Guinness article also happens
to mention the actual number of people physically
at the concert: 2,086 people.
So even When Guinness has the numbers,
he still makes shit up!
Tommy, anyone can check this! What are you doi--
I don't trust that many people were watching
the live stream, either.
There's no easily obtainable record
of the live viewership
from the Chinese streaming platform
this appeared on, so we--
and apparently also Guinness-- just have to take Tommy's word
for it that almost exactly 750,000 people
watched this live,
and considering we just caught him lying
about this exact thing, I have my doubts.
Even though he has a record with a specific number written on it,
the number keeps changing.
In an interview in the 2017
"Guinness Book of World Records--"
the "Gamer's Edition," of course--
he directly claims over a million people saw
that show live.
I cannot stress this enough.
He is literally lying to Guinness about
a record Guinness just gave him.
I--I just can't fucking believe it!
[laughing]
I can't fucking believe it.
That's all three of the records Guinness appears
to have on file for Tommy Tallarico.
Tommy seems to know better, though.
His list of awards on his web site says he has four,
the fourth one being most video game concerts in a year,
a record I cannot find anywhere other
than his list of awards and other interviews with Tommy.
So, I dunno. Maybe he has four.
Well, his biography says he currently holds five,
so, I dunno! The numbers just keep going up!
Can he at least get the record straight on
the number of records?
Okay, to be fair, he has recently updated it.
Lately he started saying he has...
[paper flapping]
Seven.
- Um, I have seven--
seven Guinness world records
for--for different things.
So what are all the others?
You know, for a guy who-- let's be frank--
fucking loves bragging about all the shit he's done--
- I've worked with everybody.
I was the first American--
- Tommy is uncharacteristically modest
about saying all these other four records are.
In a reddit AMA a few years back,
he said he has seven,
but just to avoid wasting people's time,
he only listed three of them.
Would you like to guess which three?
When someone directly asks him to list the records,
he sheepishly adds "most game concerts in a year,"
but that's it. The others are like ghosts.
Tommy, how many Guinness world records do you have?
- Um, that's-- so I have seven.
Um, one of the ones I have is the most symphony shows
in a single year,
but I would say there th-- there's three big ones.
The three big ones are most shows,
biggest live show ever seen, and then the--the, um--
the most video games.
So I have a total of seven,
but there's three big ones.
- He doesn't even have
a riddle prepared for this one.
He just refuses to tell people.
He's so shy all of a sudden.
Luckily for us in Tommy's investor videos
for the Amico,
we can see at least five of them.
So let's just take a look and find out for ourselves.
In the center we have most prolific composer
of soundtracks. Okay.
Can't verify he's done that many games,
but we at least know that one.
The two either side say "most video game concerts"
and "largest audience."
Those are the three we know he has.
Now for the mystery ones.
To the right we have,
"the record for the most video game concerts perf--"
This is the same record.
This is the previous version.
This one's from 2014 with 293 shows.
Uh, what about the one on the left?
"The longest r-- video game conce--
Video Games Live which has performed 216--"
these are the same three record--
it's starting to look like there's
a good reason the other four records
don't get mentioned much.
In one house tour he gave in 2017,
he has them all laid out on the floor where they appear
to have sat for five years now. Look at that dust bunny.
And Tommy calls them seven
different Guinness world records.
- There's seven of 'em.
Uh, seven different Guinness world records, so--
I'm not sure how these can be seven different records
if when you pause the video and look,
several of them are the same,
and I think when people get too up close
and personal with his records, they start to notice this, too.
In this clip he talks about two of them--ones we know--
and then this weird cut happens.
- That was the first one. - That was the first one.
- Yep, and then, uh-- and then the--for the shows,
and then there--where's the-- - Pretty jealous.
- I didn't edit that in. I swear.
I'd love to know what happened between these two clips.
Here's yet another fun fact.
Guinness charges separately for the award certificate
and the plaque it comes in.
They have a unique design, they don't change very often,
and they're pretty expensive.
When Tommy got these two in 2014,
it looks like he just bought two picture frames
from a store.
I guess when you have so many versions
of the same record already,
you get sick of paying full price for them.
I'm not just bringing this up to make fun of him,
although I am,
but it's actually really useful data.
You know how I mentioned Guinness renamed
his "most games" record?
In this one tour with the super awkward edit,
another funny thing happens.
Tommy reads out that record, right?
- This is, uh, the Guinness world record
for the person who's worked on the most video games
in a lifetime.
- Wow. - So that--
- But because he got
a shitty frame for this one,
we can check and see the record he's reading
from says something else.
- For the person who's worked on the most video games
in a lifetime. - Wow.
- Tommy refuses to acknowledge the new title
and pretends it has the old wrong name because
it's a bit more prestigious.
He's lying about the text of a record
he is literally holding in his hands
and pretending to read from.
This guy's a fuckin' genius. How has he never been caught?
I feel like I'm going crazy!
You know how the concert records say "videogame concerts?"
If you've been paying attention,
you'll notice Tommy always says it's for symphony concerts
or symphonic concerts.
- Biggest symphony show ever seen live.
The most symphony shows ever done.
Uh, the biggest symphony show ever seen live.
Biggest symphony show ever seen live.
- Tommy knows his video game concert record
is extremely stupid and out of embarrassment
he calls it something else.
Oh, maybe it's not deliberate.
Maybe he just got the name wrong.
No, I can prove it.
Here's a time he does that
while pointing at it
and pretending to read it.
- Here's one. - Largest audience.
752,000 people.
- We can see what the record says
in the previous shot, Tommy.
Okay, let's wrap this up..
How many records does Tommy have?
Through a list of games that cannot be found
but keeps exploding,
and by making up new definitions of "concert,"
it looks like Tommy has about three,
but he owns seven plaques of them,
so he tells people he has seven different
Guinness world records.
And maybe he does have a "most video game concerts
in a year" one and it's just never visible
in shots of his records.
Guinness only has three records in their search, though.
Well, had.
Um, I was gonna move on from Guinness at this point,
but then there was a new development
in the search for Tommy's list of games.
After looking everywhere for the list
of 350-plus games Tommy's +supposedly worked on--
or I guess "composed for" now--
we realized there was one place that would definitely have one:
Guinness themselves.
So we e-mailed them,
and by "we" I mean Kat did it for me.
She did all the work.
That's what people mean when they say "we."
They mean someone else did it for me.
"We" worked on the "oof" sound. Yeah, right.
I know this trick, Tommy.
We--Kat--asked them what evidence
was provided for the record and how it was verified.
Guinness were really polite and got back to us very quickly.
Here was their response.
[belches]
First off, this e-mail provides me the incredible quote
that the record is "not evidence-based,"
which is just fantastic. Thank you very much for that.
This is one of the situations where if you did the research
you would have the evidence.
This doesn't require specialist consultation.
It's a list of games. On top of that,
this implies Guinness have never seen a list, either.
The record was verified by a consultant
so someone somewhere says Tommy has worked on this many games
and Guinness believes them,
but then something even stranger happened.
Previously when you typed Tommy's name
into Guinness's record search, that record came up.
One of the other VGL records came up because
he's mentioned by name on that record.
The other one doesn't.
So those are the ones that came up.
This is a screenshot I took in early September.
Anyway, after we e-mailed them asking how they verified it,
I realized I needed to take another screenshot
because I'd scribbled all over one of them,
so I went back...
And the record didn't come up.
Just the other one did.
Right after we e-mailed them
asking them where their evidence was,
and they said they didn't have it,
The record disappeared. Did we...
Did we just get one of Tommy's records deleted?
Oh, no! [laughing]
I didn't mean to do this!
I just wanted to see a list of games!
Tommy, if you're watching this, it wasn't me!
It was Kat! Please, don't--
[relaxing music]
So now the breaks have come off and this video
is spiraling out of my control.
I've lost all hope of figuring out
what Tommy is doing or why.
Doing the early research before this all happened,
it got kind of nostalgic going back
and rewatching ancient episodes of "Electric Playground"
and "Reviews on the Run" and watching Tommy do
his wacky boobery and yell at Victor when
he says normal things like "Metroid Prime" is fun.
I was trying to remember if I ever found Tommy funny
or if I was always just laughing at him, you know?
- [mocking voice]
You know what I gotta say to you?
I don't care what you think!
- Even doing that level of research,
I fell back into an ancient drama
I saw unfold as a kid and completely forgot about.
Tommy's awful opinions used to be a running joke
on forums discussing his show's reviews.
People would bring up he gave "Smash Bros. Melee--"
one of the most beloved games in human history--
a 2.5 out of 10. It was a huge running joke.
I learned about this because I was a pretty big Mega64 fan
as a teenager and they shot some videos at his house
and even did an episode of their podcast there.
I remember watching this on my iPod Nano on the bus.
- Now we're in another strange room.
- This was shot just as "Smash Bros. Brawl"
had come out and the gang made fun
of his old review as well.
- "Smash Bros." is now released. - That's right.
- Uh, Tom--uh, Tommy has gone on record saying
favorite game series of all time.
- There's this awful rumor on the internet as--
as there always is-- - Mm-hmm.
- That I gave "Smash Bros.," like, a 2.5 or something.
So the reality is--is that we-- we never actually reviewed
"Smash Bros." ever on G4. - Oh, oh.
- So people on the internet who say
that I gave "Smash Bros." a low score--
- Yeah.
- None of that. - Bite--bite him.
- Tommy is pointing to the giant model dinosaur
he has in his garden.
Anyway, it's clear this rumor really gets to him.
In an IGN thread about his "Mario Galaxy" review,
this comes up and Tommy T. shows up
to defend himself because he Googles his name
and has nothing better to do.
He claims it's not true but refuses
to say what the real score was because he thinks
it's fun watching people spout nonsense.
So Tommy never gave "Melee" a 2.5.
That's just a rumor. Leave him alone.
Here's Tommy's review of "Smash Bros. Melee."
- What'd you think about "Super Smash Bros. Melee"
for the Nintendo Game Cube?
- Well, you know, I gotta tell ya,
it's another Game Cube letdown.
Another Game Cube disappointment in my book.
- 3 out of 10. - I give it a two-and-a-half.
- He said this on TV. People saw him.
The footage exists. This isn't speculation.
When Tommy does something people criticize him for,
even something dumb that doesn't need defending
like a video game opinion,
he just lies and says he never did it.
Like, why would you lie about something so stupid
and easy to check?
I'm reaching the point where
if Tommy says something,
it's easier to assume he made it up.
His web site used to have a page
of famous people seen wearing Tallarico Studios T-Shirts which
is a weird thing to document in the first place
but the thing is, though,
every single picture on it is Photoshopped.
Like, what was his goal here?
What is he even trying to do?
Tommy's stratospheric levels of clout-chasing
have hit a point where I literally can't tell
if he's joking.
He has a gallery page with pictures of him performing
and in magazines and so on,
and there's a celebrities section
sowing off all the cool people he's stood next to.
Wow. He's really proud of some
of them because he keeps reposting them.
This Jamie Lee Curtas picture pops up on his Twitter
when she's in the news or it's her birthday.
"She's a wonderful, kind, and talented human being
and a fan of my Video Games Live show."
But one of the pictures on here is really strange.
This one is of the Dalai Lama, apparently.
Before the Amico situation deteriorated
to the point he stepped down,
he used to post on the AtariAge forums
and people were discussing
the Amico's "Karma Gaming Engine--"
a feature Tommy later admitted he made up, by the way.
During the conversation about Karma,
someone referenced the Dalai Lama,
so of course he reposted that picture
and said he met him in London and he liked his music.
The issue here is this later turned out
to be a wax statue of the Dalai Lama
from the Madame Tussauds in London.
This is an example of what I've decided
to call the "Tallarico Event Horizon."
Tommy has lied so much about so many things,
I can't even tell if this is meant to be a joke.
Is he doing a bit?
Is Tommy Tallarico a CIA experiment
to see how far you can get in the liberal games industry
by just making shit up?
Is Tommy Tallarico just a shadow on the wall of a cave?
I--I started making this video because I thought
a sound effect was funny!
I can't tell if he's joking or if he genuinely wants
to convince people he met the Dalai Lama.
Like I said,
this was in a conversation
about an Amico feature it turned out he made up.
- We have something that's called our Karma Gaming Engine,
and what that means is that everybody
no matter what your skill level can feel like you have a chance
and that you're in the game.
- I'm interested in the fact that you're using
the Karma Gaming Engine.
Uh, where-- where did that come from?
- Okay, so the Karma Gaming Engine
is just some shit we made up.
- [laughing] - Oh, okay.
- Like, he literally made it up to get people to invest
and admitted it later.
Everywhere you look,
Tommy is trying to build more prestige
in ways that make no sense.
Once Tommy had fled the AtariAge forums
after calling everyone a gaming racist
and stepping down,
people started posting about
how weird he was being
and a guy told a story there
about how he ran a display
at the Houston Arcade Expo
in 2018 showing off old
Intellivision stuff right when
the Amico had just been announced.
So he asked Tommy if he wanted him
to put out some business cards advertising the Amico,
which he did.
His display won an award at the show
and when he mentioned this to Tommy,
he allegedly asked him to mail him the award.
If this story is true,
Tommy just assumed that this award belonged to him.
This is just an allegation.
Normally I wouldn't bother putting this in the video,
but the problem is it tracks so well with a lifetime
of taking credit for things he didn't do
and making up awards,
I find this story too believable not to mention.
Still, this doesn't mean Tommy hasn't done good work
in the industry or had any legitimate achievements.
To properly recognize the good work he's done,
we ought to talk about G.A.N.G.
The Game Audio Network Guild is a group
of industry professionals dedicated
to improving the craft, helping people network,
and recognizing people's achievements
with awards.
Tommy has won a lot of awards
from the guild over the years--
at least 16 by my count,
and he's clearly very proud of them because he puts them
all up next to his Guinness world records.
Tommy Tallarico is also the founder of G.A.N.G.
- Recently, uh, I founded a non-profit organization called
the Game Audio Network Guild, or G.A.N.G.
- It's really funny seeing Tommy give tours of his house
in his G.A.N.G. T-shirt and of his office with
his G.A.N.G. desktop background,
and then going to his web site and seeing 16 awards
from the group he founded and was on the board
of directors of at the time.
- Tommy Tallarico, composer and sound designer
for video games,
also the president of the Game Audio Network Guild,
also known as G.A.N.G.
- G.A.N.G. even gave an award for Best Sound Library
to that sound pack he made with Joey's help.
They've only given out that award four times
in their 20-year existence, by the way.
- And again,
these are award-winning sound effects.
- At least we know the sounds in the "Roblox" kit
really are award-winning.
Like, at this point,
research for a video that was supposed to be about
the "Roblox" "oof" has gone so far off course
that I needed, like, something that was base line
obviously true to hang onto so I could return to sanity.
So I asked myself what I thought
would be the most obvious question.
Was Tommy even on "Cribs?"
- On YouTube, like I said,
there's a lot. There's videos of your--
of your house and your-- - "MTV Cribs," I was on--
- And it's awesome, right?
- You did an "MTV Cribs?"
- Yeah. - [laughs]
- Yeah, they--they were at my house.
- Uh, didn't you have an episode
of "MTV Cribs" back in the day?
- Yeah. - Like, he tells people
it was "Cribs."
He uploaded a video to his YouTube channel
saying it was "Cribs."
So was it? [laughs]
No! [snickering]
"Cribs" is, you know, a TV show.
It has lists of episodes.
You can just check!
It was obviously a lie the entire time.
I don't know how no one called him on it.
Do gamers just not know what "Cribs" is?
"Cribs" went to the home
of massively successful musicians
like Snoop Dogg and Maroon 5,
or other really big celebrities like Tony fucking Hawk.
They did not go to the home of the guy who might
have made some of the skateboard sounds
for his game.
Absolutely no normal person
watching MTV in the mid-2000s is gonna know
who Thomas the Tallarico Engine even is!
He did the soundtrack to "Earthworm Jim."
He's not a celebrity.
Nobody gives a shit about his fucking fountain!
- The waterfall here.
Which makes me wanna pee at night, oddly enough.
- "My mother's very prou--"
"Cribs" had very specific motion graphics
and they always showed the same factoids
at the beginning every time using
the same visual.
This video just has a wall of text.
MTV had a very specific vibe with its backing tracks.
This thing uses easily identifiable stock music.
So identifiable, YouTube flagged it.
But if it wasn't "Cribs," then what was it?
Someone in the comments says they saw this on a disc
that came with a gaming magazine back
in the day but I think they're thinking
of the other times he did that.
Because Tommy's a massive narcissist,
his web site has a video section
with a meticulous collection of his appearances
and links to them on YouTube,
some of which he uploaded himself.
He links this one
and calls it "MTV Cribs" here, too,
along with two of his
"PlayStation Magazine" appearances.
But here's the thing:
Tommy's web site is ancient and has several
much older versions preserved on the Internet Archive.
On the versions from 2004 before YouTube was a thing,
he would just put the videos on his own site.
Many of the videos on the old site ended up
as links to YouTube videos on the new one.
The "PlayStation Magazine" house tour
and interviews are here,
along with this "Around the World in 80 Games" thing.
There doesn't seem to be a "Cribs" video on
the old version of the site,
which is a bit of a red flag.
Additionally, there's one house tour
that didn't seem to make it to the new one done by Gamer.tv.
The video itself on Tommy's site wasn't archived,
but Gamer.tv was a show from the UK about gaming hosted
by Sam Delaney.
One episode had a feature on ways
to make money in the game industry.
Professional gamers, voice actors,
and of course a certain composer.
Hey, I'm Tommy Tallarico,
composer and sound designer for video games--
- Hey, wait a second.
- Hey, I'm Tommy Tallarico
composer and sound designer for video games--
- So this episode is using a cut-down version
of the version we saw in Tommy's video.
So now we know who really shot this footage.
Gamer.tv used to have a web site, gamer.tv.
Oh, that's clever. It's down now,
but in archive's it's clear the site used to have
a video section with extra stuff.
One of the extra videos appears to be about a gamer
with a Ferrari and a luxury home.
I think Gamer.tv met Tommy and toured his house,
used clips from this in their show,
and uploaded the entire house tour
as a bonus feature to their web site.
The video linked here is sadly not archived, either.
At least, not directly.
It was preserved if, say, Tommy downloaded it
and put it on his own web site and then later moved
his video archive to YouTube.
This is a kind of cool act of video preservation
except for the part where it somehow ended up being
called "MTV Cribs." How did that happen?
I mean, the file on his web site was named correctly.
This would be a difficult thing to get wrong
unless he did it on purpose.
- "MTV Cribs," I was on-- - It's--it's awesome, right?
- Is Tommy just, like, a pathological liar?
Does he have to lie to sound more interesting
no matter what?
Like how he went from saying
he did some sounds for "Prime"
to saying he worked on it with Miyamoto for five years?
Or how he went from being one of the voices
in "Pro Skater" to the audio director?
Or how he went from doing three songs
for "Sonic and the Black Knight" in 2009
to being the first American to ever get to kiss Sonic
on his little mouth?
Every time something comes up again,
the lie has to get bigger.
In that newer house tour I showed,
the guy asks Tommy about if it was featured on "Cribs"
and he says it was on there more than once.
- Tommy Tallarico has invited me to his MTV crib.
- [laughs] 'Cause this has been
on "MTV Cribs," right?
- Uh, a couple times, yeah. - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
- Why is he like this?
Why are you like this?
I know you're still watching, Tommy.
Explain yourself!
What are you doing? What are you fucking doing?
[intense orchestra music]
♪ ♪
So...
Yeah.
Maybe every single thing Tommy
has ever said is a lie.
Maybe some of it is true,
but bear in mind that even if Tommy has lied,
that isn't, like, a crime.
You can just lie to people. Watch.
I am a trained helicopter pilot. See?
You can just say things. No one can stop you.
However, there are times when lying does become a crime,
and Tommy would know this intimately because
it cost him $100,000.
In 2009 after putting on a Video Games Live event
in Brazil,
Tommy returned to America
with over $100,000 in cash on his person.
When you enter America with more than $10,000,
you have to declare it for money laundering
and trafficking reasons.
Tommy knew he had to do this but for some reason he didn't.
His business associate who was also his brother filed
a customs declaration on their common behalf
denying they were bringing that much money into the country.
Tommy knew this was false.
When he was caught at a TSA checkpoint with a bag
with 100 grand in it,
there were some serious questions.
He quickly made up a story to explain himself.
He told them he didn't need to declare the money because
he had distributed it among his band members during
the flight in amounts less than $10,000,
and then took the money back once they were through customs,
so no one needed to declare anything.
Tommy thought he was being clever
but he had just accidentally confessed
to the crime of structuring where you deliberately avoid
regulations by pulling stunts like this.
Structuring is a federal felony with huge fines
and up to five years in prison attached to it.
Later he came clean and told investigators
he lied and made up that story and actually he just took
the money over the border himself.
So when I call Tommy a liar, that's not just my opinion.
There is also a legal document signed by him admitting to it.
Looking deeper into United States v. Tallarico--
that's its name-- Tommy pled guilty,
was placed on probation for a year,
forfeited the $102,000 seized by customs,
and had to pay a $1,000 fine, plus a $25 assessment fee.
America. ["Star-Spangled Banner" plays]
There's a really interesting lesson here.
In the game industry you can just lie
about what games you worked on, what sounds you made,
and whether you worked on "Cribs"
and the only real repercussion is people finding you unpleasant
but if you try that with the TSA while carrying a large,
unexplained bag of money, there can be consequences.
There are other ways lying can be a crime, too.
For example,
if you lie to potential investors
to get their money.
During one of Tommy's many attempts
to find investors for the Amico,
he told the exact kind of Tommy-esque tall tales
you would expect from him,
but in a situation where doing so
can get you in serious trouble.
In February 2021,
he recorded this video for potential investors
and lists the team of so-called "Avengers" working
at Intellivision, one of whom was Cara Acker,
a former marketing manager at Mattel on Disney Princesses
and especially "Frozen,"
which would be a great find for the company,
and thinking she was on board might well
have helped convince investors to part with their money.
If we scroll slightly higher on her LinkedIn, though,
we can see she actually left Intellivision...
In 2020.
But here's Tommy telling people
in 2021 after she was gone he has her on board
so you should definitely invest.
- Our VP of Global Marketing used
to work at Mattel as one of the Global Brand managers
over there, right?
And she was in charge
of the Disney brand within Mattel
so that's a double bonus there.
- Um, is there a word for lying to people for money?
If this convinced people to invest,
they have grounds to say they were lied to about the status
of the company.
You can't just pretend
people still work for you.
On their Republic crowdfunding campaign,
which raised $11.5 million,
the pitch video for these investors
featured Acker heavily in Tommy's disgusting Egypt room
as VP of Global Marketing.
She was front and center as one
of the intended draws to investors.
She was basically the company's pharaoh.
She's also still shown on the list of team members,
including, ironically, a link to her LinkedIn which
will tell you she's actually gone.
This crowdfunding campaign ended in 2021.
There was a period of four months minimum
where people were investing based
on a video and information which was not accurate
at the time and never corrected.
The Intellivision web site listed Acker as VP
of Global Marketing as late as July, 2021,
according to the Internet Archive.
Did the guy who ran the web site quit, too?
Investors using this web site as a source of information
would have a hard time confirming who
was actually at the company.
- People don't give--
investors don't give you millions
of dollars unless you have hardcore facts.
- I certainly hope there's some facts I missed here.
People gave this company millions of dollars.
Like, seriously, I hope for Intellivision's sake,
Acker just put the wrong date on her LinkedIn,
or there's gonna be some questions.
In fact if you click the "Invest" button on
the Intellivision web site,
it takes you to the same video with Acker still in it.
- You know the Avengers, right?
"Marvel Avengers," you know,
they're the super team of super heroes,
ready to save the world.
- Also on Tommy's list of Avengers was J Allard,
the co-founder of the Xbox and Xbox Live.
This would make the company look like it was on the right track
and had some really good minds attached to it.
However, Allard decided he wasn't a good fit
and left the company.
In 2020. - Here's another one.
How 'bout the guy who co-founded and co-created the Xbox, right?
When Tommy was saying Allard was on the team in this footage
to get people's money, Allard was already gone.
He was gone to such an extent,
he didn't just change his LinkedIn
to say he wasn't at the company anymore.
He removed it from his page completely.
Allard un-worked at Intellivision,
and after this happened,
Tommy was shooting a new video telling people he
was in the Amico Avengers.
- I mean, this guy doesn't even need
to work anymore,
but he loves our idea and concept so much
that he joined the team and has been making huge,
huge contributions.
- This particular comment is incredible because
on another investment platform-- remember Fig?
Tommy had previously bragged about Allard's involvement
in that investor video, too.
He was actually at the company when this one was made at least,
And Intellivision's share offering documents on Fig
also claimed Allard was involved,
and that he was the Global Managing Director.
A while after Allard had left,
the SEC noticed Intellivision's Fig
was still advertising he was there.
Investors were technically being deceived.
Also, a major member of staff like
the Global Managing Director leaving
could be causing problems with making the product
they were promising to investors, you know?
So they asked Fig what was going on, orally.
Someone at a government agency physically asked someone
at Fig what the hell was happening at Intellivision.
Fig asked Intellivision to clarify.
Intellivision panicked and said they
would change the documents and product development
was unaffected by his leaving because--
to quote Fig quoting Intellivision--
he has not played a material role
in product development considering his contributions.
- He joined the team and has been making huge,
huge contributions. - Uh--
this is footage of a CEO right before
his company tells a major government agency Allard
is gone and hadn't made meaningful contributions
telling people he's on the team and has been making huge,
huge contributions to get their money.
I'm not a lawyer. I'm just a helicopter pilot.
But I don't think it gets worse than this.
- You know, this is the kind of thing that's, like, really,
I mean-- talk about a slam dunk.
- The people working at the company
are the main pitch for the Amico.
"Invest in me. I don't lose.
I have the best team."
- I've been a winner in this industry my whole career.
I don't lose,
and what I've done is packed our team with other people
who are winners.
- Several of his key team members
weren't working there anymore when he recorded this.
One of them had even scrubbed it from his LinkedIn.
I don't think this is giving potential investors
an accurate impression of what they're buying into.
This is the exact kind of thing Tommy normally does
but in this context it's really bad.
And this brings us to the real question
at the center of all this.
The big thing we've been avoiding
for the last hour while we circle
the drain but we can't avoid it anymore.
Remember when that was the point of the video?
When we look at the sum collective
of all of his claims--
the Tallarico Totality, if you will--
and we put it in context with, uh, reality,
when Tommy says he created the "oof--"
this might just be me,
but I don't believe him.
Although at this point if Tommy confessed
I would assume he was just trying to be cool.
I'm sure if I was a more reasonable person
I could say the evidence is all inconclusive
and Tommy could have worked on the sound maybe,
but right now all I know is Tommy is a huge liar
and I hate him and he made me forget what
this video is about!
[deep drumming]
I promise you when I started making this video
my goal was to make something short for once,
take a break from my longer projects
to make a quick video quickly so people knew I was alive.
I did not expect while I was doing research
for a rabbit hole to open beneath my feet
and to fall Wile E. Coyote style into
an abyss of lies and madness and seemingly getting one
of his Guinness world records sent
to the fucking Shadow Realm.
I didn't choose this!
This happened to me and I'm not happy about it.
I wanted this to be a story about how
in our modern age we don't take ownership
of artists' work seriously enough through
the lens of a sound effect
that had been reused without credit
for over a decade,
but the people not being credited in this story
are the hardworking folks under Tommy
who he has taken credit from over the years
and the original voice actor,
none of whom will see any of the money Tommy makes
from selling their sound today.
It is incredibly easy for hard work to be exploited
by corporations,
and one of those corporations happens
to be called Tommy Tallarico Studios, Inc.
But that's really a structural problem
and we already all know capitalism is bad.
Statistically your most formative memories
are of a global financial crisis.
You don't need that lecture from me.
I think the unique lesson of this story is about,
well, records in multiple senses of the word.
What's really at stake here is history--
how these events and people will be remembered.
Tommy has cultivated such a reputation
that when I asked about the origins of a famous punch
sound effect on Twitter,
someone independently brought him up
and said they assume he must have done it.
He seems to have done everything.
At least, he says he has.
The man has successfully inserted himself
into conversation about sound effects
he didn't even make while the people who did
the work attributed to him evaporate
into namelessness.
No one knows who Joey Kuras is
and he made the sound effects
people think Tommy did.
He worked on fucking "Fortnite."
I've heard his sound effects as they blast
my Silver Surfer into dust.
It's not right for him and people like him
to be forgotten.
Games have always had problems
crediting authors correctly.
Early games were seen as products first
and creative work second,
so credit wasn't taken seriously.
Creators used to not be allowed to put their name on the game
and had to hide them in Easter eggs.
Mark Cerny--ironically another good candidate
for "first American to work on 'Sonic'--"
wasn't allowed to keep any of his work
or design documents when he was working at Atari,
and his games were considered Atari creations, not his.
His source code, notes,
and documentation were only preserved
because someone got them out of a dumpster when Atari closed
the office and threw it all out.
This problem has especially contributed
to the perception of women working in games.
Yoko Shimomura--one of the most well-known
video game music composers today--
a veritable industry icon, one might say--
composed all but three of the tracks
on the original arcade version of "Street Fighter II,"
but due to Capcom's crediting policy at the time,
she was credited via a pseudonym.
For her music's appearance on console releases
and updated versions of the game,
she was not credited for her compositions at all.
All credit was given to the people
who translated them to the new formats.
Her contributions to game music history
are only recognized properly decades afterwards
because her early career was rendered invisible,
music she wrote often being credited
to someone else.
This was widespread at the company.
The Capcom sound team throughout the '80s and early '90s
was almost entirely women.
Just think about that for a second.
An extremely influential group of female early game composers
all credited through pseudonyms or sometimes not at all
and with the ports of music they composed credited
to someone else.
Maybe one of the reasons game development
is perceived as a male-dominated industry
is because all the women who've always been here
keep getting left out of the history they wrote.
If you're interested in the topic,
I recommend "The Street Fighter Lady"
and "Female Credit" by Andy Lemon
and Hillegonda Rietveld.
I've linked them in the description
and plagiarized them heavily
in this section of the video.
But even when people are credited,
the recognition can easily be minimized.
Joey did some of the music
for the "Terminator" Sega CD game
but as you can imagine,
this information has been rendered obscure thanks
to a much larger musician making sure his name
is remembered first.
The official CD release of the soundtrack
has "Tommy V. Tallarico" stamped on the front.
Its booklet says, "Composed, Produced,
and Performed by Tommy Tollarico,"
and calls Tommy a "veritable video game
industry icon," of course.
The half a dozen people who collaborated with him
and wrote the other half of the songs only appear
on the back of the case at the bottom as footnotes
with stars corresponding
to which songs they actually made.
So their names don't get noticed quite as much.
Joey's song was so good,
Tommy saw fit to put it on another album
with his name and face on it:
"Tommy Tallarico: Virgin Games Greatest Hits."
Joey's name is even smaller on the back of this one.
It's not difficult to see why Joey's contributions
to game history are being forgotten.
Reuploads of the full "Terminator"
CD soundtrack onto YouTube just say, "Composed by Tommy."
There's a re-upload
of specifically Joey's song, too.
The uploader--who understandably missed
the tiny note on the back of the CD case--
credits it to Tommy.
The top comment is a guy called Joey Kuras,
explaining that he actually made it,
but also thanking people for their kind words.
We're at the point the actual composers have
to explain they made the song in the comments of re-uploads
of their work misattributed to their old boss.
This extends back into the regular music industry
as a whole, of course,
but also into material we covered here.
"Michael Jackson's" long-rumored,
now semi-confirmed work on "Sonic 3"
isn't all it's cracked up to be, either.
Like a certain other composer,
Michael had people who worked for him.
According to Brad Buxer-- an American keyboardist
and composer who did a lot of work with Jackson
and actually is credited on "Sonic 3,"
Jackson basically made him do most of it.
Once you're well enough established,
it only gets easier to exploit the talents
of people working for you and build up your own status on
the back of something you made someone else do.
The industry is still constructed in a way
that treats individual creators--
usually the biggest names on the project--
as the true authors,
attributing a game's success to them
and not the many people who did the work.
Things are so bad even the recipients
of this praise have called it out.
To quote one of the worst articles
ever written:
The journalistic attitude to credit in gaming used
to be so awful,
it's not even clear who wrote this.
The article is credited to "IGN Staff."
Basically all success and appreciation pours directly
into selected industry figureheads
even when they're actively trying
to stop it from happening,
and a lot of them aren't because even if it's a problem,
it's a problem that benefits them.
You can tell a lot about an industry by how it treats
the people who actually do the work.
In terms of the scope of time,
the average game developer is fucked.
The hundreds and sometimes thousands
of people who work on games now throw away years
of their lives and so many
of them go completely unappreciated.
Meanwhile, the most assholish men
in the industry continue to promote themselves off
the back of the efforts of the people working for them.
Imagine making great sound effects
for years and years only for your boss
to tell some guy. in a Halloween mask
on a live stream with 100 views that he did it.
We don't recognize the work and achievements
of people who make games.
We recognize the people who exploited that work the best.
It's so easy for history and credit to get wiped away.
Case in point,
we could have never learned that
the "oof" was from "Messiah"
and assumed "Roblox" made it forever,
but it's not even the "Roblox" "oof."
In my household we call it the "Messiah" "oof."
There are thousands of people whose good work
on games will never be properly credited,
who we might have already forgotten about.
Gaming is still a young medium but already the sands
of our history are spilling through
our Monster Energy-sodden fingers.
Entire games are at risk of being forgotten,
never mind the human beings who created them.
The most valuable contribution Tommy
has made to the story is mentioning that
the voice actress was the daughter
of someone who worked at Shiny Entertainment
at the time.
- Her father worked
at Shiny Entertainment.
The girl whose voice was the "oof" would be close
to 30 now.
She might even have heard it
and not even have known it was her.
She might not even remember recording it.
The people who know who this was
and the parent who worked on the game,
those people aren't gonna be around forever.
We have a limited time to learn who this was.
The thing about history is,
it happens and then it's gone.
If we don't work to preserve it,
eventually it becomes impossible.
To quote a famous Nintendo quit screen,
"Everything not saved will be lost."
And just as a kicker how hard
it is to remember things accurately,
the popularized version of the quote is wrong.
It's actually, "Anything not saved."
I'm not trying to be a pedant for once.
It's kind of poignant how easy it is for things
to shift like that.
If we don't set a prescient
of taking people's work and the accuracy of records
of who did what seriously,
we leave it to the liars and opportunists
of the world to make up that history to the spin off
of a beer company to tell us who did what,
and it honestly on a spiritual level fills me
with immense grief thinking about
the people who made the things I care about
dying unrecognized for what they did
and being forgotten.
Gaming is just old enough that we're losing
that first generation.
Tommy got the rights to Intellivision because
he bought them from the estate of its last president
when he passed away.
The name, the branding--it's his now.
The original Intellivision YouTube channel with some
of the final appearances of its former president--
one of the world's first ever game designers--
along with the original Intellivision web site
with its beautiful Web 1.0 history
of the company are now relegated to obscurity under another name
while Tommy continues to use that name
to advertise a product that doesn't even exist.
The damage to a history people are at real risk of forgetting
whose main characters are dying
might already have been done.
What history will look like 20, 30, 100 years in the future
is being decided now.
Now is the time to decide if Tommy Tallarico made
the "oof" for "Roblox" or if Joey Kuras made it
for "Messiah,"
and Tommy has already put
his finger on the scale--
decided how he wants all this to be remembered.
If you buy his new sound pack,
the metadata in the "Roblox" "oof"
has been changed to say "Tommy Tallarico."
Those who fail to learn from history
are doomed to repeat it.
That's a quote commonly attributed
to Winston Churchill,
but he was actually probably
paraphrasing George Santayana.
That was me being a pedant. Old habits die hard.
But here's a corollary I came up with all by myself.
Those who let huxters write the history they're trying
to learn from are doomed in some other horrible way.
And, for one,
I don't think history gets to be written by
a guy who wasn't even on "Cribs."
It wasn't even "Cribs!"
[exciting video game music]
[tense orchestral music]
♪ ♪
Oh, hello there.
Thank you for watching this 30-minute video
and accompanying feature-length meltdown.
The boom mic is slowly, uh, peeking into frame.
[rumbling]
Anyway, thank you all so much for watching all of this,
and, uh, I hope you had a good time
and I hope to see you again soon for once.
♪ ♪
When I bought this, uh, "Gamer's Edition" on eBay,
you know, when I was flipping through it,
a bookmark fell out.
This is a bookmark for Alexander.
"Well done for all your hard work
"in year two this year, from Miss Dunne.
Goodbye."
So Alexander, uh,
I've no idea who you are or where you are now
or if you'll ever watch this video.
Um...
I hope you made Miss Dunne proud.
I've no idea how old you are now.
This book came out in, like, 2008.
I'm not gonna do the maths on that.
Um, but if you want your bookmark back,
e-mail me and I'll happily send it to you.
Please do e-mail me, in fact,
because I can't throw this out.
Like, that would be wrong.
So this is just gonna be in my life forever
until someone claims it,
so please take this back.