CSB304: Corpomath

Hey man, how you doing?

How are you?

I'm okay.

I apologize to the live viewers for being slightly late, but the chat has informed me that if I show them this dog,

I will be forgiven.

So the deal has been made.

There you go.

Also, it doesn't matter.

This grief is temporary and it erases, and then the MP3 is forever, and that's all that matters into the future.

And then we'll be dead.

Yes.

But the temporary grief of the few in the moment that will be forgotten before the hour is over

has very little

weight and meaning.

So, what's up, man?

What's going on?

How is your temporary week of grief and excitement ready to fade into the ether bin?

Well, apparently, talking about

weight and gravity and what does does matter, I've seen

the only thing that seems to matter is gaycation.

Oh,

you saw about the gaycation.

So I'm like,

why is all this noise about gaycation now?

Yeah, well, I mean,

it's going to be that time of year.

And upon further research

and looking into the gay cation and realizing we're not talking about the 2016 television series.

Wait, that's a...

What?

Really?

Apparently.

By vice?

Oh, I didn't know that.

Apparently, not talking about that.

Talking about the current discussion about the current discussion of the gay cation, which all straight men do once a year.

Which I have discovered, and now I refuse to believe it's real.

Change my mind.

I refuse to believe that post is real.

I don't.

So Paige went ahead and she did an Am I the asshole stream uh a couple nights ago where she discovered uh my the the post like am i the asshole for telling my husband he can't go on a gay cation with his brother-in-law ah gotcha gotcha okay and that's why so much news about the gay cation now well i believe that story is fake and gay

so i mean as gay as the cation

um

but uh

It was a roller coaster because it reads like cult shit.

And it's like, you you know, you have to surrender to the gay cation, lest be destroyed.

Mind, body, and soul.

But

at the end of that stream, she went back and found like all the earlier versions of the gaycation story.

Okay.

So

is am I the asshole for believing that for not believing my boyfriend who said that he had a gay experience in Utah because of the altitude?

Okay, okay, okay.

And then, like, going back like six, seven, eight, nine years of various variations of gay Cajun storylines, different posters, which all like, what's that?

Different people, different posters, different posters, but they all read like they're written by the same person.

Okay, okay, gotcha.

Yeah, because make no mistake, like, the premise is eternal, right?

Um, this is something that will be asked

into Reddit for as long as the internet will exist.

You know,

is this mysterious man-only retreat that my husband is going on, is this a real thing?

Do other guys know about this?

Is this a bit or not?

That would be a real question.

It is a bit.

I mean, that is accurate.

But

is it a bit if it

yeah,

it can be a bit while being real, I suppose.

But my only thing is just to say that

the verbiage of

surrendering your soul

to the gaycation.

Or else be destroyed.

That is the author's touch on a shitpost.

You know?

That is

the end of your...

You write with your plume and the feather.

You wave it into the air when you stroke that ink onto the page.

I think the reason why the Gaycation story is so compelling is that you have run into, at some point in your life, people who just have convinced themselves very deeply of a completely insane nonsense reason for why something must be, right?

Like the classic, like straight version is like, I didn't even love any of those girls, baby.

They don't mean nothing to me, right?

Yeah, it doesn't count.

I was just fucking them.

I make love to you.

Yeah.

It's just bros.

We're just jerking off into tornadoes it's totally it's so straight we're just bros hanging out j-o bud all right looking looking for a j-o bud how am i supposed to recharge my crystals woman

uh yeah no no that's that's you know and then and then the confusion the of like i guess i

this could be a thing internet it could be a thing i mean i'm not i'm not in the i'm not at the the the bro sesh

you know is this what they do when they're talking about call of duty and the football i feel pretty i feel i feel a little bit sad though that we we never quite found out the follow-up to the tornado uh bud because well i i assume someone answered his ad and then they went and jerked off into tornadoes and they were good friends perhaps perhaps but like was that the end of the movie you know was it was it two backs facing uh each other as the tornado comes comes in and then we just cut to credits?

And they're wrapped around the pipe

with their belt like in Twister?

Yes, because that was a very crucial detail was that

the buds needed to tie themselves to a pipe to make sure they stayed secure so that they can handle the tornado as it passed through.

Because you don't want to fly away.

You want to be like Helen Hunt, like, like, you know, secure.

Like Bill Paxton.

One of the only movies he doesn't die in.

But you have to be close enough to make sure that the release never hits the ground.

No gay stuff.

Of course not.

Who's talking about that?

No,

you have to get it going right into the air and let nature do its thing.

Yeah.

It's natural.

Like a tornado.

It's a force of nature that would destroy you if you do not submit.

I mean,

you like to see, to witness the power and the might, you know, of like a real finger of God, as they say, the F5.

And to think to yourself, not I want to chase it and I want to capture it on film and I want to get the readings.

No, I want to fuck it.

I want to get it pregnant.

I want to get Tornado Chan pregnant.

Get over here.

Right?

To just Tracy Morgan.

If the sky is green, it's time for peen.

Come on.

I mean, it's just.

That comes from deep, deep inside, in a place that no one can follow.

You know?

Am I writing down Tornay Dussy?

No, I'm not.

I'm not telling you to do that.

All right.

No, don't do it.

All right.

What's going on?

So, aside from your impending vacation,

what's up?

Well, yeah.

I mean,

you say that.

I did.

Well,

yeah, not too much.

Played some more cyberpunk.

And

can I just say,

holy shit.

Automatic love.

What an awesome mission.

What a fucking cool.

Oh, you're now past me.

Oh,

okay.

But I don't care.

I don't give a shit.

You talk whatever you want to talk.

All right.

All right.

Fair enough.

Yeah, it is.

It's a nice early

tone setter.

And it reminds me of the moment you walk out of the Whirling in Rags in Disco and you let Shivers take over.

Yeah.

It's one of those, right?

Where you go, okay, okay, I see what's possible with this game right now.

That mission, it's called Automatic Love.

It's the Judy mission

in the yeah, early in chapter two,

sells me on

where this game can go and what this, at the very least, the story can be so far.

It's fucking great.

It's essentially

a mission where you're tracking down your

back in touch with the person who set you up on the original job in chapter one.

And,

you know, so early cyber opponent spoilers, but things go wrong, and you're trying to piece together what, and so to get your leads, uh, you basically find out uh about a doll club, you know, and that's basically just like a brothel.

But in cyberpunk standards, what a doll is is really fucking

properly dystopian, creepy, and interesting.

Um, because uh, in the world of cyberpunk, prostitution is my body is being rented out, and my brain will just, I'll just check out, and then the, the, the AI will take over, the algorithm will take over, oh, goody, and I'll just go to another place, and then come back and then be like, cool, all right, I got painted, done, and done.

Um,

it's proper horror, right?

Like, super dark and very, very like, yeah, this is, this is the, this is where you, you want to, to, to build your world and then go, like, what do each, what does each facet of the world look like when you take it all the way down to the bottom, right?

So you get to this part.

And

because of my stats, I was able to, I'm basically trying to figure out a crime scene

while I'm hunting for this person who's missing.

And because of my stats, I was able to

walk into a room I otherwise wouldn't be able to open and just figure out the mission right away.

But

as I walk out and I go, all right, I've got everything I needed to, it's like, you can still go ahead and you know, play the John in this scene where you have to go,

you know, talk to a doll and, you know, pretend that you're going to hook up and take it as far as you want to and see where this goes.

And I'm like, all right, let's see what Cyberpunk has.

And you sit down

in this room and you meet the doll.

And

it's one of these settings.

It's one of these moments where the first thing you do after you kind of get your choices of like, oh, who do you want to hook up with?

Like, according to our scans, this is the right person for you.

You can choose between angel or sky.

You know, you have these two different people that are, that are, the two different dolls that are working.

And

the

uh, and then it goes, all right, before you go in, pick your safe word, all right, and let's go, you know.

And so, uh, you walk in and you sit down, and then, like,

uh,

the doll

like turns and goes, um, oh, hello, Valerie, is it?

So, you're dying, huh?

And it's like, your options are like, what?

And safe word, safe word,

just immediately, you know?

And it's this fucking, like, you, like, you, you can just, you can immediately be like, nope, I'm the fuck, I'm out.

That's it, we're done.

And then you're like, wait, what, what is that name?

And it's like, oh, it's what the name V actually is,

except nobody but you could possibly know that.

Oh.

And it's like, oh, okay, okay, this is on frame one as intimate as you can possibly get.

You know?

And you just, and so you could play along and be like, yeah, okay, Robohooker, what do you got for me?

Huh?

We're going to play therapy.

And then you have.

I mean,

and while you have the, and I get to, I'm going to bring another disco reference here, but a Joyce Messier conversation, you have the most insane, like, introspective just sequence with

the doll as

it's the closest and most intimate thing.

And they're just kind of talking and getting closer and lying there.

And just, and like, you're reaching into, like, like, what are you paying for?

Are you paying for like all your deepest desires?

And it's like, oh,

it's reaching into your innermost fears and thoughts and

bringing those to light.

And you're like, kind of like nervously, scoffishly being like, I'm just here to find out about the mission, whatever.

And it's like, what are you afraid of?

And it's like you get into the parts where your character is like,

you've died already.

You've seen the other side and there's nothing there.

And you're afraid of dying again because the first thing you found out upon returning to this world is that you're immediately going to die again.

And it's like, yeah, that's a horrifying realization for your character.

And like all of the tough act strips away of like oh i'm from the the the outside whatever like i had the corporal route background but i'm sure like whatever it is that that that's there it's like yeah fuck all of that this is real this is super duper real and you're talking to this again like algorithm you know um

and then after this insane like incredible sequence of just breaking your character down um

you eventually you just have to kind of like you're like i you're basically you're like, yeah, I don't want this to end, but then all things have to.

And then you just, you have no choice but your safe word.

And then as soon as you say it, the whole thing shuts down.

The, the, you know, the algorithm pieces out.

And then the host takes back over their own brain and is like, what?

What's going on?

Where are we?

Huh?

You know?

And you're just like, oh, yeah, you know, whatever.

And you're just like, what the fuck is this world?

What is this game?

What is this setting?

You know?

And it's like, it's just the intro to this mission.

And it's fucking powerful.

It's really, really cool.

It was always interesting to me that when you have your cyberpunk dystopia, the issues of drug abuse and prostitution in your cyberpunk dystopia and your particular flavor of nightmare are always going to come up at some point in whatever game.

Yep.

And I did not know that's how it worked in cyberpunk because my only

number one thing is my

knowledge of how it works in Shadowrun.

Okay.

That got re-kickstarted and had a couple games out in which the primary form of prostitution slash drug abuse in that is something called a BTL,

which is a better than life chip in which you are like Johnny mnemonic like slotting in someone else's memories.

Oh, yeah.

Braindance.

But

much like a brain dance, the difference is in Shadowrun is they crank it up.

past human tolerance.

So

it feels twice as good and twice as real.

Okay.

And so when you come out, you get into like an inception situation.

So X-brain dance.

Where you're horribly addicted because real life now seems dull and fake.

Yeah.

Okay.

That's literally, that's also cyberpunk as well.

XBDs are in there.

And they, like, one of the, you know, one of the things is you can, yeah, you experience like the, the, like, the extremities.

And if you go into the memories of someone dying, you know, that is one of the most insane possible strength

moments of all

chemicals firing, everything your brain must be going through at that point.

And you capture that and then give it to a junkie, you know?

So yeah, it kind of hits on that as well.

And then yes, editors can

coordinate it and pull it back or amplify things to make your feelings, you know, to

designer drug your high, right?

So yeah, that's all part of what's available in the world here.

But like with this element, you know, it's,

yeah, it was just a really, really

strong start to,

yeah, I guess where this plot is going.

And I guess to your expectations in, you know, I'd say in a lot of media, like in games or movies where

it's like, oh, you got to go find,

you know, the drug dealer or the rat or whatever.

You got to go past, you got to go pass by the Bada Bing, right?

We're going to head over to the strip club.

And I guess I sort of expect to just kind of see like look at our cool lighting as titties are flopping around and then there'll be a fight that'll take place in dark light and you know the the battle be an interesting thing but i'm not expecting a whole lot except for like oh yeah it's the bat it's the john wick with the with the club lighting action scene in a way you know i kind of just expect that when you go we're going to the strip club it's going to be

Couple asses shaking and then it'll be a cool set piece for your explosions.

And I really did not expect it to just just become this uh beautiful existential moment um it's really interesting because like so cd project did three games back to back that were the witcher games and the witcher games are like obsessed with um otherness in society and like there it's it's like a social context right

um geral is just like a lens and he's viewed as non-human or less than human and so then the idea is like well can the less than human person be more human than people in regular situations?

Right.

And that society actually sucks shit.

Yoko Tara.

And it's fascinating because cyberpunk is like nearly exclusively internal.

I was like, well, what does a society look like when no one is human anymore?

When that humanity is just like completely fucking gone.

Yeah.

And replaced with iPads.

And when like life is as rigged as it possibly can be from the junk.

And

I think I mentioned it last time, but

doing side missions and

picking up logs and stuff, you kind of get a picture that it's like, yeah,

even being part of the system

does not give you any advantage over those who are not part of it and getting crushed by it.

Everyone's getting crushed by it, you know.

But no, so, anyways, it was pretty, it was just like, yeah, very, very strong, impressive moment, and

has

put

a memorable, you know, impact so far into that.

And I will say that, like, I mean, I don't know if it's a matter of like each character's quest lines having different quality to their writing or to the,

you know, the strengths of what the topics are.

But, like,

that coming from, I guess, Judy's quest line makes me very, very interested in that.

Obvious judy reasons aside she's awesome um i can't speak for for cyberpunk but for a lot of big games that have this many quest lines it seems very common to like divvy them up according to various writers i would imagine so like i know for i know for like new vegas and oblivion and a bunch of those types of games that it's like you get all of this guy's quests and you get all of this guy's quests and then you get the miscellaneous quests etc

and uh and it does also like feel like

a couple stories do this, like Game of Thrones kind of has it where it's like the world is here, the government,

the king, the rulers, etc., are one tier, and then everybody underneath in society is here.

And then there's the people that slip through the cracks that everyone kind of forgets about.

But underpinning all of that is the sex workers,

just streetwalkers,

literally the brothels.

Those are the people that are truly aware of and the undercurrent of all society.

And everyone comes to them and they know everything.

And they're the real power.

And depending on your setting, you could also

institute the homeless as this underclass.

So if you're playing a Like a Dragon game,

like, you know, the homeless know everything.

They see you with their cameras.

What?

Right.

Yeah, I don't worry about that.

But I would say, I would say the difference between like the way a like a dragon setting would have it is just like the homeless are observing everybody, and you know, that that that can be the same network that David Cage uses of amongst the novel hobbos,

yeah, the no

that it's getting more mangled every time we say it over the years,

the noble hubos, um, yeah, but but the nahobinos,

yeah,

young men,

um, but uh, but no, in this case, like

everyone,

from

the kings to the paupers are all taking a load off and heading down to the brothel and

letting their whispers fly in their in you know when they're in their moments of weakness or whatever.

And so like there's just that kind of underpinning of society.

And I feel like the mocks are kind of like, yeah,

Arasaka shitbags,

politicians, and you know,

fucking,

I forgot their name, the tiger claw gangs alike used to kind of run the show here.

And eventually,

the basically all the sex workers got together themselves and said, Fuck this, we're making our own gang and we'll protect ourselves and we'll fuck you up.

And they're like, Okay, got it, cool, we got the tech, we got the, we got the, you know, brain hack ability, we got everything in place, and like, yeah, you gotta answer to them, you know.

So, um, yeah, pretty cool so far.

Um,

I'm, I'm, I'm, uh,

I'm also happy that,

you know, even as I started a mission where, like, at one point, Pan Am was like, hey, get in the car.

And I was like, okay, cool.

And then ended the session there.

And then even as the thing, the objective was get in the car, I was like, yeah, I'm going to go open world for a bit.

fuck around and then did so and it's like yeah okay cool and the car's still waiting and whenever you're ready for that mission to start there it is so

it was nice to kind of just be able to have that that kind of freedom as well um

and uh and you know play and play the radio get a bit less get used to some of the different radio stations and hear the the music overall i i remember i'm realizing with cyberpunk that uh like

the only real

full

well i guess no i i think there's yeah two games that come to mind that i've played where it would have been like you have a radio station that you're fully browsing through where one would have been GTA 3 original, but I played that on my PC, and the version I played had no radio in it, so I had to put my own mp3 files in a folder.

Okay, so that was my weird radio experience with GTA 3.

And then very weird, yeah.

And then I guess, um,

um,

ah shit, what was it?

Uh,

the

black and white one where you're um

the black and white one where you're you're um taking out the nazis in

um

360 era old school

not mad world not mad world the saboteur oh the saboteur saboteur okay saboteur

um i think yeah i think that's like the only other one i think where i would have had that so you know because i haven't really done a lot of a whole bunch of the you know i haven't really done gta games uh yeah we're we're in a new world for that where we're like hey you know what you could have you could have like a walkman or something or like a you could you because like it used to be like, well, obviously, music's only going to play in your fucking car.

You're in the car 80% of the fucking game,

right?

And then, as Yo, Cyberpunk, you're on foot, like, all the fucking time.

And also, it's like, and each of these is going to have like

a big, detailed, long, original radio station recording track that's.

Oh, yeah, hey, welcome to KBBL 99, where your brain is fake, but these tunes are real.

Or whatever the fuck.

I mean, I heard like with Grand Theft Auto, like, for a while, it was, yeah, there's like the Laszlo radio stations.

Yeah, Laszlo's great, man.

Yeah.

So that's, that's one of the things I remember even hearing about without even playing, you know?

And like playing, play, like, one of the reasons, like, Paige has been streaming Fallout, and one of the reasons that Paige's like VOD situation on, or Twitch publishing situation has been so fucked up is because like playing Fallout without the radio is pointless.

Like it's it's like abjectly worthless.

Like don't bother.

But when you stream it, like it just gets pinged like every fucking 10 seconds.

It goes into fucking muted, muted, muted, muted, muted.

So at a certain certain point twitch just said you know what we're not even gonna auto publish these fucking things anymore you can just fucking do with them as you will and then you take the the fucking local recording and you throw that on youtube and then it says it's blocked in russia and who gives a shit

yeah

yeah

um that's where that's where i guess the multi-track you know things could come in handy but it's still annoying because obviously like you know people well with fallout it's really bad because you end up humming along or singing along songs that people can't hear and sound like like a fucking cycle.

And that makes it a really annoying thing, even if people.

Exactly, right?

It separates it later.

Yeah.

No, there's no real winning on this one, I think.

And as long as Twitch and YouTube kind of treat it differently or have different guidelines, it's always going to make the double upload a pain in the ass.

Oh, it's the worst.

I remember I streamed Dead Island 2, and in the options menu, it's like, hey, DMCA mode removes copyrighted music.

And so I turned it on, and it just dropped most of the music from the game and replaced it with Dead Silence, including the main menu.

I had the weird club in Cyberpunk already.

You know, thankfully, it's limited, but like, there's that, but

I guess maybe not Afterlife, but the club before that that you go to,

where it's just like, yeah, like you're walking in, you just hear fucking nothing, you know?

This club's bumping to the tunes of nothing.

I guess everyone's just doing a silent disco.

Yeah, with their headphones going, which you can do,

right?

I guess you could.

Yeah, I know, and then there's the

like, well, I talked about also the fact that, like, you know, YouTube is way stricter on the

innuendo implication, nudity, not nudity guidelines versus Twitch, which is just like, if it's in a game, it's fine, you know?

Hey, listen, are you staring at titties for 15 minutes?

Maybe don't do that.

But, but, well, in this case, like, it was the puddle underneath underneath the dude.

You know, you couldn't see anything.

He was just in, like, he was

on his hands and knees, and all junk was covered, but like, there was a puddle underneath him.

And that, contextually, is like, flag that shit.

I want to give a shout-out to two games.

One, somebody in the chat mentions, Hi-Fi Rush, oh my god, A, A, Forever.

It's the best solution.

Some of those songs are better than the songs they're replacing.

I brought it up every single time.

It's unbelievable.

Double shout out to

Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, the game that has the most stringent copyrighted music situation.

That every single video I have ever uploaded from that game has now been blocked worldwide.

Wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

There's your other guess what they did is they got a late 90s club music for real in that game.

So there's a bunch of like prodigy and shit every time you walk into a nightclub.

Sick.

Okay.

Yeah, I,

God, I don't even remember what it was, but recently, like, it's been popping up more and more, but there was, there, there's something, something we uploaded recently where, like, some fucking fake techno group decided to claim it or whatever.

Um,

the every single part of my Metal Gear playthrough, every single one has been claimed on Twitch for muting that is not them.

Assholes.

Uh, the problem with the Hi-Fi Rush, like, win is that when it doesn't work out, for example, uh, Guardians of the Galaxy, right?

You have a situation where, like, yes, there's an alt soundtrack for streaming, but if it doesn't fucking slap,

then

duh, that is not the same thing.

So

that's not the Guardians of the Galaxy problem.

The Guardians of the Galaxy problem is that the Star-Lord playlist, I think, as somebody calls it, is okay.

It's not nearly as good, but there's tracks missing.

I played that game for a sponsored stream, and during the first, like, big spaceship sequence where you're escaping from the planet, it it was like dead silence.

There's just nothing there.

There was no generic replacement track.

Yeah.

So

it is a lot to like expect, you know,

well, don't just have dead silence, but if you're going to do a replacement soundtrack, that's a lot for just the streaming process, but the streaming process is so important now.

You know, well, we'll talk about the streaming process in a little bit because I'm playing a game on my own time that is like a fucking indictment of everything to do with social media.

Fair enough.

I just know that

I don't feel

like

it feels like if I were to look at a game and be like, hey, can you please

spend time and resources for me?

For me.

Like, I'm like, I understand how they can be like, no, man,

we're making this for people to play on their own time.

And if you happen to be online, that's a you problem.

Hopefully the situation will get better with the fucking platforms you know now I can get that point of view to be fair hi-fi rush does have a specific um

uh a reason for that it's not just

so that we can play it on stream it's a music also

because the tracks they picked are expensive and popular and eventually those rights will run out and they want to be able to just segue and the game music is so important they want to just be able to turn that off, turn the key, and be like, you know what?

No more nine-inch nails music.

You can still play the game.

It's still totally good, etc.

If the licensing was temporary.

Hmm.

I wonder.

Because those are big songs that they picked up.

And temporary licensing is much more affordable than permanent.

But then I guess I wonder for games like

BPM, not BPM, but the other one.

Hellsinger.

Metal Hellsinger.

Metal Hellsinger is all completely bespoke unique music.

Oh, is that?

Wait, no.

I thought that was the one with licensed tracks.

I thought Apex.

No, I thought

BPM is original, and I think Metal Hellser.

Wait, hold on.

Let me go check.

Let me go.

Okay.

Metal Hellsinger.

Because I played Metal Hellsinger, and it's great.

My impression is that BPM is the original one, and that Metal Hellsinger is all licensed.

Okay, hold on.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I would land it.

And if so,

every track has been created specifically for the game by composer duo TwoFeathers with voices, vocals by Metal icons such as search tankian randy blithe alyssa white

okay they worked with the the they worked with big big time big artists but the music itself is for the game got it okay yeah that's a pretty solid that is a great solution that'll do it too also uh a metal hellsinger is um

incredible

It's fucking great.

Oh, there is the essential hits pack, which gives you Feel Good Inc, Uprising, Personal Jesus, etc.

Okay.

But that is a dlc pack because yeah when you have to think about like a time limit on any of these things then like what the fuck happens to the game after well because nobody wants to fucking deal with the nightmare that harmonics dealt with

yeah i just it just sucks though that like

um

you know that this system feels like it's not changing anytime soon like oh no like it's kind of locked into place after the last DMCA updates occurred um you know and like I think there was some hope when when the initial like revenue sharing thing was like, oh, it's a pile of fucking shit.

You know, you're like, they're like, oh, we're working on new ways to fix these platforms and stuff.

And like,

yeah, no, no, you know, um, entire.

I get, I get notifications every single day going, somebody's using your footage.

And it's like, because I played a game and I happened to be like the first big channel to get the YouTube of the intro up.

And they're like, that's your video.

And I'm like, no, it's not.

Yep.

You can flag everybody if you want.

You can take the power's in your hands.

You can be an asshole right now.

Click the button.

Hey, look.

Yeah.

That's not mine.

Yeah.

Like, I think,

God, what was it?

It was like, I think discussing Gungrave gore at some point when there was like some footage I had on screen or so.

It was like, oh, do you want to claim everybody's gungrave gore discussion videos and trailer footage or whatever?

And it's like, no, no, I don't.

Yeah, you know what?

But you can.

Gore, maybe, maybe I do.

Maybe I'll get paid from Brandon Heat.

Um,

yeah, it is, it is uh, absolute uh, shitbaggery, and uh, I've had entire show ideas that I've had to just trash because they never followed through on what they said they would do, with which was like uh

changing the rules around how licensed music would work on on Twitch and on YouTube.

You know, I had stuff that I had to do scam,

um,

yeah, yeah, it fucking sucks.

So,

anyway,

But still, make the game for me, though.

Do it.

Do do make add a giant extra budget.

Like, do, do more to the game for me.

Look how much we sell for you.

Look how much we.

You know what?

Actually, this is, this is, there's never going to be a better time to talk about this.

Can we switch over to my week for one game?

Because it's this topic.

Hit it.

So.

I like Josh Sawyer.

I follow him on social media.

I think he's a really smart guy.

He helped make a bunch of my favorite Obsidian games.

He's like the gameplay and lead director at a bunch of projects over Obsidian.

The number one thing you would know him as is like the director for New Vegas, right?

I like pretty much everything that Josh has put his hands on to some degree.

And

there was this long back and forth with like the reality of full level voice acting in games.

So I think we talked about this briefly, so I'll just go quickly over it.

But Pillars of Eternity 1 was a Kickstarter game and had fairly limited voice acting.

It would basically just be flavor when you met new characters, kind of thing.

And then Divinity Original Sin 2 by Larian came out and had full voice acting.

And so then when they're making Pillars 2, the decision comes down on high that says, hey, do full voice acting.

And they're like, that's really hard, right?

So they did it.

And what were the results?

So one is streamers hate it when there's no full voice acting.

We did have this discussion

two weeks ago.

Streamers hate it, and that's bad for marketing.

Players love it when it has full voice acting, et cetera.

However, planning for full voice acting and paying for full voice acting, particularly for

heavily narrative text-based games, can be really, really expensive.

And it can be a lot of like extra work to integrate it, right?

So, all that being said, that was a post-mortem for Pillars of Eternity 2.

Here comes Pentiment.

So, Pentiment is,

it's, you know, when you play a game, you're like, oh, this is someone's baby?

Yeah.

No, I'm looking at it because when I look his name up, first I see Avowed,

and then I see Pentiment.

So it's, you're like, oh, this is someone's baby.

This is someone's like

toying around in their margins for years.

Pentiment is a game in which you play an aspiring young artist in 1518 Bavaria in a small town where you work at the local abbot's scriptorium copying books as well as following up your own art.

And there is a murder which essentially gets you stuck in this tiny little hamlet for 20 years as you get to know the populace and over a very long portion of the game attempt to solve the murder, figure out what's going in the town, talk to a bunch of abbots and monks and nuns about God and the nature of Martin Luther and the Holy Roman Empire and all this shit, right?

You wake up and get hit with that.

I want to make some shit no one's even thought of remotely once in the human history of this planet.

Now, ever.

There is a definite disco Elysium feeling in that it is a very small game in which it is based around passing conversation checks and getting to know an extremely small area of the world to the point where when you start the game, the very first quest is pay your rent.

Okay.

like you walk downstairs and they're like i need you to pay your rent

right and so the first series of quests is basically begging for money it's right

um and pentament has no voice acting at all

and as a result of pentament being extraordinarily text heavy like crazy text heavy and having no voice acting at all i didn't cover it despite being a massive fan of the studio and the people behind it and a lot of people didn't cover it and the last that I heard, it did okay, but it was also one of those games that Microsoft bought when they bought Obsidian.

And so it's kind of like a Game Pass add-on.

So it did fine, but like nobody talking about Pentiment.

Like no, nobody talking about Pentiment.

And I'm playing Pentiment, and two things jump out.

One,

boy, it would have been hard to voice act Pentiment.

So, first of all, every single character is like

German or like pre-Germany German, 1518 accented.

And there are like five or six different fonts for specific people.

So academics, priests, peasants, farmers, and laborers all have different font styles

appropriate to their station and level of education.

As dialogue fills in,

there will be spelling errors, which you will then see an invisible editor scratch out with a stone and correct during dialogue.

Okay, it's a writer's game.

Yeah.

It is writing.

So I speak to the shepherd and the shepherd speaks in the peasant script

until you find out he can read.

And then a pumice stone comes and scrapes off all his dialogue and replaces it in the educated font,

which is easier to read.

And then when you talk to the abbot or

the brothers at the monastery, they speak in the clergy thing, which is a high gothic like style text, which is actually a little difficult to read.

Yeah, okay.

So playing with dialogue and text and script.

It's playing with text.

The actual adventure, yeah, right.

Like the very first thing that you do in that game is you scrape off a Greek manuscript to draw your own art in it.

Right?

Like it is obsessed with the written word.

And I completely, completely, completely understand why this would have been prohibitively expensive to voice act.

And even if it had the budget, there's a bunch of other challenges you're describing here that like design issues alongside it.

And all I can think of is like, wow, what an incredible, good use case for why something shouldn't have voice acting.

It should have still had voice acting.

Because you couldn't cover it.

Because I couldn't cover it and nobody covered it.

I just saw somebody in the chat say, I have never seen anyone stream Pentiment.

I barely see anyone talk about it.

And every time someone talks about it, they go, What an incredible game.

It's so interesting.

It's the most amazing game.

I can't believe it.

And from my couple hours with it, wow, it's amazing.

It's absolutely incredible.

Yeah, I remember you giving it its flowers sometime last year when you first came when we were talking about it.

And

no, it seems fascinating.

It's just, this is an insurmountable problem in a way, you know, as far as coverage.

It's a text-to-speech option, but it's like Microsoft Sam.

Sure.

And I was looking into the possibility.

I was like, oh, if I was going to play something like,

ah, God, it always escapes me, but really long word count.

What can change the nature of a man?

Planescape torment.

Thank you.

I was looking into the possibility of like, what if...

Fuck that.

Well, here's what I was

looking.

I was like, what if I had the script next to me and then I had a text-to-speech that I could paste

into that.

So, here you get, there's like multiple different problems that show up, and I saw them in Pentiment.

And in Planescape Torment, you do get minor voice acting, and this is a problem right away because if you have like Microsoft Sam read it, well, what you're going to hear is the nameless one talk, and the nameless one sounds just like Ron Perlman, and he's incredible.

Before, just you jumped in the middle of there before I finished the thought.

I don't want anyone thinking, no, clearly, that's a dumb word.

That's not, that's, that's not an idea that's happening.

That's, that's completely, that's not practical.

But I was, I wanted to, I was looking at how to address this game and how to play it, and what way, what ways there would be.

And I'm like, could that even be a thing?

And it very quickly revealed itself that no, that is not a thing.

So I see people.

I briefly

streamed Planescape Torment for like two hours.

And I think it was actually

like more difficult than disco.

Interesting.

So what I did do was

read a fucking book and then play Felix Wright and just make it so that if I ever were to do this, I would just take the hit and do it,

which could happen.

I'd have to see.

But like

that's a that's a pretty insurmountable problem.

And so yeah, with a game like this, you have to know going in, I guess, how old is this?

Is it abandonment?

It's like two years old.

Two years old, right?

By this point in design, you're talking whenever it started development, you know, 2018, maybe 2019 at the earliest, if it was a thought, and then it became a concept that they executed on in 2021 or so.

Like

the landscape for a small game, just it's not impossible, but boy, is it fucking hard to thrive if nobody can stream your game at the same time as like relying on word of mouth to get out there about it, you know?

Um,

yeah, that's a huge one.

We're part of the system now, man.

I mean,

how did people think about think about Unknown 9?

Uh-huh.

Yeah?

That's the Witcher spin-off that didn't take off?

No, it's not.

What the fuck?

Okay.

This is perfect.

This is such a perfect example of what I'm talking about.

So I was looking through stories and I was putting together and seeing what's going on.

And here's where I don't know what's going on.

So I saw

an article that was describing that a character from the Witcher TV show, I believe Anya was the name, was supposed to have their own spin-off or series,

and it was making reference to

Unknown Nine.

Or that was being discussed in it.

And I was going through and I quickly saw the story.

I didn't get the whole thing.

So that's what I was just asking.

I think that might have been one of the actors.

They were talking about the person from the TV show.

I understand.

Okay.

Okay.

So I read, yeah, I was reading a story quickly.

And then, yeah, that was one of the parts.

So that's why I was just like, oh, is it connected to this bit?

Gotcha.

So Unknown Nine is a game that came out like a couple months ago, I guess.

And I never heard of it, even though I went back and looked.

And like, you and I both watched trailers for it at various game shows.

It would just delete our set.

I think we even talked about its title because the name is Unknown Nine Awakening, and it's one of those

delete titles.

Unfortunately, Stormgate.

Yep.

Crickets,

if you're watching the industry too closely, you hear these names too often.

And it's the story world.

And by the story world, they mean it had like two podcasts and two books written for it before it came out and all that shit.

And it's Enduring Legacy is one of the only games that, like, I think Gigaboots failed to death stream because he just got too bored.

Just, we're gonna do a death stream.

Ah, fuck it.

It's not worth it.

I

what?

Okay, okay, okay.

So, we know that the multimedia

property can work if you start in one place and then expand into others.

But, like,

has the simultaneous push

worked at any point in the last 20 years?

Never, never.

20?

I

saw

the only one that people will tell you it worked is Dead Space 1

because there are a bunch of motion comics and comics that came out before Dead Space 1 to set it up.

I remember the motion comic because I watched it in Dead Space Extraction, which I also enjoyed.

But Dead Space was going to be fine because it looked like Resident Evil 4 in space.

Yeah,

I saw someone say Fate Stay Night, and I'm like, I remember the timeline of when, like, I guess Tsukuhime was over, and then they were like announcing the next thing, and it was that one, like,

it was the key graphic of, like,

you know, the, the, yeah, whatever, the Fates Day Night announcement.

But I think that even came out as like one thing and then slowly

started working into other mediums.

I don't think it was a multimedia blitz from different things at the same time.

I don't remember.

I saw somebody say Chronicles of Reddick, and I think that's really funny.

The idea that, well, you remember that I made those Vin Diesel movies before putting out Escape from Butcher Bay to like hype up Escape from Butcher Bay?

Yes, of course.

Pitch Black and what?

Yeah, remember?

Totally.

Yeah.

Oh, boy.

As part of the story world.

Yeah.

Okay, so Dot Hack absolutely fits into the description that we're talking about here, but is anyone...

Okay, I can't...

Is anyone going to stand on business and say that Dot Hack is like good as a whole?

Because I don't, I'm not under that impression, but I've only seen I've seen Dot Hack's Last Sign and Liminality, and I've, and that was it for me.

Now, Now, I know that there's some games that people like, and or some of the things, but when you put it all together, is it Baton

500?

What are we batting here?

I don't know, but it feels as if, as time has gone on, it feels as if it has been more bad than good.

I'm seeing mixed feelings from everybody, though.

Okay, okay.

Yeah,

some work, some don't.

80-20.

Okay.

Months ago.

It is also one of those series that is, you want to talk about the Kingdom Hearts putting it all together, level of batshit.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Try to put the dot hat timeline together.

The situation is always the same.

It's like, oh, you know what?

Look, Kingdom Hearts and Near Automata and all these things.

Look, they have these wide, sprawling things that can keep people involved even between development.

You know what we should do?

Before the game even comes out or the movie comes out, let's just flood the fucking airways with comics about something no one's ever heard of.

Yeah,

let's fucking do it.

Stop the episodes you're on.

Go play this game up to chapter two.

Now resume

where you were.

Did I tell you how insane the reading order for the Witcher series is?

You did, you did, yeah, yeah, you did.

Yeah, like that's the worst one I can think of.

I think dot hack can get dumber if you're trying to piece it all together sensibly because it involves you starting and stopping multiple things to switch back to a different thing.

And I saw an insanely cursed Like a Dragon timeline in which you play through games until you get to flashbacks so that you can order up the flashbacks as they happen.

Oh, God.

Oh, God.

So you play zero, but then you start to play one,

but only the 2005, only the 1995 section.

And then you play this until you get to the flashbacks that take place before 1995.

Oh, my God.

That's so fucking stupid.

That's painful.

Yeah.

I think looking back on it,

seeing

two.hack-related things.

The soundtrack to hack sign, excuse me, dot hack slash sign

was good.

And

the rest was bad.

I did not like it.

And then Liminality was

even...

I didn't...

It felt...

Okay, I remember watching this.

Oh, it was.

Yeah, it was like a partial OVA series.

And like, there was...

Oh, yeah, yeah.

Somebody put it in the chat.

There it is.

And it was so wild because the characters in the real world were like going into the game, but this series was based on not showing you the in-game stuff.

so you just focused on the characters with the headsets on talking to each other as like music was playing and they're like oh my god hold on watch out and and you got and it look and it stayed on just the characters going oh no wait what and and and you but you couldn't you were not allowed to go into the thing because

yeah anyway all right um don't jump the gun

before you know if your thing has any juice how about that because you're yeah you're packaged with the games and and so you're supposed to switch between the two to to fully uh

You know what?

I can only think of

one

project

in which the

core product was a dismal failure, but the pre-project story world,

like, you know, extra material was good enough on its own to make it worth it.

And it's Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning.

Ah, right, right, right.

Okay.

Because Copernicus never fucking came out because Kurt Schilling's a fucking fraud ass bitch.

But Kingdoms of Amalor was alright.

I learned how to air combo without expecting it.

That, that, yeah, there was some depth to that combat system that didn't expect to be there.

So, yes,

for the hackle menality that was packed with the PS2 games,

you play the games to see

what was going on there.

Does it make showing the characters wearing the VR goggles and making that the crux of what's going on any better or not?

Man, I don't know.

I don't know nothing about Dot Hack.

I know there's a guy named Orca

who's really strong in the first Dot Hack game.

That's it.

That's all I got.

That's literally the entirety of information I have about Dot Hack.

Oh, and also, GU is hard to find and expensive to buy.

The OP for Hack Sign 1 is fucking sick.

That opening is such a good song.

It's a banger.

It was good.

All right.

Anyways.

But yeah, no, Pentiment's Incredible.

It should have voice acting.

I know why it doesn't have voice acting, and those are all great reasons made by smarter people than me, but shut up.

It should have people talking in it

so I can do it.

Shut up.

Just do it.

Thank you.

Okay.

We said it for disco when we were super right about disco, so hey.

This makes me sad about Pentiment, and now I'm kind of like, oh, fuck, there's a, I kind of want to know, you know.

Plan it yourself.

Yeah, I guess so.

I guess so.

That's a sleeper hit.

And unfortunately, fucking,

yeah,

the culture we propagate makes it worse.

Yeah.

It's not my fault.

It's the consumer's fault.

If Twitch chat just learned how to read, I wouldn't have to read to them

from this tiny little screen.

Yeah, it's a tiny little text window.

So, you asked me this a little while ago, man.

And you asked me what language I play the Lega Dragon games on.

I said English because it's so much easier.

But there was actually a breaking point for that where I, at some point, go, oh, it's so, such, oh, it's hard to read out all this fucking dialogue and all the Japanese dialogue.

Can't you guys just read this shit on their subtitles?

And the answer is not on my fucking phone.

i can't it's like a single line of pixels and then i'm like oh yeah well actually no you actually totally can't read text on the screen at all shit

the shit is please look forward to the computer plug-in which you install which recognizes text on your screen for accessibility purposes and will just read it all out you know essentially like a um yeah blind assistance tool and then you just stream with that on

so that a Siri voice, British voice can.

I mean, I need a blind assistance tool to see items on the ground.

Oh, I don't think

you need a Reggie there.

Hey, what's that?

Oh, yeah, shit.

Oh, fuck.

Right.

Anyways.

What else do you got going on, bro?

So, played some Tekken 8, went back to the DLC on that because I hadn't gotten around to it in a minute.

They put Heihachi, Lydia, and Clive in that game.

And that's all really cool.

Definitely dead.

But more importantly, they put the ability for you to select your main character, main menu person in

and now you can go and grab who you want and stare at anyone.

So if you don't want

Kazuya's titties,

or DLC faces, you can just, you can go into your outfits and pick the Reyna with the glasses and put that as your main one.

And then she's going to be there every time you go to the main menu.

It was

exactly.

And, you know, and then they added like, yeah, some other online features, training online and stuff like that.

Going into it, it seems like, hey, guess what?

Hey, Hachi works pretty well in a system he's always worked in, except now you can do super dashes when you activate heat.

And Tekken has decided,

I touched on it a little with Eddie, but they've decided there's a clear design philosophy with all DLC.

You know how every time, you know, there's always something different and like appealing that's more than just a base roster character.

Oh, yeah.

It's like, ooh, it's new.

Ooh, what's going on?

Going on here as if they should have been a base roster character.

Then it's like, oh, thank goodness.

But like, even the things in like Street Fighter where they're like, let's give them a taunt that unlocks some extra crazy bullshit, right?

Yeah.

Like with Bison or Akuma.

Ah, they're coming with new music that's different from the style of the rest of the game.

You know, poison systems on Aki or like homage extra specials for Terry.

And I'm sure Mai will have, you know, she has her super taunt.

And there's all these little things where they're just like, we're going to put a lot of extra effort and

in some cases, like have a very obvious

sort of new system in place.

And it makes sense because the bass roster means it's like $2 a character or $4 a character or whatever, but the DLC characters is more like $8 to $10 a character.

So you got to really increase the value.

Yes.

People are also referencing, so the Smash DLC meter.

When you pick a Smash DLC character and you see, like, okay, ready, or the little bean meter, or the, you know, like the

hero, like, drop down, like, there's always that little extra bit, you know, like, yep, that's a DLC character right there who's got a special function.

So Teken is like, we need to sell you a character, and there needs to be a number under the life bar that makes you feel them powering up.

And it's like, literally all of them have it.

And in some cases, it's drastic.

And in some cases, it's very minor, but it always is a part of the DLC.

So Eddie Gordo came out and they gave him...

I called them Mandingo points, but it's like the Mandinga stance where he goes into

you're getting hit.

You're getting to catch up, catch up, all right?

All right, all right, all right, Mandingo points.

So, you go into the Mandinga stance where it's the banana tree stance, and then you can do a couple of different kicks when you're upside down.

And it's okay, you're all confused.

If you're don't worry, Tekken,

we know what we're talking about.

I'm gonna just keep up.

This is the most Tekken fucking conversation ever.

It's okay, just move fast, and it's okay.

Um, so you flip upside down, and he can do a couple of unique moves from this stance.

Um,

and uh, every time you do certain uh, like you you do certain sequences or combos with him or certain moves, at the end of it, he kind of goes, he leans back and goes, bam, and you see like a big power-up, you know, and the number underneath his life bar goes up, right?

And you still, you see it go to level one and level two and then level three.

And like, you kind of feel like, oh, he's getting stronger.

And nothing's really happening.

It just makes a couple of moves from this one stance get a little bit better.

It's very subtle, you know,

they become pretty good moves, but it, it just feels like

your DLC character is really getting stronger, you know, because that number went up.

And

it would have been very minor if he did or didn't have that little effect, you know?

So

Heihachi

comes out and

he's got a meter as well, and it's a number, and it's every time you activate heat with him, you know,

the once per round like sort of ability that Tekken 8 has, that number goes up by one.

and when you finally get it to three you can then do a big old explosion and he gets powered up and now he

gets access to

better versions better frame data and safer versions of normal things that he does that are kind of like old hay hatching

so it makes him really really good but it's still a very subtle thing compared to the feeling of

you know

but it's there and you watch the number go up, you're like, yeah, he's getting strong, you know.

Lydia has a number, right?

And do you know what that meant?

Because you feel it, man, it makes you feel like, man, I bet he could totally beat Kazi if they won another round.

Oh, if you went another round, it was Lydia.

He could do it now.

Stopped him, yeah.

And then, and again, competitively, you get to you, you get to that point with him, and you can do all kinds of insane pressure, and people get blown up.

But yeah, Lydia has one as well.

And then, of course, Clive, he's got the

Odin meter, right?

Where you build the levels up, and then you can do the dimension slash, you know,

and as you sort of use, because he switches weapons as you fight with Clive.

So

all of that, and those at level four, you do R5, you do like fucking insane damage if you do the cash-out move that he does.

So Zanzetsuken.

Zan Tetsuken.

Yeah.

It really is just like, all right, every one of these characters, you're going to see see that number going up as you play, and you're going to feel like, yeah, even if you use it or don't.

And I think Harada has like locked in on that specific feeling for the whole season.

Fortunately, I guess I can say that

when Noctis came out, it did feel like, you know, kind of what

it felt like you drop a character in, you give him some very annoying buttons, some very simple, you know, 2-2-2-2-2-2-2.

You press it and you get a very oppressive series of weapon combos that are just fucking you up.

And in this case, they kind of pulled back on some of that, where it's like you has a bunch of weapons, he's Danteing in the middle of Tekken.

He feels so much like he should be in Soul Calibur, but

it's not as ridiculous as Noctus felt, at least just for a beginner.

But he does feel like a really cool, faithful, obvious like, you know, version of the character.

The attention to detail they put into Akuma and Geese and all that, they've put into Clive.

And as you're kind of doing stuff with him,

it's

yeah, like when you have little things where you switch to Bahamut and you're off the ground, so the wings come out, and you know, like you're doing the floating stance with him.

And if anyone goes for a low, it automatically gets low parried.

Of course it does.

You know, because you're off the ground.

Why?

That shouldn't work, right?

You can do your Titan, giant Titan punch, and that's his big armored take the hits and then blast through it move, you know?

Like it takes all of the

icons and just puts them around the places where, you know,

the, this is what an armored move would be.

This would be a tracking move would be.

So if you try to sidestep, he does the

Garuda.

He does like a slash, you know, kind of sideways.

And it's like, yeah, right.

The Garuda kind of serves that purpose.

Every time he jumps, jumps, you see the little wind on it.

It's really, it's really cool.

You know, I like him.

So I think that Street Fighter's done like a pretty good job with its guest characters in that there's Terry and Terry fits in great.

But like

putting Terry Bogart into Street Fighter is like putting jelly into your peanut butter sandwich.

It's like the most no-brainer, no-effort shit ever.

Like, yeah, okay, we know how Terry would work.

Tekken has been putting like

all these weird fucking fucking characters from like 2D fighting games, non-fighting games, and has kept them very, very accurate to their feel.

Yeah.

And it's very impressive.

Like, well, I mean, I feel like somebody who could walk along and be like, wait, Terry wasn't in Street Fighter already?

And that would be a normal reaction.

Oh, I thought he was in Capcom versus that a thing?

Yeah.

Right.

But I think because Bandai are the same Soul Calibur, you know, folks, they know themselves how wild guest characters can get and how that can be a big hit.

Like, Soul Calibur is dead, so like, there's at least one guy who moved teams, probably, and is like, well, I know how to make weird guest characters.

We put Jedis in some of our fighting games.

Well, I mean, Harada had a big threat talking about exactly how and why Soul Calibur is currently dead.

It was a really good discussion, and like he kind of broke down that, you know, essentially just a strong team with a clear vision that was willing to kind of ignore the higher-ups,

you know, and just like plow through.

And they kind of competed internally, Project Soul and Tech and Project with each other as almost like Team Red and Team Blue over at

Arxis, you know?

But

the,

yeah, the series that like

championed, invented, and, you know, like, I mean, honestly perfected the guest character in that first one.

Soul Calibur 2 with Link Spawn and Ahachi was

gangbuster.

Totally agree.

Killed it.

Smash Brothers is like, it's an entire franchise about guests, so it feels kind of like almost like an unfair comparison in a way.

But I feel like that first one was a slam dunk that

we almost have yet to top.

But

nonetheless,

Final Fantasy, big Japanese franchise,

you can find...

It's not the weirdest fit.

As long as we can keep it not AMC's The Walking Dead, I think I'll be okay.

I think I'm on board with wherever we go from here.

And then there's the ones where you kind of just don't even remember they happened like Cole in Street Fighter Cross-Tekken.

Cole is like a more interesting fighter than

Street Fighter Cross-Tekken deserve to keep for just themselves.

Is he?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Damn.

He's got like a wide variety of electricity powers.

He's kind of like Clive in that respect of, like, he could have done tons of weird shit.

But

do you remember the kerfuffle about his look going into Infamous 2?

What might have been the most dog shit gamer thing that's ever happened?

I don't.

So Cole in Infamous 1 looks like a bald space marine wearing like a yellow jacket.

Yeah, shaved headman.

Yeah.

It's like 360 man, like to a T, right?

And then in the second game, they're like, We're gonna, we're gonna change up Cole's look for something new and exciting.

And then they just made him into Nathan Drake, like

white guy with short brown hair from 360 military guy to like, yeah, to Nathan Drake.

And people are like, fuck that.

No, we love classic Cole, the Cole.

And so then they changed him back to

bald, weird-looking Space Marine man.

And it's like, oh, yeah,

okay, okay.

What hot sauce do I want?

Katsup or ketchup?

Like, holy shit.

It's like we went from Afro to Killmonger back to Afro.

Okay, it's terrible, like, unbelievable.

Um,

for me, I'm just, I just, all I remember really is the

infamous prototype, like,

what, what is what, who is who, cats and dogs, what world is this, uh, confusion.

Um,

and then

I'll tell you what, Infamous is a way better game.

I love prototype way more, yeah,

because of the tude.

No, well, no, bio-organic nightmare thing powers and how fast you would go were more fun than well-produced, good-playing electricity powers.

Well, I remember one, I remember seeing them both and going, one of them feels like your venom,

and the other one feels not like that.

Right.

Yeah, well, because it's the guys who made prototype made the Hulk Ultimate Destruct Destruction games.

And then there was the DLC

Infamous campaign where you had the paper ability that looked pretty cool.

No.

Was that it?

No.

That is not right.

Whoa.

So Infamous 2, no.

Oh, man.

This is ancient PS3 knowledge.

Lore.

Infamous 2 had a vampire DLC setting.

And then the third game called Infamous Second Sun, that was the crazy one because instead of electricity powers, you had smoke, paper, neon.

Oh, okay, okay, okay.

It was an infamous DLC.

It wasn't the second game.

It was the third game.

Gotcha.

Okay, okay, okay.

I was like, but that was infamous, right?

Yeah, okay, right.

And I remember being excited about the family.

And then they had a second infamous second son spin-off that was

neon because you played as the neon girl.

Okay.

Not paper?

No?

Okay.

Maybe I'm just thinking too hard of Read or Die.

I feel like my brain is.

I think the worst part about Infamous Second Son is that the enemies get the power of concrete, which is awesome.

And you spend the entire time fighting concrete dudes.

And then

you get concrete as like the final upgrade when you beat the final boss, but then you can use it, and there's nothing to use it on.

Oh,

boo.

You're like, what the fuck?

And they teased paper, but then you never got it.

Okay, so I saw something that made that put that thought in there.

Yeah, okay, okay.

They teased it and then fucking didn't do it.

Boo.

Paper control is so cool.

That's such a cool power, but not wood.

Not wood.

specifically.

I'm gonna hey, the process

of converting paper into papyrus into fucking.

I'm gonna say something so brave.

Are you ready for this bravery?

Because I went back to Ghost of Tsushima this week and been playing it, and I cannot believe that the team that made Infamous and Infamous 2 and Second Son are the people that made Ghost of Tsushima.

It is, it is so,

it is is such a fucking

quantum fucking leap forward in quality.

It is so unbelievable.

That was, was that the, was,

was how open world, I guess, in scale was the, or the infamous games?

Second son?

Yeah.

Yeah, well, yeah, the infamous games are open world, absolutely.

You had three islands.

Oh, shit.

Okay, okay.

Like, it's.

Oh, my God.

There was that Naruto character with the paper control.

I was, yo, I'm thinking of Yomiko Reedman, y'all.

Oh, maybe.

Maybe you are.

Anyway.

So, yeah,

Tech N DLC check.

Yeah, very cool.

I like Clive.

Lydia was doing cool shit.

She was doing traditional Polish karate.

And she, her stream.

Is that a thing?

Or did they just make that shit up?

So I was kind of, I feel like, and I might be getting this incomplete, but I feel like I was like, wait, so, because she's like the most Polish pride ever, right?

She's the prime minister, and she's speaking it, and she's killing it, and she looks so cool.

And I'm like, and

so what about, is there not like a style that is like most appropriate for her to do besides something Japanese?

And it's like, no, no, no, no.

There's actually a really strong martial arts community in Poland that like has been doing it for a while to kill it.

So fair enough.

It makes sense.

I remember.

And then she takes you to the Polish dimension when she does her super.

Back in like Tekken 3.

I remember reading an article with, I don't know if he was even credited as the director, but it was probably Harada.

I was like, how do you guys figure out what new fighters to have?

And then the answer is

they pick the country and then they go, well,

what fighting style fits this country?

And then they're like, what would a cool person from this country look like?

And then they just do it.

And that's it.

That's the whole design process.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You know?

And like, and in some cases, I know, know like like so Tarata did a whole

thread on like how Josie came to be and how they like

you know tried to go as accurate as possible and stuff so they they they put more research in or you know of course like you get Fakum Ram with the

Muay Thai and stuff but in this case yeah you just like you go we it's the Polish prime minister and she does Shotokan and she brings you to a

fucking Sukiyomi that's all white and red.

And you're Polish people can do that.

Yeah, that's it.

You know, that's how they communicate with each other.

They have the Polish paths.

They can.

They can all talk, and suddenly, while the world is on a normal timeline, all Polish people appear in a desert that's all white and red, and they can talk to each other.

That's true.

Anyway.

no, she's pretty cool.

Um always always thought she was she was a dope character.

And then, yeah, I guess the only other thing

is

in

arrivals,

been trying to

learn some other characters, some more characters, mix it up a bit.

And I got fucking annihilated by some, I played a couple games where

you jump in and you realize, okay, everybody's about the same skill level here, and we're all having a fairly normal match.

You know, everyone's whatever KD is where it's supposed to be, but then there's just one Hawkeye that's just murdering the entire game.

And you're like, oh man, if you have good aim, you are the game.

You're the whole thing.

No, you don't have to have good aim.

That's why Hawkeye is good because the hitbox

on the headshot for his arrow is like a full character size.

Is it easier to land a headshot with him than other characters?

Yes.

Absolutely.

Oh.

The headshot radius on the arrow is like five feet.

It's like a five-foot sphere on the head of the arrow.

Interesting.

Okay, because I've been playing him to try and see him like, let's fuck around with this and see if I can get my aim better because I've always had bad aim.

And I'm like, every once in a while, I'm like, oh shit, I'm actually landing it.

That's nice because I feel as if every arrow that whiffs or like just hits a body or so, I'm like, damn, that could have been a kill, you know?

But

yeah, so

the trade-off from Widow to him is that Widow is hit scan, but requires like pinpoint accuracy, whereas he actually fires a projectile, but to accommodate that, the projectile is actually like 10 times the size that it looks.

Okay.

So, I mean, the Hanzo comparisons aside, did Hanzo also have an increased headshot hitbox?

Yeah, it did.

And the other thing about Hanzo is Hanzo didn't have to look at you for a couple seconds to power up the power of his shot.

There's that part of it as well.

That's why Hawkeye has that exact mechanic so that he doesn't turn into Hanzo.

Okay.

Did Hanzo always have easier headshots than everyone?

Because I feel like Hanzo mains as a meme has always been, you have fucking terrible aim.

Stop picking the character that requires you to have good aim.

Now, now I'm unsure, but okay, I know that when I played Hanzo 35 years ago,

I thought you have to shit in.

I thought the whole bit was aiming is hard, you don't have the skill, stop wasting.

No, no, aiming is hard, so pick Hanzo

because his hitbox is big,

okay.

Um,

well, don't don't don't pick Widowmaker because aiming is hard, Pick Hanzo.

So, yeah, messing around with him and such.

And

I do feel like every once in a while when you get it, it's like, oh, fuck, that's cool.

That's nice.

And

it is a nice, like,

I want to play him more, not only to, like,

because that's incredibly useful to have from the back line and stuff,

but you can,

but like, I, yeah, I need, what's it called?

It's tracing, right?

Practice where you just, like, follow following the target with your mouse or with the, in this case, the joystick, you know.

It's a different, a different motor skill from, with twin sticks than it is from, like, WASD and mouse, you know, tracking and leading, yeah.

So

that's been particularly fun.

And then on the complete flip side of that, messing around with Cloak and Dagger.

Cloak and Dagger are great.

I love Cloak and Dagger.

Us against against the World.

Just like, hit the Winston electricity button.

You know, alright, switch it up.

Fuck out of there.

Get up close.

Annoy.

But don't be the...

Don't aim.

Fuck that.

Yeah, but also then, like, there's been some games where like the dagger

immediately switches over to Cloak and starts rushing like a DPS.

Yeah, you can.

You can.

You have to be a DPS for two buttons.

But if your team needs healing, you should probably stay on healing duty more than you should.

No, what you should do is you should be,

what you should have is your cooldowns should always be ticking because you've used everything up at all times.

And if you overextend, you also put yourself in a squishy bad position.

Well, that's why you've got...

Oh, I'm invisible.

No one can see me on cloak.

I mean, like, I feel like something I have learned over some Overwatch lessons back in the day and then to now with rivals is healer duty, do stay on heels, do your job, and if everyone is looking pretty healthy, try to take some picks, try to take some shots, contribute to the fight.

And if someone comes after you, fucking survive, do what you got to do, but the times to overextend and chase down a kill and go all the way in are extremely rare.

And holy fuck, you better land the pick.

I have a piece of information that I learned from Final Fantasy XIV, and it's applicable to all games in which damage is going in and out.

Doing more damage is also damage mitigation.

The enemy cannot hurt your team if you killed them.

Yes,

that is Cloak's purpose.

But when you're racing down someone's life bar, and like,

if you're trying to, you're chasing down like a venom, and a venom is like, thanks for the damage.

You know what I mean?

Like,

the fuck are you doing, right?

Yeah.

No, Cloak's best ability is his

E, which is the fucking damage debuff that makes everybody purple.

The big shot.

Everybody can use it.

To get in here.

Yeah, so, you know, that's fun messing around with that.

And Cap to some degree as well.

Cap's so goddamn weird.

It feels really fun, though, to have someone that moves that fast and can jump that high and just as mobile compared to the rest of the fight.

Be super annoying.

Be as annoying as you possibly can.

But if you run and jump, then you are probably not holding the line.

So be smart about that.

And, you know, when you properly, I do, I didn't quite realize it like until I'm getting in there, but like the system of landing a couple melee hits and now you can throw the shield out is a pretty cool way to do it.

You know, he's like, you can't just sit back and plink the shield around.

You got to get in there.

But once you do.

But on your way out, you can go...

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

That's a fun way to design him.

Um,

so a lot of dive tanks in this game, yeah, yeah, Hulk, you know, fucking Hulk, Venom, and Cap, all dive tanks.

You can kind of do it with

whatchamacallit as well.

Uh, and Reed, actually, yeah, just because of his

fridge mode.

Uh, uh,

it's Spider time!

I like that button so much, it's so gross.

I hate it.

Thor and Strange, yeah, with Strange in particular, you can do the fly, unfly, and then drop your Eye of Agamoto, you know, in a very like jump right over the line and then get behind it and get everybody.

So dive tanking is like,

I'd say like half of the tanks are meant to do that.

Pretty cool.

Anyway, yeah, so that's pretty much it.

I like that game a lot.

That Marvel Rivals is great.

Yeah, yeah.

And I saw some of the new costumes.

And then I saw the next round of upcoming costumes.

And they look really cool.

And you're also like,

oh, yeah, this game was made in China.

Oh, yeah.

It's the same cycle.

You get

new costumes, second batch of new costumes.

Hey, it's a Chinese game, hey.

Yeah, yeah.

Like Chinese Doctor Strange looks cool as shit.

And Chinese Moon Knight is doing it.

And we're getting the

whatchamacallit?

Yeah, the Lion Lucio Ball game they just kind of showed the trailer for.

So, yeah, with the Chinese New Year celebrations, all those outfits are dropping.

And it's like, oh, yeah, so there's

probably going to be something like that for the entire cast, I imagine.

Eventually.

Eventually, yeah, yeah.

And you know what?

I will gladly take all of that while Street Fighter delivers nothing.

Well, listen, you have to buy Street Fighter.

This is true.

Cosmetics are the lifeblood.

Cosmetics are the Marvel rivalry.

You're right.

It's not the same comparison.

That is true.

However, you're seeing the cosmetics go to the other side of the game with an increased frequency that makes you go, well, what the fuck are we doing here?

Didn't we have like a discussion where we talked about how someone on capcom said that like

like most of the money no is going to avatar costs i was i was i was theorizing that because that was your theory it would only make sense given the decisions we've seen them make right they're putting so much emphasis on it that one has to think oh this makes a ton of money they're making all these costumes or they think it might or yeah like this is a game plan they're following through on because we can't follow the logic otherwise everyone is like waiting for the main, you know, um, costumes for the characters.

And instead, you're we'll get another batch of costumes after this season passes over.

Um,

anyways, that's pretty much it.

Um, so yeah, I no streams this week, as I've announced, gonna be over at MAGFest

for uh the rest of this week until the weekend.

So, uh, yeah, come through.

There's gonna be a You have to go to MagFest lest you be destroyed.

Lest you be destroyed.

There's something deep inside of me.

Is it fellas?

Concerned wife here wants to know, do the boys have to go to MAGFest?

Is this a thing?

Is this real?

No, so

there will be a series of events, and I've posted the schedule on my Twitter, but Friday at 4 p.m.

in panel room 2 is the Dokopon incident.

Then at 9.30 is Versus Wolves Live, and then there will be a signing on Saturday as well.

And then, yeah, I'm going to be doing a event with Sonic Fox as they play Mortal Kombat 1.

And I just sit

and I just sit by and go, oh, damn, shit, that's crazy.

Is he still like the undisputed fucking God King?

I would assume they're still the Undisputed God King.

And if not, it's it's like, give it a week.

It's like, it's.

I remember they were talking about.

It was Sonic Fox that was like, I'm not even good at this game.

Lol.

Y'all are just trash.

Lol

LMAO.

Probably, I believe so.

I don't even really, yeah, because I mean, look, there's only so much attention you're going to pay to it.

And at a certain point, it's like

as the servers dry up and you sit in the throne, there's only so much to do, you know?

There's a real real throne of an empty world metaphor going on here.

Like Shao Kahn.

Anyway,

so yeah, come hang out at MagFest.

Should be a good time, everybody.

All right.

What's going on?

I beat Metal Gear Solid 2.

That, so I beat Metal Gear Solid 2 yesterday,

and I got to the part where we installed the virus worm on

GW

on Saturday, simultaneous to TikTok going down.

And it's like, let me tell you, man.

You did it.

Man,

that shit is even

more

like future telling y than you remember it being.

Oh, yeah.

Hidden.

When you go back to Spider-Man.

There's like a specific, like, the one that got me is that, like, you're talking to the president, and he's like, well, the Patriots wanted me to make a Space Force, so I had to make a Space Force.

That was, that was the Patriots' idea.

And you're just like, wow, I fucking forgot about that one.

Damn.

That's crazy.

Okay, but what I really want to know, and this has been bugging me for a while, but I've never just gone to check.

Yeah.

How did the katana on the second stick feel after all this?

It feels like shit.

Damn it.

It It feels like garbage.

Fuck, it's not good.

Oh, it feels like charging.

Oh, God, I want it to be good in my memories.

I want the katana on the right stick to be good.

I want it to be cool.

It feels really bad.

God damn it.

I was talking about this yesterday.

I was like, oh, this sucks.

And like, it really was revengeful.

It was left, right, up, down to try and do like a combo.

Raiden inexplicably like tilts to the left on every sword swing.

So in the solidist boss fight, if you try and do like five sword swipes in a row, Ryden will actually turn 90 degrees to the left and stop hitting him.

God damn it.

Okay, it was just for vengeance then.

Yeah, no, it's really bad.

You know, it's really bad.

As someone who's like, I got one eye squinting and peeking at fucking

Fight Night 3 for with the uppercut motions of like moving and leaning.

Yeah, and jabbing and stuff and using the stick.

I was like,

I'm always like, hey, a button is a button, and that's the simplest way to input your moves in a fighting game, and that's important.

But how fucking interesting and fun is it to be able to lean and swerve and hook, you know, on and fight night three?

And then I'm also squinting and staring at the other eye at fucking Bariki 1,

you know, where it's like, use the stick to do your moves and use the buttons to move around.

The weirdest game.

I'm gonna play Monster Hunter 1 and see how fun that system is.

I remember hearing the nightmares about that.

But I just, I'm like, damn, I remember swinging that stick around, but I don't remember if it felt good or not.

And I was hoping it was.

Ah.

No, no, it sucks, dude.

It sucks shit.

It's terrible.

Okay, okay.

And like, you know what, you know, my favorite part of this is, you know what I discovered replaying Revengeance a little while ago?

I discovered that using the analog stick to cut in that game also sucks.

compared to just aiming the whole camera with the left left stick to overlap it.

Because you know when you get a Desandatsu, there's a line that starts it off?

Yeah.

Instead of aligning it with the right analog stick, just use the left analog stick to line

out of the box.

It's super fast.

It's way better.

Oh, just move the camera instead.

Yeah, okay, okay.

And then you get fucked because you've been doing that the whole game.

And then you get to Armstrong where it demands that you use the right analog stick and you get blown up all the time.

Yeah, I don't remember at this point, unfortunately.

But I do remember like, you know, the slash, slash, slash, zandatsu shit being very fun to do.

You know, yeah, absolutely.

It was, it was, it was, it, it was enjoyable.

Um,

man.

And then there was also like making it non-lethal by flipping it from red to blue.

So if you want to be an insane person and go for your extreme big boss ranking like a psycho.

And you still slash, but you're hitting them with the back of the blade, right?

Or whatever.

Yeah, I'm knocking out these Arsenal Tengus, man.

But But we don't want you to not have fun by swinging the sword around.

And it was such a big, like, it's like, oh, at the end of the game, you get access to the sword.

I think, um, I think.

So I said this at the end of Metal Gear Solid 1, and I'm now going to say it at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2.

And it's, I remember us having conversations about this that lasted for hours.

By the end of Metal Gear Solid 2, once again, every single thing that comes out of Ocelot's mouth is either a lie or not true.

Like

100% fail rate on truth-telling.

Literally, every single thing.

Some of the things that he believes is then later explained to be wrong.

Like, not even like, he wasn't lying.

He was just wrong.

Well, hold on.

There was one truth.

His name is Adam.

I'm talking to the end of Metal Gear Solid 2.

Okay, okay, okay, okay.

By the end of Metal Gear Solid 2, we are now at a 100% fail rate for Ocelot telling the truth.

And I am reminded, everyone had a fun time with this when the last time you ever talked to Liquid,

when he talks to you

on top of Ray at the end of MGS2, and he says that's why he chose Ocelot as his host

for the audience.

Yeah, yeah, that horse shit.

Which for the fuck?

You were a corpse in the dirt, Liquid.

You're fucking crazy.

I just remembered.

I think the reason why i was so invested in the sword being good too is because in vr missions you could control ninja yeah but the sword was super unsatisfying

too

you couldn't do much it was it was just a modified version of the snake combo You know, the punch-punch kick,

but it was very, very slight, and it didn't feel like you were fucking swinging a sword around.

So when they

were...

I have a great...

There's a fantastic statement that's in the chat right now, which is someone saying, it's never explained why Liquid's voice comes out of Ocelot.

Actually, it is, but it's different on what region you're playing the game.

Because so many people in my chat did not know.

They're like, hey, how come it's a robot arm later, but it looks like a real arm now?

Because it is a real arm in MGS2, and he is being possessed by a ghost, but he removes that arm and fakes it later.

He's faking it later.

And that's why in English, in MGS2, it changes to Liquid's voice, but in MGS2.

No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, stop that.

No, the red cod in four

erased it so that in two, we found out he was faking it.

Fuck you, he was really possessed.

Fuck you, man.

It was real.

No!

No!

It was real in two.

You're wrong.

No way.

He removed Liquid's arm and replaced it with a synthetic one and then hypnotized himself to think he was still being possessed to fool the Patriots.

I shut the fuck.

I can't.

I refuse.

No, no.

Four told us that two was bullshit.

No.

Four tells you that he switched to a synthetic arm later and hypnotized himself.

And sister was a witch, Doug.

Get it together.

You know, my favorite part about that video is

they're both holding knives.

Have you noticed that they're both

during the argument?

She came down in a bubble, Doug.

Like they were ready to get into a fucking knife fight over that shit.

Oh, fuck me.

No way, no how.

I can't.

I can't be litigating Kajumbo in 2025.

Oh, shit.

It's so stupid.

It's so stupid.

It's so dumb.

I love Metal Gear.

I love Metal Gear so much.

There's nothing like it.

There really isn't.

There's nothing like it.

There's nothing like it.

Let's go back to Tekken for a second because I have like a genuine question as to whether or not we're hypocrites.

The answer is yes, but go on.

Negan,

walking dead man in Tekken, Tekken,

boo.

Lame.

Daryl from Walking Deadman in Death Stranding.

Ooh, thumbs up.

Thumbs up.

Hold on a minute now.

Norman Reedus from Ride with Norman Reedus in Death Stranding.

Ooh, good, good.

Oh, okay.

Okay, okay, I see.

Monster in

Norman Reedus, then, as a whole,

being exit existing and being a part of a PT.

Boo, bad.

Um,

so, so, I just wanted to say it.

I just wanted to say it.

I just wanted to bring it up.

Okay, that's fine.

Well, look, if Jeffrey Dean Morgan shows up anywhere in any project whatsoever, Jeffrey Dean Morgan, I really like hypocrite.

No, boo, that actor is not allowed to be a part of any game project ever.

No.

I also did a sponsored stream for a game called Smite 2.

I've heard of Smite.

Which came out?

Are you familiar with Smite 1?

I have seen and have heard of the Smite.

So Smite, for anybody who doesn't know, it was that other MOBA.

You know how there's Dota and League of Legends?

And then later there was Hero of the Storm?

There's always room for three.

Well, in fact, there was actually room for four.

Just enough.

And Smite had like, I looked up the, I was so curious after I did the stream.

I'm like, what's the Smite numbers?

Like, what's Smite

doing?

It's minimum popping because every single game show has a big Smite booth that has a lot of people at it.

So what Smite is doing is it is doing consistent, loyal, reasonable numbers, unlike League and Dota and all that shit, which was just like, you know, big old explosion shit, right?

And I was like, but why?

Right?

Like, what is the big difference?

Because I had not played it prior to being sent a contract and an offer to do a sponsored stream.

And now I know the reason why.

One, it's pretty solid.

Like, it's a fairly solid, good MOBA that has all the things that you would want for MOBA.

But the number one thing it has is the ability to play it with one of these,

which I'm holding up a PlayStation as a controller.

Smite is the MOBA if you want to play a MOBA on console.

Are none of the others?

Zero.

They never even bothered.

No, never.

It's the only one.

Huh.

Interesting.

And how does that work?

How it works is that instead of being a top-down RTS, it's a behind-the-back third-person game.

Yes.

The fact that it's third-person, I do recall because

this is the one where I realize I'm like, every time i see it it looks like the character banner wallpapers that make me go oh is that a lead character and it's like no it could be a smite character but when we get to actual gameplay it's like world of warcraft yeah so i'm going to correct myself people are saying what about pokemon unite you know what i completely forgot about that so instead i'll say smite is the the mobo you can play on all consoles wow we're just and personal computer that don't say nintendo on it we're just going to shit on guilty Gear Overture.

We are.

We are going to shit on Guilty Gear Overture until Daisuke apologizes, but he won't because that's his dream game.

He will never apologize.

He will never apologize because that's the one he wanted to make.

You apologize for not buying it.

So I hop into the Smite 2.

And

so I have now tried all of your major MOBAs to some degree.

So

I've gotten an ankle in on all of them.

And the first thing that I notice is that Smite 2 is not a complexity nightmare like Dota is and League is.

And even in its, like, it's, it's, it just went into open beta.

It's, it's like, it has usable menus and understandable.

The screenshots I'm looking at feel like otherwise?

Hold on.

But

wait for me.

Wait for me.

So it loads you in and it goes, hey, listen, here's a tutorial.

And it has a real tutorial.

And that's nice.

and then it goes okay here's what we're gonna do when you start options are going to be as such auto level and auto buy are just going to be on uh

so shopping when you

not when you start okay so when you start your very first game it's going to go okay we're going to level up your character for you and we're going to tell you what your character is good at like in its base state and recommended like leveling path.

And also, when you start, it's going to give you a bunch of choices and it's going to go, do you want to be a basic attack, basic attack, auto-attack build?

Do you want to be an ability build?

Do you want to be a tank?

And it's different for

each character.

And you click on one, and it goes, okay, when you come back to the store, it'll auto-buy things in the correct order for your game.

And so the very, very first game that you play,

you have to just worry about playing it

and like playing it and not fighting its menu.

And does this become a feature where you can continue doing that until you hit a difficulty wall where the skill requires you to now

learn how to do that?

Like the Smite 2 is not there yet, and people are asking for, like,

can I put my own builds in there to choose?

But it has a bunch of

starter ones, and they're fine.

Now, if you're a really good Smite player, like I see somebody in the chat saying that the auto build thing sucks,

you're probably right.

However, and this is the important thing, the auto builds can't be worse than what I would put together on my fucking first 100 games, not knowing the system fucking at all.

There's absolutely no way.

And they also

go ahead.

No, after you, after you.

And like, yeah, the net decking aspect is like, because in Deadlock, it's like pretty simple to pick the character, go to the shop, and then like, here's the most upvoted, like, current thing, um, net decking.

Yeah, here, when you have that shit on, it's just like, it's literally like part of like the console-style interface.

It's like, hey, what kind of build would you like to try out?

And it's like, it's, it's very easy.

On top of that, they try and push you for your early games into a mode called Arena, which is no lanes.

It's a big fucking team fight the whole time.

It is just a 5v5 fucking brawl.

Okay, no creep.

And it's like, okay, so I don't really have to worry about laning.

I can just fucking get in there and fight and learn how characters play.

No, no creep.

No, no.

it's an arena.

Just fight against the other team.

There's no other.

It is a 5v5 fucking fight.

No E to fight.

Okay, that's interesting.

Yeah.

And then I also tried one called Joust, which is

a single lane with 3v3, which I use to practice.

And then there's also Duel, which is one lane.

It's 1v1.

And it's 1v1.

And I fought somebody

who absolutely knew what they were doing.

And then on my second duel, I fought somebody who absolutely did not know what they were doing.

And those matches went exactly as you would expect.

And

it felt really nice to have like a ramp

to actually start playing the game.

Because Dota has like its

help a player learn thing and tutorials.

Dota's ramp is a sheer cliff up that goes like backwards at some points in complexity.

It's

like infinite.

It's so ridiculous.

And

League is not quite as ridiculous, but I remember when I did streams for League, I was like, I don't know what to buy in the shop.

And the advice I actually unironically got was, well, before you start playing, you're supposed to learn what every item in the shop does.

I remember this insane

to which I said, I don't even do that for fighting games.

Why the fuck would I do it for the shop in a fucking MOBA?

Also, you work in the user-voted versions of it, and then there's like just infinite variability there.

Yeah.

So I'm looking at some of it here, and I'm also being reminded of like,

while playing a couple rounds of Deadlock did make a lot of sense to what the screen's elements are with the genre, and I can see like, okay, here's where the team is at, where's the other team, and,

you know,

I can piece together most of what I'm looking at here.

I'm reminded that that initial

look at the mini-map when you're unfamiliar and everything's going is terrifying.

Deadlock is crazy.

Deadlock is probably the hardest one now.

Like Sejan put out a video a couple months ago called teaching new people to play deadlock is rough because the way that you would learn how to play that game is the opposite of how anyone would learn how to play a game because just getting in there and playing ends up you getting stomped out and losing your team the game and just being the most actively miserable experience possible.

But Deadlock is asking you to do whole

stuff.

And then it's also asking you to do all the shooter stuff also on top of that.

And the mental stack is like absolutely crazy.

Meanwhile, over on Smite, man, that mental stack is nice and low on a lot of that.

Like one of the things that's like,

since you're maybe unfamiliar, so hey, let's talk about creeps, right?

I'm not sure if they've updated this since, but you know, when you're jungling, are you familiar with your jungling?

I guess now I am.

And my frame of reference is deadlock, because I think that's the one I've put the most game on.

All right, so let's imagine you're playing live from a League of Legends' Arkane, the punch lady with the pink hair, right?

Her job in League of Legends is not to go down the lanes.

Yeah, Vi.

I thought you said lie.

Garage, go ahead.

No, no, Vi.

Yeah, yeah.

Vi from the League of Legends, your job is not to go down the lanes, but to run around in the jungle and kill mobs to get really strong so you can, you know, snipe out or, you know, push in various opportune places, right?

So, um,

well, how do you know when the mobs repop?

How do you know when they're back?

Well, the answer is that you run a mental timer in your head.

Fuck.

Oh, shit.

After you kill them.

Okay.

It's not an icon on the map that'll pop up.

No, fuck that.

No, learn it.

And then...

Oh, they have timers now?

Great.

Fantastic.

Because one of the things that showed up when I was playing Smite 2 was that I killed a bunch of mobs and then I got to see a little timer start going around on the spot that would tell me when the fucking mobs would come back.

Thank you.

Because when I was playing League of Legends, I was using a fucking overlay.

to show me those timers.

Okay.

So I don't...

Yeah, I'd have to pull up a screenshot of Deadlock to compare the mini-map and that to this one, but I'm looking at- Oh, it's a fucking nightmare.

But the smite one is essentially like, yeah, it looks like a game of like Chinese checkers or so, but

there's just, well, yeah, all the different colors and, you know, things at play are

happening.

And it's, it's,

I'm sure, not that bad once you,

you know, learn it and stuff.

And again, I, I, I,

but, but that, that initial, like, kind of was like, whoa, what is that thing over there?

There's so much information to parse from that.

And, you know, again, as someone who is like excited about fighting games and talks to people about hairs, how you can ignore this stuff, you can't, and this is stuff you should, you know, just go have fun with or whatever.

In these games, that's side of deadlock, if you just pick a character and start going down your lane and trying to do your job.

keeping it simple with the auto shock you will lose to even the most beginnerist beginner okay

but losing or winning aside are you like

grasping it?

Are you picking it up?

Because forgetting about winning or losing, are you like just absolutely tanking your team or are you just kind of like treading water

and getting pulled under?

It is a really complicated situation because the general, like,

I would like to play League of Legends or Smite 2.

I'm going to start playing it.

Usually

leads to just miserable outcomes.

Just at like,

okay, you know how when you play games, you don't have to win to have fun.

Yeah.

But you do have to feel like you're playing it.

Yes.

So playing rivals now and like basically being parts of games where I'm like, all right, we did not win, but did I do my job?

Is my, are my numbers good?

Okay, cool.

I contributed.

I'm not the best at these things, but I held my ground.

And that's kind of what I'm wondering about in these cases.

Yeah.

With these, like, can you get that feeling here?

Or are you just the weakest link and we're losing until you go

do the homework?

I would say

that the

goal is actually, hey, man, for like a while.

And I mean like a while, play human teams versus AI.

Ah, right.

Like a while.

Right?

Like

the basic level learning curve is so high that, like, yes, you actually do need baby games against robots for a bunch

before you should get in there.

Because going against even like a, like, you know, like, think about

like when you're like, hey, let's get into fighting games.

And you pick any fighting game that you have familiarity with, but some people in the chat don't have familiarity with, and you can just make it so that they don't get to fucking play at all.

Yeah.

Does

our matches 45 minutes here as well?

No, they're not.

Okay.

They're 15 to 30.

Way good.

Good.

That's a lot better for that.

Most of the matches I did were 20 minutes.

And once you graduate from bots, then you go into casual matches where you don't go ranked fully, but you still get the feeling of fighting human opponents and

stuff here.

Low stakes is also fine, right?

Like anyone who gets super mad and rages out in a casual match is kind of just a

crazy person.

like

if you're, if you're, if you're going um, GGEZ, tank diff in a casual match, like, what the fuck is wrong with you?

It's casual, it's like,

you know, but uh, yeah, okay, I think playing quick match and rivals has has shown me, like, just how toxic people can be over matches that don't matter.

It's so fucking funny, it's crazy, it's so fucking funny, it's so nuts to be like that, like to yeah, to go absolutely ham on like quick play.

It's the funniest shit ever.

I love it.

It's like you look at the other team and they're like six DPS.

What are you talking about?

This isn't real.

This is, you know, the glorified tripod.

I will say, and I don't know if you're getting that in rivals, but I have found that

in all of your team games,

you never have to worry about the opponents being mean.

It's always, the call is always coming from inside the house.

It's always your other team member.

Oh, well, Team Chat.

Team Chat is

the real fight.

Oh, yeah, the blue text.

The blue.

Yeah, yeah.

Never mind the brown.

It's all about the blue text scrolling by.

But I will say,

rare, but I've had the opposite of toxic.

You know, I've had

whatever,

flower blue.

I don't know what the word would be.

Nice, nice interaction with human.

Nice interaction, but like someone who rallied the team and was like, okay, like, like, was like, we went down one round and was like, okay, here, guys, we can, I think we can do this and that and stuff.

And like, not in a really shitty way.

It was like, hey, your DPS isn't working.

Join me on the tank, brother.

All right, let's do it this way.

Good stuff.

And the positivity actually turned the second game around and it was like, good, adjust.

And everyone was like, oh shit, that advice really worked.

It's like, all right, we can do this, guys.

Let's go.

Third round, you know?

I love there's a version of that person that starts.

They don't respond to the situation that way.

They start that way.

And I've seen that person in Guild Wars and WoW and FF14

where you're multi and Battlefield where the

very large scale PvP.

And it is just the funniest thing in the world to me to people who start up their multiplayer game and go, okay, I'm going to play the worst real-time strategy game known to man where I just yell at my units and my units units don't do what I tell them to do.

And I just get mad

for an hour because the units won't do what I tell them to do.

And it's so fucking funny.

It's still PvE to me, damn it.

Yeah, yeah.

There's just, God, fuck.

The, the, no,

this positive chat type of thing that, you know, it's, it's rare, but it, it is cool when it happens.

And, you know, at the end of the game, like,

you know, it's like even in those cases, you kind of have the like, okay, well, you lost and it didn't work out, but it was close.

And so no one's kind of like getting too upset by that.

They're like, ah, shit.

Okay, well, good game, whatever.

And then you see the upvotes in the lost screen.

You're like, okay, most of the team, except for the person who queued up right away, was pretty okay with how that went, you know?

So I think it's not a lost cause.

I think I have played enough multiplayer games that

are five and up and all that shit

that I feel like I can distill my single largest complaint with every team I have ever played with into one sentence, which is, oh my god, just push.

Like, it is the single most, like, I want to say it's like 70, 80% of all of my complaints is, it's right there.

Just go and just go.

Just press W or on the just go.

Stand on the point.

I'm going to guess that you're not hitting the chat at all at any point, but you're going to mash that ping button.

No.

No, you're not going, get on the point, get on the point, get on the point.

No, absolutely.

Group up, group up, group up, group up, group up.

Everyone can see.

You just, listen.

Invisible woman just threw down her alt on the point, and two of the other team are dead.

Wait, you're going stand back behind the car?

Um, I will, and I will say too, like, uh,

learning

the game also means learning when the push is like whether where the bat, where the limit is going to be, when you think the game is going to go longer than it is, because you misunderstand that you just have to reach the point that they failed at.

You know, if you're doing an escort or something.

That's fun.

So the payload push, yeah, but that's a thing where like someone, you die, and then you watch the replay and then someone doesn't just jump on the overtime payload push because they think that there's still more time.

But that's a misunderstood thing because it's like, it's not about getting it to the end.

It's about just getting it past this point or stopping it.

You know,

that's a learning curve thing as well.

Oh, you know what?

I have my second big complaint, which is, hey, man,

we are all dead.

Hey, you respawn first.

You respawned 20 seconds before the rest of the team.

How about you?

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

How about you just wait a second before you just completely

offer yourself onto the altar of a six-man team?

Hey, Mantis, chill.

Mantis, chill by the...

Chill?

Chill.

Right?

And or

the Doctor Strange types in chat,

portal.

I'm making a portal.

And then Punisher's like, Yeah, that's cool.

Bye.

And you're like,

dude, please.

He's literally, we're just stat.

Yeah.

Nah.

It's,

you know,

it takes time.

It takes time.

But all this to say that if you can be a team hero,

you're going to, you're going to make the general game experience better for everybody.

If you're stuck out there in

fucking solo queue.

So, are you familiar with Elo Hell?

Yeah, I think I get what that is just from us talking about that shit over the years.

Elo Hell is like so for real in Rivals right now.

You just ping Paul

the rank decay they put in on the zero season to first season.

Oh,

up and down, up and down, up and down.

The strongest I've ever felt it was in Rising Thunders beta, where it was the most transparent that it would just grab somebody from the top of the skill chart leaderboards and then someone from beneath you and just 50% one to the other every time.

So every second match, you would dominate and every third match would be the real one, you know?

I think there's, I think there's

a really interesting thing that when I mention Elo Hell, I see chat go 50-50 on whether or not Elo Elo Hell is real as fuck or fake as shit and that it's Total Johns.

And I think the core difference here is: hey, are you solo queuing in your multiplayer game or are you playing with at least a couple people with you?

Because Elo Hell is for solo queue.

If you're teaming up with people, you're getting other people with the same types of team-ups.

So that's going to be much more.

There's a wider range of randomness to the three-person queue and then the two-stack and then the solo, you know, versus like, yeah, being solo all the time for sure.

So I was, I was, I was like, just after that first season came out, I was on the Marvel subreddit and I was like, I saw some threads posting about Elo Hell and how bad it is.

And then you go in and you're like, this person got SVP

15 games in a row on losses.

And it's like, okay, maybe this person is definitely trapped in Elo Hell because that is crazy.

That is bananas.

Oh, no.

Like, that's fucking psychotic.

Ouch.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah.

But yeah, no,

it's, it's, it is an interesting thing.

So, but all, all in all, um, Smite

with controller, you're not, you're not.

losing functionality.

So I

asked around.

I went to the Smite 2 subreddit and typed in controller.

And what you get is a bunch of incredibly unhelpful answers when you do that.

Because what you see is people going, Well, everyone on Grand Master Rank plays with a mouse and keyboard.

I'm like, I'm starting the game today.

Please help.

So instead, what you do is you put that question out to the general populace, and the answer is, most people play Smite on console.

So

the discussion's kind of moot.

And of note that I forgot about, I really forgot about this genuinely when I, but when I was doing the sponsored stream, I'm like, Smite 2.

Why is that?

Oh, right.

Smite, because it's the smaller MOBA, is where you can go to get crossovers that you would not expect on games like Fortnite or League.

That's where the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles showed up as characters and the cast of Avatar.

And if you wanted to play Iron Mouse in a a video game,

Iron Mouse is a character in Goddamn Smite.

Any

Ava, Ray, and Asuka?

Not that.

No, that's just PUBG.

Okay.

I believe that is just PUBG.

Oh, she's like the...

Stranger Things.

Oh, my God.

Okay.

Got it.

It's free to play.

Yes.

Now it is.

The sponsored segment was to coincide with them going into uh open beta um and they're in a weird situation because smite two is like um it's like a direct upgrade like it's an unreal engine 5 game and they've there's also a bunch of mechanical changes but it's like a full port over but smite one has like 130 characters that are not all in smite two

That's

so they have promised that they're gonna do this thing where they basically just do a character a week for as long as they can

to catch up because that happened with um that happened with dota like when dota 2 came to steam it would it was not the dota 2 that you'd play it was not dota in that it didn't have all the characters they did eventually catch up but it took a while uh and i guess that also means there will be nothing resembling a new character for a very long time

i believe they've actually already put some new characters in there to start so like they're it's they're not saying they're gonna port a new character every week they say they there will be a new character playable every week.

Okay, so it'll just alter it, I guess.

Like Aladdin who's on the front page right now is new.

Okay.

Cool.

All right.

Let's take a quick break.

All right.

Very big.

All right.

Let's take a quick word from our sponsors.

I love our sponsors.

This week, the podcast is sponsored by Express VPN.

Wow,

what a great time for Express VPN, man.

Yeah.

So,

how did you choose which internet service provider to use?

The sad thing is, most of us have very little choice because ISPs operate like monopolies in the regions they serve.

And

they use this monopoly power to take advantage of customers, data caps, bandwidth throttling, and the list goes on.

Yeah, actually, I'm thinking of the time where I used to use a different ISP back in the day where they were like unlimited, whatever they advertised, and then what it asterisks.

And it's like, it's unlimited, but when you go over the amount we don't like, you get dropped into the fucking hamster wheel server.

I know exactly what ISP you're talking about because I also used to use that.

Yeah.

And you just watch as overnight your internet drops off a cliff and becomes dial-up.

And you're like, what the fuck is this?

And it's like, and then you call them and they're like, well, you're still able to check your email, right?

And you're like, how about you?

So, yeah, it's, it's functionally limited.

We just pretend, we just lie and say that, no, you're fine.

Terrible garbage.

Anyways, so that sucks.

And on top of that, they're

keeping logs of everything you're doing.

They're keeping a full profile on you that they can sell to third parties.

I don't like that.

Unless you use ExpressVPN.

Because

your info is valuable.

And it's not just the 12-year-old on the McDonald's Wi-Fi that's able to

steal your shit.

It's also literally the internet service provider that might be a scumbag company

that you have no other choice but to use given the region where you live.

So

yeah, no, ExpressVPN is very simple to use.

It is

a rerouter of 100% of your traffic through a secure encrypted server.

So third parties can't just

grab that browsing history.

It works on all of your devices.

It's very easy to set up and it'll work with a single click of a button.

Fire up the app and it makes it extremely difficult for third parties to track your online activity.

Whether it's your phone, laptop, tablet, or more, you can stay private on the go.

And it's ranked number one by top tech reviewers like CNET and The Verge.

So,

yeah, nice to be able to, to, you know, not be restricted by the region I'm in to watch what I want to watch or, you know, get access to the game that I have already pre-ordered.

I mean, hey, like,

did you want to play Marvel Snap over the weekend?

Too bad, depending where you live.

Unless you had ExpressVPN.

Depending on where you lived.

So,

yeah, you can protect your online privacy today by visiting expressvpn.com/slash superbeast.

That's expressvpn.com slash superbeast.

And you can get an extra four months free.

Expressvpn.com slash superbeast.

Thanks, ExpressVPN.

Thanks, ExpressVPN.

I love you.

This week, the podcast is sponsored by Factor.

And

that is your nutrition and the importance of eating well.

Not lost on any of us.

But it's hard.

It's really, really hard.

Yeah, we can't just be like this dog over here that just steals the baby's food and doesn't care about his calories.

Like, we're adults and we have to know what we're doing.

Also, we're really, really lazy.

Hey, listen.

What can you do for me?

Can you put it?

Can you put it in the oven for me?

No, but we can can get you almost right there.

Excuse me.

Factor has chef-made gourmet meals that make eating well easy.

They're dietitian-approved, ready to heat and eat in two minutes, so you can fuel up and feel great no matter what life throws at you.

So yeah, it's nice to be able to

eat food that tastes good, but also when it's healthy and when it's doing right by your goals, then you don't have to feel bad about it.

I propose a standard for food, which is when your dog somehow gets up on your table and steals your food, you should be devastated.

That's devastating.

That's a critical hit.

Yeah, that's critical.

Have you ever lost, dropped, or had food stolen and you're like, I don't even care?

That's never going to happen with Factor.

You'll be sad.

Because you really wanted to eat it.

So there you go.

Don't let, don't, don't, if that, hmm.

Okay, look, sometimes you're going to lose food to the dog, all right?

It'll happen.

Sometimes your wife's just going to steal food right off your plate.

That too.

That too.

But hey, you know, if you have 40 options and eight dietary preferences on the menu each week to choose from, maybe you can pick the thing that you really love that they hate.

You know, maybe it's like hot sauce on the pizza slice where it's like, I love this, but nobody else wants it.

More for me, no stealing.

That's the trade.

The problem that you did with that is that you actually got tons of people into chicken and pineapple pizza.

Yeah, well,

like that backfired on you really badly.

Well, I'm sorry for taste, you know.

However,

look,

if you're trying to figure it out and yeah, different options like Calorie Smarts, Protein Plus, or Keto, which, you know, you can do it the lazy way, but you want to, if you do it the lazy way, you're going to be like, yeah, I'm sort of doing keto.

Don't do that.

If you're going to, if you're going to bother and you're going to do it, do it right.

So

do it the way that the dietitian-approved meals can actually make sure you're properly doing your keto stuff.

A lot of people can say for years, yeah, I've been doing keto, and it just means you've been like

throwing out burger buns while eating burgers.

You know, like, I mean, come on, right?

Do it, do it, do it better.

So, um, Factor can help you feel your best all day long with wholesome smoothies, breakfasts, grab-to-go, snacks, and more add-ons as well.

So yeah,

you can get more than just your regular meals and reach your goals this year

with convenience that can't be beat.

Eat smart with Factor.

Get started on factormeals.com slash Castle50Off.

50 Off!

Castle50 Off!

And use code Castle50Off

to get 50% off your first box plus free shipping.

That's really clear as to why the code is named that way.

So once again, that's code Castle50Off

at factormeals.com slash castle50off, and you're going to get 50% off

plus free shipping on your first box.

Thank you very much,

Factor.

Thanks, Factor.

And last but not least, this week the podcast is sponsored by Turtle Beach.

And yeah, when I was setting up my studio, I got myself a pair of Turtle Beach headphones because they've always been pretty comfortable and good to go as a pair of reliable headphones back in the day for a while now.

Always been a fan of that.

In particular,

however, you got the

new new Stealth 700

headphones that are super comfortable.

They have an insane 80-hour battery life and a quick charge function.

Yeah.

So you barely even have to think about the charging aspect of it.

The cushions on the side as well for an over-the-ear

headset are very, very soft, and they have that good, like, ooh,

I can rest pillow-like almost when they're on my head.

Um,

which I like

personally, I'm a fan of that.

And, um, yeah, you know, in terms of just the features, the

cross-play, of course, industry's first ever cross-play dual wireless transmitter system available in the Stealth 700 headphones means that you can connect seamlessly to multiple devices, and with just the click of a button, you can switch between the two nice and easy.

No fuss, no muss.

But even better than that, and much to my surprise, was

the dual

aspect of the cross-play connection system so that you can connect to your phone and listen to music, take a call, listen to a podcast, whatever's going on on your phone while still connected to your PC or to console or game device and hear the game at the same time.

Wait, really?

Oh, that's awesome.

And both are balanced off each other.

So you can literally hear both clearly and it automatically knows to do that.

It was super

super useful.

Yes.

Why haven't headphones done that before?

That's awesome.

It's kind of, it's, it's, it's, it's the best feature.

And every time I'm talking about the Stealth 700s, I'm going to bring that up because it was so good to be able to just, I look, I listen to shit on my headphones all the time, and I have one ear off to kind of hear the TV sometimes.

Yeah, because I've done this thing where I'm like, I got Discord coming on my phone speaker so that I can

one ear on my headphones

listen to Discord and

the one ear off days are over.

It's super duper nuts and handy to just have the ability to connect it to both right off the bat and hear them both fed in crystal clear.

So incredible feature.

Immediately, I was like, yeah, banger.

Say less.

So,

yeah, check them out.

And you want to go get your Stealth 700s from Turtle Beach.

The,

sorry, I just lost where I was getting to.

Yeah, you can, so there you go.

Anyway, so New Year, you can spend that Christmas money you got on something you actually love.

Head to turtlebeach.com and use code CASTEL for 10% off your entire order.

That's 10% off your order at turtlebeach.com with the promo code CASTEL.

Are you holding it together?

I totally misunderstood what you meant when you said that.

When you said use that Christmas money on something you love, my brain was like, yeah, don't use it on your wife or children.

Buy yourself something nice.

Take the money out of your wallet, put it in your own pocket, tap your pocket, tap yourself on the cheek, and say

buy yourself something nice.

You did good, kid.

Thanks, thanks, me.

Yeah, once again,

head to turtlebeach.com and use the code CASTEL for 10% off your entire order.

That's 10% off your order at turtlebeach.com with the promo code CASTLE.

Thank you, Turtle Beach.

Thanks, Turtle Beach.

All right.

Into what's going on.

Oh, my God.

The Switch to...

Yeah, okay.

There it is.

I forgot that was the switch.

Because it was like, hey, dipshits, fuck off.

Shut up.

The most yeah, okay announcement in video game history.

A Nintendo console at that to no fanfare.

Like Saitama, MS Paint, okay.

It feels, here's the crazy part.

Coming from a time where in my living memory, I recall the Nintendo console announcements being the biggest, most important subject at the time,

this announcement feels like a new skew of an existing console.

It feels like no, you know what it fucking feels like?

Like, it feels like, yeah, we know we're going to make fucking shit zillion dollars.

We're not even changing the fucking name.

Yeah, well, look, with, I don't like Switch 2, sure.

You know, it's that we, you thing of like the capital that we've built with Wii exists in

the mind share space.

So we're going to, we're going to just continue while while people continue to think about the word switch.

Um, that being said, it, yeah, the energy of this, of course, extra deflated because, hey, guess what?

What are the details?

It's 31% bigger.

We already knew that.

It's got Halloween.

Hall effect joysticks, we already knew that.

There's a USB-C and a headphone slot.

Yeah, yeah, we knew.

4K 30 FPS.

It's the leakiest console thing that's ever been ever.

Saw the shape of it, saw the motherboard, saw every aspect of it.

I think the only detail that the trailer revealed was the part where the joy-cons can now be used as a mouse yeah and they're magnetically clipped yes so that they don't that's not going to wear down over time i saw a gentleman talking about that where um

repair technicians get to find out about stress points on pieces of hardware

um yeah the switch has a the stress point yeah the stress point is the locking mechanism for the joy-con causes kids to just snatch it right off You feel it.

You feel it as you hold it like it's wiggling.

Yes.

I could do it.

You could do it.

Like a grown adult and maybe a teenager could do it.

A simple fall from chest height to the ground could do it.

So this is an improvement on that for sure.

So now that we've had all this shit leak out,

so in the lead up to April,

when it's going to release in May or June, right?

End of May, beginning of June,

I foresee in March, we're going to start to see what games are going to be launched for this game.

Not officially, fuck no, but every single, like, we saw the motherboard for fuck's sake.

I think the mouse aspect is

it allows more porting of Steam games that want it that would want to show up without

any trouble, right?

So

you pitch this, and now Darkest Dungeon comes over without any of the HUD changes that they had to make.

I mean, depending on how this works, the Joy-Con may become

like the

ultimate Steam controller

as a game pad that is also a mouse simultaneously.

It is nice that the Steam deck has the, you know, it has the mouse pad thumb area while also having the DE pad and your stick options.

So there's a plethora.

Plus touch as well.

But But no, in this case, it's just like, hey, a lot of games that

would be perfect for Switch, but just these are mouse games.

And

using a mouse on the stick doesn't feel great depending on the game a lot of the time.

So it's a nice solution there.

The fact that it's bigger as well feels directly influenced by the Steam Deck.

It's like, yeah, no, people are down for a bigger console and

are down to have room for both headphones and USB-C, not this one or the other shit.

You know?

I think my own personal excitement is very low, but because to me,

I look at this as the ability to play the dozen of Switch games that I bought, played for 10 minutes, and went, oh my fucking God,

I'll wait.

Jesus.

Well, slow your roll, there, cowboy, because we need to confirm which Switch games are going to be playable.

That's going to be all of them except for Labo and the weird gimmick bullshit.

It says some.

It says select.

So we'll see.

It might not be all.

It might end up being one of those cases like, you know, PS Classics or the Xbox Originals where it was like

cartridges.

It's going to be everything except for everything weird.

But it's not the days of, hey, take that

GBA game and stick it into your DS and it plays, you know?

Actually, it is like that.

The only difference is that stuff like WarioWare Twisted, which did technically work on the DS, will not work here because of the cardboard nonsense and the fucking box nonsense like one, two, three.

Like, it is exactly that.

Well, anything digital that is not.

Well, it says select, it says some.

So yeah, no, there will be fringe cases that have

peripheral requirements that don't, that don't work.

But like, it has a, it has a cartridge slot

for Switch cartridges.

I'm hoping that we don't end up with.

If it's just fringe things and stuff with specific bits, then sure.

I'm hoping we don't end up with obvious things where they're just kind of like, nah, we're just not porting this, or we're going to resell it, or it's going to be like a weird e-shop type situation.

But hey, you know what?

I would like to play the Xenoblade games at a human appreciable frame rate.

That'd be nice.

It would be nice to not have sticks drift by just using them with any regular

frequency.

And I guess, you know, I don't know if the...

Do we know anything about the docking and whether or not that'll...

That'll have a dock.

But will there be performance differences between docked and undocked?

We don't know that, but considering it's the exact same device as the last one, but better, it's probably

the same thing.

It might.

You know what I would really like?

I would like the console to have a 1080p resolution on handheld mode and then also have a 1080p resolution on the dock mode so that they don't perform differently.

Like the resolution bump on docked mode that would make

the dock mode perform way worse in some cases.

Lock it.

That was the worst.

Don't have it change at all if you don't want it to.

Let it stick around.

Let it stay and consistent for both.

Yeah.

That'd be cool.

I would would rather have an uglier game on my TV than one that runs bad.

That's what I say.

Further, I would say I would like the ability to grab a USB-C to HDMI and just without a dock,

feed that into a TV.

No, no, Nintendo says you buy a dock.

Yeah,

Nintendo says.

You must.

You must dock.

Yes.

It would be nice.

Nintendo says docking mandatory.

It would be wonderful if you didn't have to, but here we are.

And of course, the difference between having it charge and not charge, you know,

or would be a part of that, plus extra USB slots.

Like, there's benefits you get from the dock, but I just, it would be nice because other devices can just go straight in and video out, you know?

So,

and we'll see what they do with the, like,

you know, is replacing a Joy-Con ever going to be a possibility?

Is that a, you know, a thing?

No pro controller in that announcement thing.

Nothing shown.

But they'll have one.

Yeah, I mean,

safe to say it'll look exactly like it has been for the last two gens.

Bro, I got to buy three Switch 2s.

That's going to be hard.

Me, wife, nephew.

Oh.

Four, including nephew's friend.

Including nephew's friend.

Yeah, so when this drops.

Baby doesn't need one.

He's too young for video game.

Or you can just use mine to play Fortnite.

So when this drops, you know, we'll see what comes out for it.

Seems like there's a decent possibility that maybe one silk song

might show up on the Switch 2.

Bro, shut up.

Oh,

man.

Did we even talk about that last week?

It didn't happen last week.

It happened this week.

Oh, my God.

What is happening to my memory?

I mean,

I.

So, what I heard, I heard shit was going on with Silk Song, and I was like, okay, it was going down.

What's happening, right?

And it's like, the Silk Song subreddit is in complete revolt.

Yeah,

that is correct.

And basically,

you're right.

The first thing I see is, yeah, a thread that's like, Team Cherry, we demand an answer.

We demand a response.

And it's this insane, like, Pepe Sylvia trace.

Do you want the really short version?

I think I have it, but by all means, summarize.

The really short version is that...

One of the developers changed their Twitter profile and made a bunch of really suspicious looking tweets right before the Switch 2 got announced.

So it really, really looked like like Silk Song 2 was, sorry, Silk Song.

Yeah, Silk Song 2.

No, but Silk Song was going to be announced to be a Switch game, and then nothing happened.

And then people were like,

can you just say

what the fuck that

was?

It was because also.

Team Cherry apparently did something ARG-ish in the past.

They have done ARG stuff in the past.

So when the dev changed his profile to a chocolate cake photo and then kind of just made some cryptic tweets that were not real cryptic shit, right?

That were not clear.

People were like, oh, we're playing an ARG again.

And so they started going along with it and going like, that's a very specific chocolate cake.

That cake dates back to this release when it came out and when it first was invented.

And so people are tying the numbers in and go down this whole fucking

thread.

And then eventually it gets to a point where they're like, okay, this is fucking stupid.

This is nothing.

What is happening?

What do you, you can't play this game now that everyone's mad?

Like, they've been upset.

It's not the time for an ARPG.

It's going to be ARG rather.

And

so they eventually did get the community

manager to go, hey, no, like, yep, talking to the team now.

We'll have something to say.

And then the thing they had to say was, hey, we confirm that the game is still being worked on.

It's real.

It's progressing and it will release.

And it's like,

I just

was curious, so I looked up like Silk Song articles right before the podcast.

And I found one from Game Rant talking about how Silk Song is a victim of Hollow Knight success.

Yeah.

And it hasn't been in development that long.

And I'm like, wait, what?

And then I kept reading and it was like all this cope shit.

And the article was like two and a half years fucking old.

And I'm like, yeah, no, this is actually ridiculous.

Like, one, I'm going to just go back to the same thing I say every time.

Okay.

You go through these things and people go totally crazy, and people start making like demands and being like super villains about this shit.

And then they always say, Team Terry owes us.

Yeah, people go completely insane and become unreasonable.

And then someone goes, They don't owe you shit.

And then I come in to be a buzzkill and go, Actually, they do.

They do owe you shit because of the kickstarter.

Because the Silk Song is the last backer reward

for Hollow Knight.

And, like, we just go in this circle of, like, if

the Hornet campaign was not a backer reward, every single part of this discussion would be completely different.

But people have already paid for that game and have been waiting for it since, like, what?

When was the Hollow Knight Kickstarter?

Like, 2011?

And I remember in the peak of when Goodwill at its maximum, it was also

announced.

Well, back when this was going to be the third piece of DLC, wasn't there, I believe, an announcement that it would be like, was it going to be free?

So what happened was that it was going to be the final piece of DLC.

It was a stretch.

Just wait.

It's going to be big.

We know it's taking a long time, but it's going to be larger than the other DLCs.

Then that was like radio silence for like a year.

And then they re-announced Silk Song as a completely new game.

And people went, wait, what?

And they said, don't worry.

If you backed it and we're going to get the Silk Song as the DLC, then you people will get it for free because it's technically a backer reward.

That's what it was.

If you were one of the backer reward stretch goal people, then you would have gotten it as part of your thing.

Yes.

So looking at that, that's one angle on it.

My angle was just coming at a different perspective, which is like, I don't know what in God's green earth is happening behind the scenes.

None of us can.

And, you know, it could be the most insane fucking tornado fire in the team's team service charge studio.

There's a list of reasons that are totally reasonable.

And I think the most obvious one is that they switched from Unity to Godot when Unity went crazy.

When that was happening, that was a really and they have to rebuild the whole fucking game.

That debacle sucked for a ton of indie games.

But you could just say that.

You could just say it with your mouth.

But here's the bit.

Here's the bit, right?

Let's say you don't.

Let's say you just don't communicate, and that's best for you for whatever reasons that we don't know.

Maybe just don't do the avatar change

cryptic tweet thing

when people are already on edge.

Like, maybe

the hint thing is not the best move when people are like, just say what it is or nothing.

And they've been that way for a couple years now.

It's the wrong time to start the dance.

You know, the time for dancing is probably over.

Someone in the chat points out that that was a personal account of the developer, not an official account.

And that's true.

Similarly to how interviews with George R.R.

Martin that are not about books or movies do include bits and pieces of his life in which he describes not writing his book.

That doesn't make like there's this weird thing that

like this is kind of a macro topic in which people go, you know,

they're very straightforward and they're logicing a bunch of situations and they're going, well, this, that, this, this, and that's, that's how it should be.

And how things should be are not how things are.

Right?

You're like, well, you shouldn't be mad at all because Kickstarters TOS doesn't state that they owe all backer rewards as is

and things can change.

And so they don't actually owe you anything.

And it's like, well, that is technically the letter of the law.

Shut up.

No one felt that way ever.

And that will not stop people's emotions.

It's just before you click the send button on that post, you have to kind of,

you have to know that there's a pot stirring that's occurring there.

You have to know that this is going to be received.

And

while you can't account for all the way everyone will and let that govern everything,

this is just the worst possible move when everyone is at their fucking limit with it, you know?

So I don't know.

It was a wild inability to read the room on that decision there.

Listen,

I don't understand why you're even mad because, as we've discovered, as we've discussed, it doesn't count if it's on the gay cation.

Why are you getting upset?

It doesn't count, it doesn't count on the gay cation.

Wait, why are you mad?

Why are you mad?

This is so illogical.

You know, you have to submit to the Silk Song development cycle, lest you be destroyed.

I mean,

I feel like

if it were me, any post that was not just an attachment to silksong.zip is just a no-go.

We're just like, we're just not posting at all.

We're not...

There's nothing to be said here.

Because the decision to not communicate is one thing.

But to,

yeah.

Anyways, all right.

So

a lot of this has speculated that they're waiting for the Switch to hey, I'm trapped in my chair.

I can't get my headphone cable out.

Are you okay?

Should we send help?

Oh my god, we're gonna have to take a break.

I've actually sat on my cable and broken it.

Pat has reached that color of red.

We'll be right back.

Okay.

I'm sorry about that.

Yeah, all right.

Coming back.

God damn, I should get some fucking Turtle Beach headphones up in here.

Wires.

Don't get this cable nightmare.

Wires Christ.

The danger of wires can never be overstated.

I'm sorry, Willie.

I missed some of that as I was fighting with my own ass and wheels.

That's okay.

I was just remarking on the color of your face changing from

the, you know, Caucasian pink to

Caucasian plus.

I saw a black guy on, I think it was on Twitter, just refer to a fucking picture of the red Hulk and just go, I don't know, this just seems like a mad white person.

Ah, shit, damn, he's not wrong.

Yeah, not wrong.

Red bone.

Oh, fuck.

Yeah, well, you know.

And he's got a gun.

Yeah, so people in the chat are saying, hey, remember No Man's Sky and what a disaster that was, and how then the people who made No Man's Sky just shut the fuck up and kept working until they fixed it?

Yes.

Head down, etc.

And like, is it reasonable for us to sit here and go, hey, if you're making a highly anticipated thing that's a secret that people are excited for, that you should retreat to the woods and shut up until it's done.

No, that's not realistic.

But also,

maybe I do want that deep down.

You don't have to do anything, you can also just cancel a game and walk away from it.

But yeah, people's expectations and stuff are going to be what they are as time goes on,

as administrations change and as decades peel off over the course of many, many moves.

Hollow Knight's the biggest Metroidvania I've ever played, and that took two and a half years to develop.

So, therefore,

Silk Song is six years in.

That means it must be at least twice as big as Hollow Knight.

What if this is just reverse game development, and like all the time that Hollow Knight should have taken is now being lagged on the back end?

Monkey's paw

for the quality of the game that it is.

I don't know if this is true, but I saw some people saying it on the Silk Song subreddit, so take it with a big grain of salt.

But I did see some folks say that the reason why the game they suspect the reason why the game is taking so long is because the only reason Hollow Knight released when it did was because the team ran out of Kickstarter money and had to put it out.

I would need to see that sourced

before

fully

that's not impossible, but

I would.

That's an accusation that I would want to see sourced because that's fucking crazy.

That's insane.

That's so insane.

Big grain of salt.

Oh my God.

Huge grain of salt.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Well, do I have a source editor?

I may be reading it off a guy who made it the fuck up.

It's possible.

Yeah, okay, okay.

But you know,

in writing, editors exist to kick your ass and get the thing out the door, right?

So,

anyways, so yeah, we'll see what happens when the Switch 2 launches.

Maybe that'll happen.

Maybe that'll be part of it.

Maybe not.

You know, I'm so torn because, yeah, you know what?

Launch title for the Switch 2 would actually be like very reasonable.

However, it is also the copist shit

like ever.

Like you might as well change your name to fucking Lola and go down to the Copa Cabana with this fucking Switch 2 launch party shit.

But I mean the entire non-ARG into we demand a response like explosion is a bit of a like

it's that last bit of like energy that anyone would have left, you know?

Well, that's not true.

I mean the Reddit is going to be over there and people are going to be going nuts long after the game comes out, if ever.

But

I feel like if you're kind of just like putting it out of your mind and then you heard about this thing and going down, it just re-exhausts you.

You know, you're like, oh, God, I wasn't thinking about that.

You know?

Anyways, anyways, anyways.

So

I think what we need to do.

So I want to to say one last thing because I made the joke about how it has to be twice as big as Hollow Knight.

And what I said was a feeling that people have, but it's so stupid that you didn't bother to respond because it's obviously incorrect.

And I think back to something that somebody when I was talking about this on my show a couple of days ago, somebody in my chat said that time should not accumulate expectation,

which sounds really wise, but I totally disagree 100%.

I 100% disagree.

Well, it should, whether it should or shouldn't.

It doesn't because, I mean, sorry, it does.

It does.

Because we've seen this happen time and time again in the industry, and the things that are the most hated are the things that are announced way too ahead of their time.

Like, it's just this ha, there's nothing you can do about this, whether you claim it ought to not be that way.

But, like, it's the way it is.

Food analogies are the danger, right?

But if you come home and your wife's like, honey, I spent all day slaving in the kitchen over this,

and then hands you like

some bullshit, you're going to be like, oh, I was really excited.

Yeah, I think the time to start yelling.

No, no, no, no, no.

Well, look,

I think

the most reasonable

type of approach you can take on it is just like

you should, the level of disappointment you feel should not enter the realm of one-finger all-caps Pepe Silvia posting.

Right.

Like, don't let anything hit that level for your own sake.

But people just in general feeling like, God damn it, is extremely reasonable, normal, and given the circumstances.

And I don't feel like it makes, it's not fair to tell anyone who's, especially if anyone is on the people that have paid and are up there in that group of people that are owed something, to tell them to expect otherwise or to feel differently about it.

Can we?

And I'm saying this as the person who is mostly fine with delays every time I hear about them and is in no hurry to be like, oh, goddammit, oh no, the thing got delayed a little bit.

I'm like, yeah, take your time.

It's cool.

There's no shortage of games.

We're all good.

I think what we need to do, and I'm going to start using this as the barometer.

And

it felt unfair before, but I don't care anymore.

And I'm going to start talking about video game development according to the RGG system,

which is how Silk Song was announced in 2019.

How many Yakuza ago?

That means since the announcement of Silk Song, we have received Yakuza Like a Dragon, Lost Judgment, Like a Dragon, Ishin, Like a Dragon, Gaiden, the Man Who raced his name.

Like a dragon, infinite wealth.

And soon, like a dragon, pirate Yakuza in Hawaii.

And who knows how many more?

Was there an engine change in any of those?

Yes!

There was!

Okay.

It really sucks that

the decision to just stay mostly silent has now eclipsed the discussion about Hollow Knight entirely because anyone, because yeah, we'll all,

you know what?

But I don't know.

We're also so close to this, and we're surrounded, you know what I mean?

We're in the middle of the pit of people that are like really, really, really excited for Silk Song.

So I can't really, it's hard to say what it looks like outside of the bubble anymore.

You know what?

I'm going to go to replay Hollow Knight on stream and be like, man, this game sucks.

And then I'm going to beat it.

I'm like, damn it, I'm even more in a fucking funk now than ever because it actually rules.

It rules so hard.

I just.

Oh, hey, you want, you want some, some, some pull from my ass speculation?

They were working on Silk Song, they were making it a certain way, and then they did the Gods and Bugs DLC, which they thought was awesome.

And everyone's like, I don't want to do fucking boss fights against all this shit.

I want to explore levels.

And they were like, oh, shit.

Oh, no.

Silk song's mostly boss fights.

Oh, crap.

Oh, they wanted the Metroid part?

Oh, no.

Big if true.

No, that's crazy.

Actually, what it is is because

they've been writing for Elden Ring Night Rain.

Team Cherry has been.

Yeah.

And they've completed the entire story of Elden Ring.

That's crazy, dude.

Hey, man, I got to go.

I got to be right back.

Sorry to take another break.

Speaking of games never coming out.

Yeah.

This could be a long section.

So

the initial story.

PlayStation has canceled two more live service games, both subsidiaries from Bend and Blue Point.

Bloomberg has learned it.

People have been wondering what Blue Point has been working on for the last couple years.

It's a live service God of War game.

So,

uh that initially was then followed up with uh

let's see here if I can pull it all together um

yeah

uh Raddick on uh Twitter pointed out that uh

PlayStation was planning to release at least 12 live service games um

and when looking at the full list it's possibly even more than that only three have been released so far far.

One was released and quickly shut down.

Seven have been cancelled, and another seven are being waited on.

So there is

a

full list here of games that Sony have been

live service games that Sony have been investing in and that are canceled to be determined or just outright shut down, taken offline, etc.

It's a lot, man.

Destruction All-Stars, Gran Turismo 7, Helldivers 2, all released.

Concorde, shut down.

Anti-released.

Fair games.

Horizon Multiplayer.

Marathon.

Horizon MMO.

All to be determined.

Then Media Molecule live service game.

Bungie and

Jason Blundell's LA Studio game, all three unannounced.

And then Last of Us Online, cancelled.

Twisted Metal, cancelled.

Spider-Man the Great Web, cancelled.

London Studio live service game, cancelled.

God of War live service game from Bluepoint, cancelled.

Ben Studio live service game, cancelled.

All right, so

the Horizon MMO is also dead.

Horizon MMO, sure.

Throw that on the floor.

So I'm going to hold up my hand as somebody who's played nearly every single one of the games that these are parts of the series.

God of War MMO live service thing, someone, whoever said that as an idea should have been thrown out a window.

That is like, was always going to be a disaster.

Horizon MMO, similar.

Like, like, for no one.

Like, for no one.

Main character-driven narrative series and then

Nozgoth?

No one.

Yeah, okay.

So.

I talked about this on the Beast Guy.

I was skeeting about it quite often.

And

I feel like,

and I, you know, there's only so much you can put into a single skeet,

but I feel like destiny has been

the, like, so remember when World of Warcraft, we talked about this, Street Fighter and Call of Duty and World of Warcraft, and everybody chases after the big thing and

makes their, you know, their game, let's chase the trend,

let's chase the bubble, right?

One leader, one imitator, one third weird one.

Yeah.

And it's been this thing forever, right?

And so, like, WoW was the great

fire that swept through the industry where everyone's like, you know what?

Let's blow hundreds of millions of dollars and five years of dev time on an MMO that will immediately die.

Like, instantly, just crash and burn.

And I mentioned like Copernicus earlier, but there was a ton of them.

Like it was crazy how awful it was.

And I feel like Destiny 2

has

actually surpassed it in like this week alone

because

like you would see people talking about how their gas game should emulate destiny and even the ones that didn't.

Sony literally said that they wanted their gas games to emulate Destiny because they bought Destiny and then said, hey, Destiny devs, go to these other live service developers and you will be the people to tell them how to do live service

and give them the the lessons they need to do live service but destiny has always been like on the verge of falling to pieces like the reason why activision allowed destiny to buy themselves out was because it wasn't making any fucking money.

And so we're looking at like Concorde alone.

Concorde alone.

But then there's like nine other games that were all in like multiple years of dev.

Like, hey, what's Bluepoint doing?

The answer is now nothing.

Bluepoint has now done nothing for multiple years.

So

the

trend chase feels like something that while it's always been part of the industry, every once in a while you'd ramp up and perhaps make make a huge expensive whoopsies, learn a lesson from that, and then heavily reconsider, right?

Start

go back to the drawing board on it and look at what other angles or what other releases are currently working or at the very least are floating and are sustainable.

Because of the way the industry has been shaking out, and I think because of that, that discussion from a couple months ago about like, once again, ripping people's attention away from the free-to-play and then

the idea of like a video game, a triple-A just cannot be profitable, a quadruple A just almost cannot be profitable unless the circumstances are perfect is

it's become such a dire situation and the desperation of like Sony looking and going, no, we must chase this live service trend.

We must chase this.

We must take it over is like...

It feels as if you were originally playing a game of poker where like you there the odds can go one way or the other.

And

as times have gotten worse and as it's become more clear that like

if you're making a game that's just live service on its own and like there's no

there's no baked in audience, there's no initial appeal for that.

If you're just kind of throwing

a fucking gamble out there, it's basically going from playing poker to playing the lottery.

And I don't know why a loss like Concorde wouldn't make you drastically re-evaluate fucking.

Well, that's everyone has happened.

Like concorde is is the the the thing of like wait a second we could actually spend two three four more years on all of these and for all of them to end up like concord we're talking billions in losses so 17 games on this list is is what we're looking at here and the realization that the the the the concorde path was the tip of the iceberg there was fuck there was an entire thought process that like no this is all this is going to work out and yeah god of war multiplayer multiplayer, horizon multiplayer, all those things.

Like,

it's the, the, the,

the fact that the lessons are,

I guess, I guess it takes a Concord level loss to have this massive correction occur, and it takes years for these projects to all shape out and such.

But I just didn't think that it was that bad.

I didn't realize that they were this committed to it and made a decision to essentially spend

everything,

right?

First, that everything major first-party related on this gamble.

I think

there's a second part to this, which is more of a design ethic.

And it's

so that people making these decisions often don't understand games.

And that's fine.

Everybody knows that you don't have to actually understand your product at all to manage it.

Just look at what else is making money.

Right.

But

they don't even understand their product from an economic standpoint.

And, like, granted, I'm not an economist, I'm just like a dipshit that talks about video games on Tuesdays and does streams, but I do play a lot of video games and I have played a lot of games as a service games, and that includes MMOs.

And one of the things that anybody with a brain or touched an MMO at any point over the past like 10 years learned is that, you know, it's actually really hard to play more than one gas game.

It's really difficult because games as a service are designed to monopolize your time.

And the way that their cosmetic or upgrade systems work for Cash Ola is because you are spending all of your time with that one game, which means in the games as a service audience, every new game as a service that you release is chasing after a smaller and smaller pie.

And that can be fine depending on what you're putting out.

But why were they going to release 17 games that were all going to compete are you saying each other are you saying that the people interested in playing a horizon live surface game might also be the same audience as the people that are going to spend their time on a god of war live service actually they are the exact same person and that you're dividing that pie

into nothing

The the same and the same non-existent person, of course, that we're describing here.

I like PlayStation games, says person.

So what does that mean?

I like God of War and Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima and Bloodborne and Gran Turismo.

Okay.

How many of those can I play a week

while hitting all my dailies?

Because I mentioned five games.

Can you blow out dailies and weeklies?

for a full gas game in one day a week.

No, you can't.

This is, I think looking at, like, this might be the craziest all-in, like, push.

It's the biggest all-in-one.

I've ever seen in the history of video games.

This is the craziest all-in push to the table I've seen.

Well, it's

like.

Like, this will, like, so, and, and, um,

you will see multiple live service games come and go popping up on a Steam-like platform or such as everyone independently is taking a stab at it and seeing if they can, you know, grab a little bit of market share for themselves and get something going or so.

But for Sony first party specifically to be bankrolling this level of like incestuous market

is it's ins it's insane it's the most insane thing

these are all super expensive games They already own Destiny and Warframe is already on the PlayStation.

So like right away, right away, you are competing against those two games that already exist and you own one of them,

right?

It's it is so okay.

Let's

just sing back.

Are you after you?

No, I was gonna say, the other reading when you see what and hell divers.

Oh my god, I forgot.

Helldivers, too.

Yeah, um, when you see what looks like, this is such an insanely, bafflingly dumb level of commitment that you're like

the only other take here is like the situation is so much more dire than you think that this was the right call for them to make at the time or so perceive.

The best time to stop is now.

Sorry, the best time to stop was yesterday.

And the second best time to stop is now.

Yes.

It's clearly happening.

I have a variation of that that I love to say.

And maybe it's lame that I think, but like there's the phrase like, make sure to quit while you're ahead.

I have been saying for a while, like,

you can also quit while you are behind.

Right.

It's a variation of throwing good money after bad.

And I just say, just staple the square

sales report story to this one.

You know, just

like let's let's go back in time, right?

Let's look at Fatal Fury and Street Fighter, which we know about.

Hey, you know how those fighting games are hot?

They're hot as fuck in the arcades.

They're making a pretty good.

Can we make one of those?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Spang that out.

Strike up the profits.

All right.

Okay.

Hey, you know what?

Platformers.

They're pretty big right now.

3D platformers.

Can we make some of those?

Yeah, okay.

They're more expensive than fighting games.

But like, yeah, we can make an Ape Escape.

Sure.

We can make a Sly Cooper.

All right.

Military shooters.

Okay.

Well, now we're talking.

Call of Duty is pretty expensive, but we can do it.

And like each of these trend chasers has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger.

And chasing after WoW was crazy money, right?

That was your studio killed itself money, right?

And I thought that was the top.

I thought that chasing after MMOs

was going to be the top of money into the toilet on fire.

But apparently,

chasing after gas games, if you just chase after enough of them.

And to be fair to that first point,

what 14 did was unprecedented in the sense that

the only one to ever do it.

Yeah.

They learned, like they did 11, so they had enough of like an understanding of what they're going into with 14 saw how badly it was fucking up and then just

like well

made a sequel, but it wasn't a sequel, you know, it's complicated.

But anyone else anywhere else would have shut that shit down.

Anyone

14 got to do it?

It was the same reason why Square was obsessed.

They're like, well, it has the name Final Fantasy on it, so it can't be an absolute piece of fucking dog shit because our investors are going to pull out their shares if Final Fantasy is absolute trash.

A numbered Final Fantasy cannot be a failure.

And so, hey, guess what?

You know why they also got a fucking free pass?

Because it's square and it said Final Fantasy on the fucking box.

Most devs don't get that kind of fucking benefit of the doubt.

So, yeah, it is, it is so

bananas.

The chase of the chase of live service, where it's it's like all the ongoing costs of your MMO

with even more dev time and even more resources.

And you're competing with

Fortnite.

You're competing with all the Mihoyo games.

You're competing with Naval Rivals.

Now with Netis, you know.

Like,

there's a part when

you're developing your game, and I have not developed a game, so I cannot speak to this.

This is purely my own like emotional foresight or whatever the fuck you want to call it, where it's like, okay, we're making a game that is highly similar to an existing game.

Is it better than that game?

No.

Does it have a unique hook that can hook people that that other game doesn't have?

No.

Well, shit.

Right?

Yeah.

Like, fuck.

Well, it's just, it's just overall, you you know,

the discussion here and over time for the last fucking five years has just been like,

all or nothing now is the only way.

That's it.

All or nothing.

Everything is all or nothing.

Spend hard, go big, lose hard, go home.

There's no

semblance of.

If you're not first, you're last.

There's no semblance of smaller, stable releases.

Again, you know, critical, darling, profitable, profitable, everything's like that.

You just, you just can't, right?

It's a market that is just all, it is, it has to be dethrone the gods or, or burn everything, or, you know, burn everything.

It's really fascinating that you mentioned dethrone the gods because there's two games that I think about when you say that.

The one is Monster Hunter.

Monster Hunter has been the king of its own genre and has been chased by like a fucking 20 imitators, and they have all crashed against the rocks of the eternal shore as Monster Hunter goes on to make infinity fucking dollars, right?

Bankroll and Capcom.

And the other one that I think of is a game we're not super familiar with, which is Tarkov.

So Tarkov invented the extraction genre

and

like Marathon and shit like that.

Like there are games that were supposed to chase Tarkov,

but it has become clear that people don't like extraction games.

They like Tarkov.

That's the one they want to play.

I see.

I see.

Okay.

The trend is already over.

It's like, like, not a game can't couldn't, a game couldn't even release to chase it

before it became clear that it's the one game.

As insane as it is to learn about this list,

as you said, like

we're learning about it via the cancellations, and therefore the best time was really yesterday.

You know,

it's like we're not learning about it through five Concords in a row, and then a confused

stage show going, I don't get it.

Why,

why not?

Kids, don't you love Kratos?

The past couple of years is like, where are all the Sony games?

Well, we are watching them get burned in a garbage can in front of us in this news section on the podcast.

You said 17 games were on that list?

17.

That is multiple years of first-party output that are just, it's just not going to happen now.

Just not going to happen.

This would be a great time for Microsoft to swoop in with their own first part.

Oh, Jesus Christ.

Well, so this.

I was thinking it.

I was thinking it.

But it's like,

does the effect of this, like, does it

make Sony suddenly basically sound like how Microsoft did in this generation, even though Microsoft puts their games out on Sony consoles?

Yeah.

Yeah.

I saw people talking about how Halo is, the Master Chief collection is fucking coming to PS5 by this year.

And that's the end.

Man, if I see Master Chief fucking using X and square button prompts on a video game, that is the end of that shit.

I guess we just don't know what the hardware coffers look like relative to, you know,

the upper ceiling of what they're willing to invest in studios for first-party games here and for, you know, Quadruple A in particular.

So

I don't know how bad

how bad this damage is.

It's really bad.

It's really bad, but like

the damage is in the billions.

But it's just like, how close are we to that magic pixel when you look at this?

Because

this sounds like death

is what it sounds like.

If you were taking that level and applying it to, like, there were less properties on the, there were less failures on the

fucking big deal that just fell through.

What was the goddamn company that was buying everything?

Then the Saudi deal fell through.

Oh,

Tencent?

No, no, no.

With IDOS and shit.

Oh, the fucking

sweeter.

There were less corpses in the Embracer deal than there are in this.

It's crazy.

You know, like,

this sounds lethal when I look at that amount of games on a fucking list of, you know, but yeah, so I'm just just like, I don't know, man.

We're in the negative health values.

You know, you know what the dumbest part is?

Is like there's something that I, uh, we neither of us because we don't care about it, but like we haven't brought it up once.

It's like, hey, Sony, do you think any of these games are going to compete with Grand Theft Auto V online on your own console?

No,

no, they're not.

I don't know.

Embracer burned like a hundred plus games.

Okay.

Then I'm then I'm going off of, I suppose, the

vibes.

The vibes of the

canned out titles.

The biggest titles that were part of that, the stuff that hits the wall, like

Deus Ex and

everything that IDOS released and everything that was.

The idea behind this live service shit from Sony was like the combination of multiple different styles of development that all took the worst lesson.

So like take like Bloomhouse, right?

They're like, well, we'll buy like 40 scripts for horror movies and we'll make them cheap because one of them will be paranormal activity.

And Sonny went, that's a great idea.

You know what we should do?

We should buy 17 games worth of dev time and then make them all the most expensive games we've ever made.

And then one of them will maybe blow up and recoup its own losses.

And that's it.

And that's it, right?

So like 10 years ago when we were going, oh, yeah, like, this gas shit sucks, and this is dumb, and it's going to take a lot of pain, but hey, eventually a lesson will be learned, right?

Well, no, because the success one, the one that breaks out and makes

gangbusters money forever, continues to exist.

We got to see.

We actually got to see what it would take to give up, and that is Suicide Squad and Concord.

Oh, out the window, never mind, mind, undo.

Yeah.

Yeah.

It's like, oh, wow.

There's a piece of

dialogue from a movie I really like called Contact.

It's based off Carl Sagan's book

in which they're building a big machine to contact aliens, and it gets blown up.

And

the main character speaks with a rich benefactor, and he says, why buy one where you can buy two for twice the price?

And I think about that when I look at this nonsense fucking story.

Why have one live service game that could do well when we could have 20 live service games?

Think of how much more money we would make.

Well,

you actually lost

billions, right?

Because

and you wasted, like,

think of the man

years

of lost dev time

on these projects.

So, so, um,

you got, you got, you got boy math and girl math, and now you have CEO math,

which is, if we can make two Fortnites, then we could have twice the Fortnite money.

That's true.

Right.

Listen.

Of course.

Does Tomb Raider need multiplayer?

No, but if we put all this money into into making Tomb Raider multiplayer, we'll make that money back five times.

Corp math.

Is that true?

No.

Corpo math.

It all adds up.

The numbers can't fail.

Look at them.

Oh, man.

Yeah, that's a lot of studios, man.

That's a lot of big studios.

I feel the same talking about this story as I did sitting

in my fucking parents' basement looking at Kaz Harai, say the phrase 599 US dollars.

Discipline.

Like, it's the same exact emotion of, oh,

oh, no.

We're committing to it.

You will listen.

You will learn.

Yeah.

This is.

This is the part where you go like, oh yeah, we're going to be feeling this for, and it's like,

there's no end point.

There's like, you go like, oh yeah, the damage is.

No, it's that you

untold, untold.

If you see Concorde on its own, we were freaking out at the amount of billions.

Yeah, times 17.

Or 16.

These aren't

balatro games getting canceled, you know?

Did you see Shuhei Yoshida's interview about this shit?

What'd he say?

He said, yeah, I would have told him not to do that shit.

That shit's stupid, but that's probably why they got rid of me.

Ah.

Got it.

Thank you.

Cool, cool, cool, cool.

For sure.

It's so big of him to be out and be like, I would have seen that shit coming.

I would have told him.

Yeah, sure, man.

Whatever.

Oh, man.

Yeah, again, again, you want to fucking...

want, like, one could argue the cancellation is a response to seeing it coming, perhaps too late.

You know,

we're not looking at five Concorde releases into unreleases.

Though, hey, let's think about how awesome that would be.

I mean, as far as podcast content goes, oh, man, it'd be fucking awesome, dude.

Trust.

Trust.

Because, like, bro, okay, you remember Concorde came out and everybody was just like, I got to get fucking on that Concorde because I only got like 10 days worth of footage.

I can get, right?

If there was a fucking Horizon MMO that came out, dude, I would no light that shit for a month because you know it's never gonna last.

Just

the influencer-only server energy.

Everyone online is filming a bit.

Everyone is making their video essay or streaming to see what the fuck is going on.

No one is playing for real.

The Babylon's false shit.

People are jumping off of cliffs and running in circles and just everyone's got TTV in front of their name.

It's fuck.

Hey, let me ask you a question.

You ever play a game, a multiplayer game, and you see somebody with the TTV?

in their name and you pull out your fucking phone and you go watch them and you beat their ass, and then you're like, all right, now let's get the live reaction.

No, I can't say that I have.

You can do that when you play Dead by Daylight.

It's

real sick.

Oh, man.

That's sick as fuck.

No, no, you don't stream snipe them.

You stream eulogize them.

It's great.

It's great.

I love it.

Yeah.

Anyway, so there was other stuff as well.

Um, it seems uh like an unannounced Warhammer game has also been cancelled,

or was cancelled at the end of last year.

From who?

Do you know?

Let's see.

ThoughtPennies

was the name of the developer.

And the description, and this...

I mean, the description of the game is a fantasy live service co-op PVE action RPG with a cast of unique heroes and playstyles.

Does that describe anything to you?

It describes fucking Vermintide.

That's like a game that already exists.

Yeah.

Yeah, co-op PVE with unique characters.

Live service fantasy?

Uh-huh.

Yes, absolutely.

It describes numerous games that already exist.

So, hey, you know what's a really good example to chase that?

Is like, let's talk about Warhammer games.

Was it Jacob Giller?

No, is it Race Vik?

It's Racevik, who has a video about how much he loves Mass Effect and he's jealous of Warhammer games.

Games Workshop just gives out their fucking license to fucking anybody.

There are so many fucking Warhammer games.

There are so goddamn many.

So you say, like, hey, the Warhammer game got canceled.

You know what?

Fuck it.

There's going to be 10 out tomorrow.

They spread that shit everywhere.

Man.

You can't go 10 feet in a steam sale without tripping over multiple Warhammer games.

So it doesn't actually mean anything.

No, man.

Oh, my God.

They'll let anybody use that shit.

And a bunch of them are terrible.

A bunch of them are terrible.

But if you want to play Warhammer games, bro, you have an option.

You have many options.

But when they're good.

But when they're good, though.

Yeah, when they're good, they're good.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Right.

No RTS yet.

So what is Dawn of War?

Oh, don't, don't, don't, don't fall for that.

Don't, that, oh, no.

Dawn of War.

All right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right, all right.

That, that is, that is, that Dawn of War 3 was so bad that it, like, killed Warhammer RTSs.

Man.

Okay, well, look, you know, as we've described,

the putting out more live service games means more live service dollars.

And

what better way to accompany that shot with a chaser over here?

Love this one.

Many in the video game industry are hoping for

GTA 6 to price at, if not 80, then perhaps $100,

because the bump could then correspond to an overwide over an overall industry game cost bump.

And if people are willing to spend that on GTA 6, then surely they will spend it on whatever piece of shit you're about to put out.

Forever, right?

That's how that works?

I think that's how that works.

That's how it worked.

I have a competing article for you that I was able to pull up and get ready while you were saying that shit.

Hello, Larian.

What do you have to say?

From Wednesday, the 29th of May, 2024, quote: PS5 players are buying fewer new games, but spending more than ever overall.

Why is that?

Because game prices are too high.

It has resulted in a net loss for PlayStation in terms of game sales, but microtransactions have made up the slack.

So if you increase the cost of every single game and fill them up as live service, you are going to create a situation with even less winners than you have now, but the winners will be bigger and the winners will be Grand Theft Auto.

Oh, but because people are willing to, right?

Yeah, no, for sure.

The winner will be Grand Theft Auto.

Yep, totally.

That's the one that's only Grand Theft Auto.

Yeah.

And you know, like, because Grand Theft Auto is, you know, when they move the whole thing forward and every game costs more and we, we, like, the cost goes up and stuff, um, people are making more money than ever now, right?

Wages are doing great, and they have way more money to spend on games.

So, why not just

scale that up to

yeah,

so Baldur's Gate 3 developer Larian tweeted in response to this story,

you're not supposed to say this out loud.

A good company raises its salaries in line with inflation so that their staff don't die or something.

But game prices haven't risen with inflation.

This isn't the reason the industry is in the shit for now, but it is an uncomfortable truth.

On the other hand, the responsibility for a game developer is to make sure that the game they show lives up to that promise and that investment from the player.

Yeah,

like

I don't buy that at all.

When you say that game prices haven't risen with inflation, you only can make that claim if you're only talking about

the game as it is the day it comes out

without any of the extra stuff that would have been packed in otherwise.

But just the idea of putting it on, like, this thing that we kind of thought, we kind of felt, because do you remember for us, we were talking about how in Canada it was Street Fighter 4 that increased the Canadian game price up by $10 and then it never went back down, right?

Yes.

So here

it's like, oh, GTA is what moves it forward.

And like, we can all follow suit, right?

We have to sit back in the shadows and wait and see.

And if

the big cat makes its move, if the, you know, that, if everyone gets used to that and they're willing to do it on that, then we can come out with everything next week and crank that shit up.

You know?

So like the whole discussion's kind of a stupid moot point because every time they raise the prices, sales go down because people know what games cost.

Like, just straight up.

And it's like, well, I don't care about my competitors' sales.

We're all fighting for the same dollars in the market.

It's like, that's true.

But if

people

look at their PlayStation 6 and go, well, that's $1,000 and I can only get one game every year instead of three or whatever the fuck, they're just not going to buy it at all.

Picture the.

They're going to go start doing drugs.

Picture the story.

Picture the story that we just covered before.

Picture

the Concorde feeling, except you just spent $130 Canadian dollars on that release.

Yeah.

As the quote, full price.

Once Bitten Twice Shy is real forever.

If you're charging me $130 fucking dollars,

tell me that Jam Project music is going to be included as well as licensed Japanese OPs, you sons of bitches.

Fuck off.

Yeah, to be fair.

To be fair, there is something that's happening, which is games, the games market

cost-wise,

if you have a wide variety of tastes, the games market is actually democratized in price way more than a lot of other mediums.

There are a lot of games that come out.

A lot.

You and I, and I'm sure a lot of the people listening to this in particular have massive backlogs of really good games that many of us picked up for dirt cheap, either at a used place because they're a couple of years old or a Steam sale or whatever the fuck.

There is plenty of shit to play all the time.

And if

game, if if games get too hot for price,

then

you can just wait.

Now, granted,

I am like a big proponent of the cult of the new.

I'm obsessed with the new.

Certainly are.

Obsessed.

Yes.

And so are a lot of the people listening to this, the power users.

Yes.

And I'm playing through Ghost of Tsushima, which I did not finish on release.

And I'm like, why the fuck didn't I just wait for this to fucking come out on PC?

Like, the DLC is included, and it runs way better.

And

they added all the Legends shit and all that.

And it's like, it's taking somebody like me who is obsessed with brand new right now and go i should wait on sony games until they're done because they're cheaper and all that shit

now granted this doesn't work for nintendo games

so smart move nintendo never changing

um

yeah i like when uh we have these moments of balls exposed asshole out just full on tell us exactly what your stupid fucking mentality is.

Like, just tell us transparently, because that's that, that price feel, that $10 moment was something that, like, I remember, like, we talked about it, like, James Small mentioned it.

He's like, hey, did you notice?

It's like, yeah.

And we kind of mentioned it ourselves.

We're like, hey, that's the moment.

They never fucking dropped it back.

But now you get to have this where it's like, oh, no, openly, you're saying.

You're just saying the quiet part out loud.

And

the ramifications are felt.

Like, everybody gets to see how much of a fucking dumbass you are.

And it's less of a mystery when it all goes wrong, of course.

And then, yeah, as this continues to happen, you can just go spend, I don't know, 15 or 20 bucks on a smaller game that pops up on Steam somewhere and

satisfy that

same potential hour count that you'd otherwise would be looking at.

So here's the really fun part, right?

And

well, no, sorry, just the other bit, too, is that,

like, I'm not, I'm not, you know, obviously as someone who's not like in the GTA fucking space, I might be wrong, but isn't GTA also one of those games where Rockstar made bank on the tail end with the GTA online

shit they sold?

Grand Theft Auto games,

Grand Theft Auto games make infinity dollars within 10 minutes of their release.

Every time, but they then make double infinity dollars on the long tail.

Yes.

Okay, so double infinity.

That's what I'm saying.

I'm saying there's double infinity dollars that they know is coming with

the online portion, clearly.

So it's not even about that initial.

Yeah, anyway, all right, go ahead.

So, no, the real fun part is that there's a lot of devs that are going to talk about this.

And yeah,

let's say GTA comes out and it's 10 bucks more than other games.

We're going to get to see a really fun experiment where a bunch of publishers get to find out that their game is not fucking Grand Theft Auto 6.

Right.

Right.

Where they're going to go with.

Well, oh, well, we're

like, shut up.

But Rockstar.

No, Rockstar led the charge.

Well, they did it.

We could all do it now, guys.

No.

It's safe.

No.

Nintendo can.

And maybe God of War

can.

God.

But you can't.

Not you.

Just getting out of the trenches, turning around.

I can do it too.

Yeah, yeah.

Again, these moments of transparency, I appreciate.

I do.

Right on.

Okay.

Let's get it moving.

Beyond that, I mean, not much else to it except, you know,

rest in peace, David Lynch.

Terrible.

Passed away this

week.

A lifetime of smoking is

apparently

responsible for the music.

So there were three things that contributed to this.

One of which is his lifetime obsession with smoking, which, to his credit and detriment, he made look really cool.

Makes it look really cool.

Like, that's the worst part.

Secondary animation, you know, the smoke trailing from your hand is great for art.

The second of which is that because of his deteriorating health and the current endemicness of COVID, because people can't take precautions, meant that he was very unlikely to be able to leave his home safely.

Last year,

the third of which is that the smoke from the LA fires didn't do him any favors either.

So it's like personal, societal, and then and then environmental.

Yeah, so 78 is definitely on the on the young side for that.

That's that fucking sucks.

And through this, people are going on and now discovering all the crazy shit he's worked on over the years that he never told anybody about.

Like the comic books that he's written, and

just like his name is attached to so many fucking random projects out there.

I didn't

films

until his death that he had made

Eraser Head.

And then his big break being Elephant Man, he got because Mel Brooks was like, yo, Eraser Head's awesome.

You should have this dude make Elephant Man.

Incredible.

And I think about Mel Brooks as the absolute last person in the world to go, yeah, Eraser Head.

But fuck it.

He's got good taste.

Yeah.

To say nothing of the fucking PlayStation 2 commercials with the duck

like you know what creatively called him over to be like yeah sure a video game console that's about right

uh

that it quacked and it walked through a portal

oh man anyways um all right let's take some letters Hey, if you want to send it a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

Send it to castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

Hey, if also, if you worked on one of many games that were live service and got canceled, write into castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com and tell us how bad that sucks shit.

Yeah, there you go.

Put a little asterisk in your subject.

We won't use your name, we promise.

Put a couple asterisks in your subject.

I'll catch that shit.

Also, New Darkest Dungeon 2 DLC, the abomination is coming out.

Looks rattish shit.

You know, we forgot to talk about Drake suing UMG

for defamation.

Yeah, yeah.

Was it hedgehogs that grind their shit into a paste?

It is.

It is.

It's pretty nuts that you can take something already pretty fucking gross and just keep it going, you know?

It really just.

man's getting into a situation

when people are going to.

I thought it was as bad as it got.

You know, here we are.

People are going to go into a courtroom and go, this is why I believe Drake was a creep, Your Honor.

I mean,

sticking to the guns.

There's something to admire about just like

the level of tone deafness still after all this time not catching up.

But anyway, that's fine.

Hey, um,

let's take one over here from

uh, chef

they're chewy and fuck face.

Chef here, uh, not a question, but watching Willie and Reggie navigate their way through cyberpunk and dealing with the corporal bullshit reminds me of the times corporations fucked over people IRL.

There was one time where eBay had the head of security essentially harass and threaten an elderly couple who blogged about the company.

It ranged from doxing the couple to to sending them fetal pigs and then threatening their lives.

Of course, eBay let him take

the fall for almost everything, but I thought it would be a good addition to the list of unhinged corporate reactions.

That

I didn't expect to hear the phrase fetal pigs today.

Yeah, that absolutely sounds like

an Arasaka or or corp

cyberpunk corp mission.

That's an NCPD log file you read about after you

walk past a bunch of corpses under a bridge somewhere.

Or send them to pigs.

So the eBay stalking scandal

was conducted in 2019 by eBay and its contractors.

And

scrolling, scrolling.

The Steiners were harassed and threatened both online and physically in their home by deliveries of things such as a bloody pig mask, live cockroaches and spiders, a funeral wreath, large orders of pizza, and pornographic magazines with David Steiner's name on them were sent to a neighbor's house.

What the fuck is happening?

2019?

What?

eBay?

What is

what?

I don't stop talking shit about us.

All right.

Let's do some crazy shit.

This was 2019?

Like, you mean that site that I occasionally, like, forget exists and then it shows up in the shop results?

You know, next to everything else.

What the fuck?

Hey, do you want to buy the thing you're looking for but damaged and it'll never get to you?

Oh my God.

Oh, not really.

I actually don't really.

That doesn't seem like a good deal.

They flew from California to Boston.

Employees went to to vandal their personal vehicle, break into their garage, and place a GPS tracker on their car.

This is insane.

This is the most insane unhinged fucking thing I've ever...

Okay.

Yeah.

You saying I'm crazy?

I'll show you who's crazy.

That's that energy coming through.

Don't talk shit about eBay.

will I will I will fly to your house and murder you if you talk shit about my company

What the fuck?

Okay

Oh man, we're talking shit about eBay right now

Abram says hello Willie and Pat Abram here

So since you brought up Bamani on the previous podcast and Pat was talking about misspellings, I wanted to send my favorite of all time in 2002 Konami released Guitar Freak's 8th Mix and Drum Mania 7th Mix Power-Up version,

which had the first release, which was the first release to support their EMU system for safe scoring.

On the login screen,

the purpose of the game's release and something appears at the beginning of every game, they misspelled their own company name as KonMai.

This led to an inside joke in the Bumani community.

The classic KanMai quality, for example.

That's so good.

When the company did something disappointing or released something of poor quality.

This is like Revellayatuns or

Cap Kapom.

That's, dude, like

seeing that goddamn Cap Kabom

come up

filled me with an emotion I can't describe.

To make matters worse, Konami was so upset by this that they banned use of Konmai as a player-inputted name in their games, like Beatmania and so on.

Fucking fix it.

It's on the same level as Slurs as the N-word.

So more than 20 years later, they still ban Kanmai in all of their games.

Konami has been mad for 20 plus years.

I love it.

I love it.

Oh, that's beautiful.

That's glorious.

Fantastic.

Never change, man.

You know what?

Commit to it.

Fucking commit.

At this point,

like people are making the new games using, and they're going down a localization Excel sheet of banned terms, and they don't even know why the terms are there anymore, but they just.

What the fuck is a con mine?

Yeah, but they just put them in, right?

It's the monkeys that don't know that approaching the ladder will get them beat up.

Or why.

Wait, what?

The experiment about like you put the ladder and then like the monkeys that climb up, if anything tries to go up to the top and reach for the grape, they all get sprayed with the hose.

Okay.

And so eventually they start attacking any monkey that goes up to the ladder to climb it.

And then eventually they start.

Why are we beating up monkeys that go towards the ladder?

And then we remove the ladder and now we change the monkeys out and now we just beat up monkeys that go towards there.

We don't know why we do it.

It's that.

Like I don't know what Kanmai is, but it says we have to ban it in our game because

20 years ago.

Well now I'm going to start using Kanmai as as a slur because it seems bad if it's next to these other slurs.

Good shit.

Good shit.

I like that.

That's perfect.

All right.

Take it easy, everybody.

Have a good week, bud.