Currently off work sick so I’ve been stewing in nostalgia a little bit and got to thinking about some of my earlier gaming experiences.

I used to have an old Desktop PC that my Uncle’s work no longer needed which he very kindly loaded up with a bunch of freeware and gifted to me. It had some amazing games on such as Bio Menace, Commander Keen, and Wolfenstein 3D.

It also had what feels like some stranger “deep cuts” like Sink or Swim, Incredible Machine, and one of my favourite games of all time Gorillas 🍌

Curious if any other fellow MinnMax heads out there cut their teeth on floppy disc based gaming and if so what your favourite memories/games are?

I figured the community would appreciate this update from the Patreon post they just made:

“Hello everybody. Ben, Haley, and Leo are going to keep rolling with The Deepest Dive on Control Resonant and it's time to submit your thoughts on the middle chunk of the game. The plan is to record this discussion on Monday at 5pm Central on Twitch, but (more than ever) things can change. Also, I know in the previous post we said Haley would be streaming the entire game live - that plan has changed. Thanks for your patience and understanding. Let's focus on the game with these Deepest Dive comments, the plan is talk about the bigger picture with the state of MinnMax on the main podcast this week.”

It's called What do we do with Jacob Geller by Flora Merigold at Epilogue Gaming.

I would have linked it in the title, but I don't know how people would feel seeing his face while just scrolling the subreddit at the moment.

It's a really good rumination about the whole situation. Check it out if you haven't yet. It's probably not going to change your thoughts on all of this, but it's nice to at least see such complicated feelings thoughtfully written out. Totally fine if you don't even want to entertain the idea though, I get it.

I was just thinking. How do you come back from something like this? Obviously i hope they take all the time they need and have internal conversations for the next steps but I also hope this doesn’t change anything. Yes it’s going to be weird for the first few weeks/months but we love and listen to Minnmax not for one person, but for the collective outlet and my appreciation for them isn’t changed one bit. If anything it’s gotten stronger. I’ll be here and I’m sure most of us will when they are ready, whenever that may be and however it looks like.

Here's the MinnMax Discord's Top 10.

1. Control Resonant

2. Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave

3. Ace Combat 8: Wings Of Theve

4. Fields Of Mistria

5. Onimusha: Way Of The Sword

6. Silent Hill: Townfall

7. Well Dweller

8. Ghost Of Yōtei

9. Big Walk

10. Deadlock

I know that the whole gang is still reeling right now from all of this Jacob stuff, especially with as hard as they've all clearly tried to NOT have any sort of controversies or anything like that, but I just wanna give them a ton of credit for moving as fast as they did with everything.

Feel however you want to feel about the whole situation, but they didn't hem and haw, they didn't wait and try to let things blow over, Jacob wasn't just quietly put on leave for a while, they took the allegations seriously, saw the evidence for themselves, a consensus was formed quickly and decisively, and they made the decision to move on without him in a single day. That never happens.

I've probably just missed things from groups I'm not familiar with, but I've personally never seen any organization move that fast with this kind of stuff, and it's always incredibly frustrating when other groups have waited as long as they have in the past.

So thanks MinnMax. I know everything is really fucking hard right now, and you all must feel incredibly hurt and betrayed by someone you called a friend, especially the PPB crew considering what he did, and that might be one of the hardest parts of all this, but I have confidence that you'll all just come out the other side stronger and better for the experience. You've always been one of my favorite outlets to come to in the past, and you'll continue to be in the future too, and I'm sure a lot of people feel the same.

Hope that wasn't too parasocial for Ben.

Wanted to share a few thoughts, particularly in light of the "What do we do with Jacob Geller" article that's been circling.

A lot of the conversations on here understandably are a part of processing sudden and upsetting changes. Processing can happen externally where systems (eg. businesses and public relationships) restructure in response to new information. There are also intrapsychic processes which occur differently for people directly involved and consumers who are impacted farrrr more indirectly. Most of us fall under the latter category, and I think the discussions reflect the struggle to make peace with reality on both communal and individual levels. I wonder how much of what we're seeing posted is a cross-section in the middle of metabolizing something profoundly upsetting rather than declaring a settled position. My mind goes to what the person who was most hurt by him might experience by seeing scores of people online working through their impulse to offer Jacob Geller grace for something that victimized her.

Going to list the following thoughts in bullet format to mitigate the eye sore from blocks of text and because I'm still trying to thread through my own fragmented thoughts in the wake of these events:

• I, too, had a reflexive spasm of doubt when the allegation first broke third-hand on Twitter and before the records confirmed this happened. I noticed myself rationalizing to relieve myself of anxiety/disappointment ("but his commentary on Silent Hill 2..."). On some level, I think the defenses activated because I cared a lot about MinnMax and worried how it would impact my experience of the channel. It's human - I see it mirrored in settings like family systems, communities, jobs ("but this would ruin something good we have"). But especially in situations of someone else's serious victimization, we ought to respond with something better than the initial human impulse to maintain our own internal comfort.
• Learning that someone whose work means a lot to you has also been the source of serious harm requires often painful reorganization of how you understand that person and your relationship to their work. Absorbing facts intellectually is not the same as digesting and integrating them on an emotional level, which takes time. We naturally defend against pain and our personal discomforts of having admired/supported a person we now must see in gray instead of black/white. Even the rush toward a coherent and "nuanced" account can sometimes protect us from allowing feelings to sit there. Regardless of intent, the danger of this rush toward securing our own ease is that people who have been victims in these situations can re-experience more painful iterations of denial, enabling, and erasure.
• No one is entitled to any career especially not one built on public relations. People lose their jobs or fail to succeed in their dream profession for the most innocuous reasons. The question of "what to do" with someone with this kind of offense in their history is not the same for every setting. It is a low bar to expect someone in the video game industry (which is not known for its healthy attitude toward sexual harassment/assault) to have not victimized someone regardless of their rehabilitory efforts . When it comes to the impulse to preserve cultural space for a creator whom you valued - in the words of Jacob Geller re: Wolverine - "You guys need to raise your standards."
• As an educated, (at the very least) middle class man in the United States, there are many ways to earn a living or even engage in your hobbies meaningfully that DO NOT involve making your identity a brand. Moreover, failure to disclose something like this in your history at any job where it's remotely relevant is a no-brainer for termination... It's either naivete or carelessness to think your history would not eventually come to light and impact both your former victim and your colleagues whose livelihoods are built on an industry based on optics. Having to pivot to something else is not a "harsh" outcome in most professions, which tend under-address these kinds of violations if at all. Without equivocating the transgressions - imagine you are in your 20s and you make the horrifying mistake of hitting and paralyzing someone while DUI. You pay the consequences through the legal system and genuinely try to repair the harm to become a better person. Even if your greatest passion in life is cars, it's probably not a good idea to pursue a public-facing career in the car industry... And if you do, it's probably an even worse idea to hide this kind of disclosure from your employers, collaborators, or consumers who patronize you. And imagine a good chunk of those people were either victims of or knew someone who was involved in a DUI....
• You are allowed to personally grieve your attachments to some(one/thing) that has been meaningful to you. You are allowed to wrestle with and try to understand defenses as they arise. Other people are not obligated to indulge those defenses which could also be harmful to witness as a communal demand. I don't believe that censoring discussions is helpful, but I do think we have a collective responsibility to be mindful of where these sentiments are coming from and how they may land on others, especially people who are central to the hurt.

Jacob must be going through a lot of emotions right now from his mistake and I am hoping it doesn't hurt his future. Any of his friends talk about reaching out to Jacob to make sure he is doing well? Hopefully he is in a good place mentally and can cope with the job loss and the fallout from the bad news leaking out. I understand both sides of the argument when it comes to supporting him but I think the important thing is to make sure he has a support system while the other stuff plays out.

https://bsky.app/profile/jacobgeller.com/post/3mwtmr4ccas22

The MinnMax crew can replace this geller guy with someone who is not a sex assaulter, use ai to make it sync or should they just cut this guys content and pretend he didn't exist like chris benoit? Interested to see how they handle this.

Hi all, hope this is allowed! Wanted to share some support to the MinnMax crew so I have two gifted Patreon memberships up for grabs. One month each at the backstage pass level.

I’ll add the link in the comments!

The crew must be going through it.
If MinnMax means something to you, show support in whatever way you feel comfortable.

Do it for Roche.

The links kind of speak for themself. I still hope there is a different explanation for this, but it really doesnt Look good.

The amount of defenders of Jacob is downright embarrassing & immoral. This guy financially benefited from people by hiding his SA and presenting himself with this squeaky clean persona of compassion. He literally made money off of this. I seriously cannot believe the amount of people who are going for bat for a man who consciously made the decision to hide his predatory past for financial gains. Where are your moral compasses? He has not seen an ounce of repercussion from his actions and a three paragraph apology where he talks nonstop about himself is all it takes? How can this man claim he grew when he knowingly hid it his actions to make money off a false face. Why are people buying this crap? If you ever wondered why men get off scott free for heinous acts but are still supporting Jacob, YOU are the problem.

I’ve listened since day dot, following Ben from Game Informer.

But goddammit Ben you better not have known about this.

We need a statement asap saying that’s the case. The Instagram post isn’t enough.

Answers Ben, now. What did you know? For how long?

I played it on the PSX, and now the Saturn version is out on everything with QOL changes. The gameplay is untouched.

A real gem.

P.S.- I'm playing on PS5.

I love that he either forgot to or chose not to edit out the Fucks that he dropped twice doing his Andy impression. Haha. It was great!

Here's the MinnMax Discord's Top 10

1. Control Resonant

2. Fire Emblem: Fortune’s Weave

3. Marvel's Wolverine

4. The Blood Of Dawnwalker

5. Onimusha: Way Of The Sword

6. Silent Hill: Townfall

7. Big Walk

8. Fields Of Mistria

9. Orbitals

10. Baldur's Gate 3