CSB300: ANTIFAE

Happy almost Christmas doesn't mean it was Christmas.

So

there's an incredible thread on the subreddit right now.

I don't know if you saw it.

Which one?

But it says, because of the Phoenix Wright LP,

we get to post this tired old joke.

And you click on it, and it's the fucking message from Kai Lang about fucking this.

Right.

And it's like, oh, man, that's just fucking A plus.

It got me.

It actually got me for real.

It continues.

It continues to get.

Yeah.

All right.

How you doing, Wooly?

You sound like shit.

Well, we are approaching a wall very quickly.

I am

looking at imminent burnout.

Oh, hell yeah, bro.

I'm looking at it.

So, you know, I'm doing what I can do to take care of that.

And this is one of the final obligations I have.

So let's chill it down.

Let's chill it down.

Have like a relaxed...

Yeah, no worries.

I mean, it's ultimately, you know, it's been, yeah,

since tech voibles all the way through preparation for

con travel stuff and

recordings on and off stream and so on, it's been a pretty breakneck pace.

And I landed back yesterday, and so we're going today.

At which point I assume a holiday feeling will suddenly, immediately start, right?

That's going to rejuvenate you, man.

I don't know.

The light of Christ is going to shoot out of your eyes.

A wind will blow through, and then all of a sudden,

all of this fatigue will be gone.

Yeah, no, that era is over.

That era stopped when we stopped believing in Santa Claus.

Sick.

So, hey, look at that.

300.

Today's 300, huh?

That's crazy.

Viewers.

Oh, oh.

Oh.

There's 300 of y'all out there.

Oh, it's 299 today, actually.

Look at that.

Wow.

Apparently, people love Jesus.

People thought today the podcast wasn't going to happen.

Yeah.

They thought that.

But I didn't say anything.

Therefore, the rules apply.

The rules apply.

I don't say nothing.

I'm not too worried about it.

It's okay.

Jesus loves them, too.

Jesus loves everybody.

Except you, guy who knows who I'm talking about.

You know what you did.

I mean,

he did, like,

cleanse out that marketplace of all the merchants and stuff.

You know,

he did talk mad shit that one time by writing something in the dirt.

You know what, Willie?

I'm going to be blunt.

We don't have the time and energy to go into our usual make fun of Jesus diatribe that we do every year.

Fair enough, but this wasn't going to be a make fun of Jesus moment.

This was legit one time people were talking mad shit.

Pharisees were getting uppity.

And Jesus just bent down and wrote something in the sand.

And we don't know what he wrote, but they read it and just walked away.

I bet it was very mean.

He fucking wrecked their shit.

I bet it was the meanest fucking thing you've ever heard.

Yeah, no.

Like,

unironically,

I'm still hype over that story because they got.

The Pharisees are a bunch of bitch boy rage pluggers.

He wrote their fucking, he wrote their Elo.

He wrote their Elo on the ground.

Let's talk about Elo.

Have you been playing Marvel Rivals over the past week at all?

Don't ask me if I've been anything.

Oh, yeah, I got it.

Dude, that game is so good, and I'm so bad at it.

Though, to be fair, I gave up.

I just fully switched back over to mouse and keyboard.

Oh, wow.

Okay.

And

so what's happening is on console, you're unranked.

You can only play with console players.

And on PC, when you play ranked, you can only play with PC players.

But the aim assist does not work the same

on a PC or a console.

Like everything else, like that.

It is much more aggressive on the console.

For sure.

Titanfall, big example.

And what I discovered is that

characters that I thought were good or bad completely inverted once I started using mouse and keyboard.

I was like, I don't know why anyone ever picks Adam Warlock.

And I'm like, oh my God, if you play with a mouse and keyboard, oh my God, Adam Warlock's so fucking good.

Oh my God.

So what you're saying is you're now a Hella main?

No,

I'm too shit for that.

Okay, because the moment you learn how to aim, there's no reason to not just play Hella.

A Hawkeye is actually a lot more fun for me than Hella because, and I saw people test this, the hitbox on his arrow is like five feet around.

It's actually super massive.

Okay, is he a hit scan as well?

No, he's not.

He's Hanzo.

Okay.

Yeah.

I feel like

characters that have just headshot aiming, like one shot down.

I feel so bad about like, yeah, if you had this skill, then you would be able to do this, but you don't.

Go develop that skill.

They did the holiday event with Jeff the Land Shark to when you play not Splatoon.

Ah.

So it's not as good as Splatoon because it's like a themed gimmick game mode.

It's way

not

worse than Splatoon than I expected.

It's much closer to being really good than I thought it was gonna be for a two-week holiday event.

Is it as not worse

from Splatoon as Lucio Ball was from?

Oh, it's much better.

It's much better.

Because Lucio Ball was a not worse,

but well, no, that's not true.

Lucio Ball was worse than

Car Soccer, but

yes, Car Soccer was way better than Lucio Ball.

Yeah, but

it was a little attempt.

It was a fun attempt, you know.

Okay.

Yeah, that Marvel Rivals is kind of unbelievable.

And I don't know if you've been looking around, but when season one comes out in 18 days, there's going to be like six more characters.

Oh, are we still on zero?

Is that what we're going for?

This is zero, yeah.

So, this is the baby starter season.

The next one will last like three months and is going to include the entire Fantastic Four, Blade, Daredevil, and Ultra.

Okay, yeah, man, a whole lot of things came out.

Uh, I'll get to them when I get a chance, but uh, there's there's a lot to take care of.

Uh, but yeah, that Marvel Rivals is kind of unbelievable.

I'm so fucking impressed.

I'm kind of like madly in love with that shit.

Have they dropped any, like, go fuck yourself i don't care i have to have it costumes yet

there's so the battle pass costumes are all really really good like they're all really excellent and um

the uh there's a couple that people are like nuts about but i haven't seen anything that i'm like oh that's absolute must-have

like i paid my five bucks and got the see the the battle pass ones okay but they haven't they haven't dropped the the the personalized nuke no but all the starter costumes are fantastic, to be honest.

Like, I'm super impressed.

Also,

it was trivially easy to bang out the whole Battle Pass.

It took me like a week.

That, once again, has no end date.

So, even if you didn't.

So, I looked that up.

I found out what the deal with that is.

So, the Battle Pass has no end date, but the currency you use to buy things out of it does.

What does that mean?

So, okay, so it's season zero now.

Yeah.

And you get the little purple tokens that you use to buy things out of Battle Pass, right?

At the end of season zero, your purple tokens will be set to zero.

And if you want to spend season one using your season one purple tokens to buy stuff out of season zero, you can.

So if you want to have everything out of all the passes, you do have to constantly keep playing.

But if you do,

yes.

Basically, they don't want to make it so that you can save up coins to just bang out battle passes the day they come out.

Okay, okay.

So you can still buy the old thing that you didn't get, but you have to use the current season's currency

to do so.

Gotcha.

Okay, okay.

So, yeah, in the end, you can end up wasting your

time.

And what it means is that basically, if you bought a battle pass that you were loved with, but you did never got to it, like, oh, I stopped playing for three months, you can then go, well, I don't care about any of these new ones.

I want to go get that battle pass that I got a couple months ago.

Okay, that is not as generous as it initially sounded, but it is a decent compromise in the sense that it's not attacking you with the worst FOMO, which is the usual goal.

As somebody who has interacted with many of these gas games and their battle passes and all this shit.

This,

the only one that does it better is Helldivers.

Because Helldivers, you just earn currency forever and the Battle Passes are available forever.

Right.

Yeah.

I don't know if Season Zero is going to go away in 19 days.

Okay.

But ultimately, for most people, I think it's like the thing that you want to get is available.

You just have to go play the current game to get it.

Yeah.

Is more than fine.

Like, so, yeah, if you buy one battle pass a year and it takes you six months to earn the currency to do it, you can.

And it was whatever.

I think that's actually a fairly good compromise.

And there's no like season zero currency is worth twice as much type nonsense or shit.

So yeah, that's it's ultimately just like if you come back to it after a while, play the current season to earn enough to go back to buy the old thing.

That being said, I can't believe how good the game is at the free level.

Like, it's, it's crazy.

It's, it's, it's bananas, in fact.

Uh, so you haven't been playing anything.

How was Holiday Matsuri?

So yeah,

that went pretty cool.

Went down, returned to Florida.

And

after,

so at first, you know, I joked about like, hey, how about that Waffle House, round two, you know, Rebel 2?

Should we eat the rematch?

And then it was like...

Okay, wait, where should we go, wait?

And it's like, okay, no, wait, seriously?

Are we actually...

And ultimately, we decided not to.

But in lieu of going to the Waffle House for a second round, I did finally get a chance to experience TGI Fridays.

Oh, thank goodness it's Fridays.

Yeah.

And it was during the holidays, so I didn't get to see all the flare that should be worn, you know, with the pins and such.

But

yeah, that is a fast, casual, mid-ass menu that delivers exactly what it says and

well I wasn't hungry when I left you know it was what what day did you go on to the CGI Fridays

I think we went on a Saturday

yeah it was it's fine it was fine

you know I kind of of the places I've tried where I've walked away going okay like this is a fast casual chain or whatever but you know what the the that that cracker barrel intimidating aura and all still had some pretty tasty biscuits or the the b-dubs the buffalo wild wings yeah okay the boneless wings aka nuggets they had like those i had oh you mean the throat annihilating boneless wings why are they throat annihilators oh you didn't hear about this so there's a dude who ate a buffalo wild wing and like slashed his esophagus on the bones inside it

and he sued them and he's like what the fuck you guys said this was boneless And then he lost that lawsuit because the courts in the U.S.

decided that boneless wings don't have to have no bones in them.

Oh, fuck me.

I didn't hear about that.

No.

Okay.

Well,

yeah, that's insane.

Although, you should be chewing your food, like, to be perfectly honest.

But that's crazy.

No one on God's earth can tell me to chew my food if I don't want to.

No, you can put yourself at choking harm's risk if you want to.

But yeah, that is still bullshit.

You can't advertise, you should not be able to advertise boneless and then put an asterisk that says may contain bones.

That's why I only asked for my pizza boneless.

God damn that judicial system.

We

so the warnings were clear.

There was

a possibility that the events I described, fighting game charades and sound trivia quiz, might have cringe factor.

It's possible.

Turns out it was okay.

Oh yeah.

Yes, I did cringe test.

I did make sure.

And actually, no, if anything,

I was kind of thinking about like how the difficulty might work for people across both.

And the charades went really, really well.

It was a it was a pretty fun time.

The only downside, of course, is that it was on Friday morning, so not as many people were there because most people get their Saturday passes for conventions and stuff.

But yeah, we had a game.

People came up in teams, and they had to...

The main, the key to that game was

you don't get to just do whatever fighting game move you think you know how to do and make people guess it because someone coming up there being terrible and just doing a jab or something and being like, yeah, guess who's or whatever is that's dumb.

So I made sure to pick the moves, and you had to choose from a list of those and then do your best to take a crack at it.

And we picked some pretty good ones.

Not to mention, we had a system where you could call in an assist and have me or Reggie jump in and

do it

for you if you looked at it and went, I don't know what the fuck this is.

And it's like, all right, assist.

We'll come out and do it.

It was really fun.

Obviously,

you know how well it's going to go when somebody goes up and does their best Merkava, right?

That's our long-armed undernight.

That's tough, man.

But it worked, you know.

Pretty good.

Same thing for sound trivia, which is up now, actually, on Willie vs.

the algorithm.

Is the erge noise in there?

It sure is.

The first half second of the noise.

And sure enough, people went, oh, God, that yes and totally got awful noise the first frame of the erge noise was enough for people to get it so yeah that worked out and uh we gave out some prizes for folks to go to the artist alley um so no it was really that those those events were a lot of fun

um it is it is interesting because like you know bending balancing things for difficulty even if you pick like the easiest noises which like oh it's tough man so some noises are super easy for people, but like the person next to you has knowledge that you don't.

So, the person that's heard the wheel of fate is turning a thousand times has not heard the intro drums to third strike, you know.

Yeah, and you're both like, oh, oh, oh, but then your blind spot is right there, and it's like, that's why the goal was get three in a row, you know.

And uh, yeah, I love that feeling of seeing like you know your anime games super well, but like certainly they existed.

Those blinded blinded by ambition is flying right overhead, you know.

Um,

so yeah, those were a lot of fun.

Um,

what else went on?

Uh, Pro Z D was there, finally got uh, finally got to go say what's up.

Uh,

and uh, that was nice, you know, just like hey, yo, hey, burp, burp.

How's King Dragon?

Hanging out, doing his thing, doing all right.

Um,

nice fellow, and uh, then I decided to roll for some IRL gacha.

Oh, yeah.

I saw that.

I saw that shit.

So I walked by the 10.0 booth.

And 10.0, they have a bunch of cool merch, including like I got this buckler shirt, you know, and some other cool stuff that they have from different fighting games.

And one of the things they got is the

third strike pins of like certain characters doing certain moves, but they're blind boxes.

So I'm like, I see an Aegis Reflector.

I see Hyakaretsukik,

you know, and then

Makoto,

you know, doing her Fukuyagi.

And I was like, okay, well,

let me,

you know, most of these are pretty cool.

There's only a couple things here that I wouldn't necessarily want, but it's fine.

Let's roll for it.

And I opened it up, and yeah, sure enough, it was a Yun activating Genajin.

And it was the super rare version that had the Ganagian ghost colors on and it's like the hardest one to get and I'm like motherfucker I don't want this this is what defeated Chairithi in third strike this year at Evo

fuck this thing I hate this stupid thing

you know um and then it was like all right let me just go two more and then I get a Dudley and then I get another Yun and it's like son of a bitch come on you know and that's when Reggie I'm just too good damn and then reggie was like all right no fuck that i'm going in and he grab reggie grabs two and then it's another two dudleys

and then our friend who was with us she grabs another one and it's another yun and like by the end it's three yuns and three fucking dudleys and i'm just like what is this shit man well you can either you can either just pull one

or keep pulling till you get what you want.

I'm reminded of the Devil May Cry diamond distributing toys from like DMC1,

where it was like, you get one Dante per case and 19 puppets.

Yeah, that's so fucked up.

Beat shit.

Everyone hated.

Every store owner was like, fuck this company after that.

So yeah, I'm like, where's...

Where's my pity system?

What's going on?

And they're like, ah, you know, that's what it is.

I'm like, god damn it.

So I tweeted that out afterwards.

I just took a picture and I went, fuck gotcha, or whatever.

And, um,

you know, and then Ultra David, who's like of Ted O is just like, thank you for your patronage.

We appreciate your stick-to-utiveness.

I'm like, I just promoted the Black Friday sale on a couple videos for y'all.

What the hell?

You know?

But it's like, yeah, all right.

They know.

They know that third strike is for the people that want it.

And they know that like the chances of somebody coming out for this merch merch and being a whale, if they even notice it, are high.

This long after the fact, if you see Third Strike merch and you're getting in there, you're probably looking to whale it.

But then Hanzo, Gonzo,

thanks, Hanzo, behind the scenes was just like, hey,

if you head back over there, I told him you can, you know,

just to grab one out there for you.

So the pity system actively actually.

The pity system wasn't really a pity system.

It it was a pity slash friend system it was a it was a influencer slash friend slash fg like i know a guy system i know a guy in the back pity system yes exactly 100

absolutely um so you've transcended like the pity system to just straight like pity

just like oh no oh

yeah well i got my i got my goddamn pin and um you know what?

That battle passed.

And that's what matters.

And that battle pass wasn't too bad in the end.

Yeah, this game's all right.

I'm going to keep playing.

Fuck, man.

I was like, can't you at least do the thing where you do the x-rays and then you package them together so that you have a set that guarantees the full set if you want to go all in?

No.

No.

Anyway.

Just keep buying them till you win.

So we we did that, and

I guess there was a bit of a lag hiccup, but yeah.

Yeah, I know, it happened on my end, too.

Okay.

Seems all right.

I don't worry about it.

Keep an eye on it.

Yeah, went out

with

a couple of folks, Dio Sama and Kitsune Star, took us out for Ethiopian food.

I've never had Ethiopian food.

Oh, Paige is crazy about Ethiopian food.

Yeah, I didn't know.

I mean, it was pretty good.

I kind of, the only, like, I remember once there was um a lady who was braiding my hair when i was younger and she was kind of um she asked me to like she's like oh do you want to stay for dinner because it's taking a while and it was like sitting around with the communal kind of eating thing and you know you just kind of do it with your hands and i was like i'm good on that um

it was uh Yeah, it was, it wasn't like during COVID or anything, but it certainly wasn't particularly sanitary vibes.

It's good for you, man.

But what you get when you go to the actual cuisine restaurant is like your own thing to hand pick out of and sanitizer as well.

So they obviously have that part covered.

But you get some really good, like, yeah, it's like a, you get like a, like a soft bread to just kind of pick things up with.

And it was great.

It was great.

Like, it reminded me of like grabbing like naan and eating a curry with it type of thing.

So

yeah, if you've got an Ethiopian food place and you've never tried it in your neighborhood, consider that.

It's different.

We

also

got to.

Oh, yeah.

Ventus Fury, really nice gentleman that liked, it was the person that originally turned me on to Buckies.

You know,

then first

preached about the good word of Buckies.

Came back with a bunch of stuff, like just box full of, got a cyberpunk guide and a board game that's like called React, just like a fighting game board game or something to check out.

So thank you very much for that stuff.

Very, very kind.

And

another kind person came up and handed me The Infinite and the Divine,

a Warhammer 40k

love story.

So,

I might crack this open at some point and find out because the pitch was pretty cool.

It was basically something about like,

what if two salty immortal fuckers were after one thing?

What's it called?

The Infinite and the Divine.

Oh,

is it?

Yes.

You mean that book Paige has been ranting and raving to me about for weeks and just went on a book club to talk about?

Like, literally,

yesterday?

This exact one?

Oh, yeah.

Infinite and divine.

Traz and the infinite.

That's the one.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, shit.

That's awesome.

How about that timing?

So it's pretty good then.

Yeah, Paige went on the numbskulls and did a little book report about that.

I think that came out yesterday.

Well, there you go.

Okay.

Yeah, I was told that this is, if you're like, this is the good one.

It's apparently super incredible.

Okay.

Okay.

That it's incredible, Willie.

You'll love it.

Okay.

I don't know when I'm going to crack it open,

but the pitch of like, if you're going to check check out some of this lore, this is an awesome place to start.

And also,

yeah, just again, two immortal salty fuckers going after it.

So

I have not personally read the book, but I now know many people who have.

And I have been told there's one problem with reading that book is your introduction to 40K.

It never gets to be funny.

That book is really funny

in a way that 40K books are not.

Are not.

Yeah, yeah.

Okay, right.

It's the introduction, but also from here, you're in.

It's also the weird one.

And it's all downhill.

No, no, not downhill.

It's just like

it's not like a gut buster the way these two shitty old robots are.

Okay.

Um,

damn.

What the hell are the odds of that?

Unless it was,

unless it was, you know what, this might have been a coordinated two-prong attack, perhaps.

Maybe, but 40k's time is now.

Okay.

Well, duly noted, I have put it aside, so

I'll take a look.

And yeah, I think beyond that, it was a good time.

They had CEO Taku at the same time down there.

Did you win?

Compete.

I'm working.

Like, I'm doing multiple events a day.

Ah, so you, yeah, you would have.

But you were busy.

I was very busy.

That's correct.

You know, so I let someone else take a crack at it.

There was a really cool

dance arcade machine I saw that apparently has been a thing for a couple of years now, but I've just never come across it.

It's a Konami game called Dance Rush.

And Konami has been like, you know, post-DDR has been keeping it up and releasing new games and one-off things, but pretty much exclusively to Japan or round one.

Dance Rush, huh?

So if you're in America and you're like, you have round ones near you, then that's awesome.

You're lucky you have the opportunity to play these games still.

But otherwise, if you live anywhere else like we do, fuck off.

That's not happening.

But yeah, Dance Rush Stardom just caught my attention because it's like.

There's no buttons.

There's no buttons on the dance mat, right?

So if you want to DDR it, it's all about where you are horizontally on this large like light up touch mat, pressure sensitive.

That's crazy.

And so note charts are coming at you

that sway from left to right, and it asks you to put your left and right feet in position and move them around and step and slide and sometimes jump or crouch according to what's coming at you on the note chart.

But the end result of like what it's sending at you teaches you how to shuffle.

Yeah, I'm watching two guys play it right now, and like they're shuffling all over the fucking place.

Yeah, it's not just the, it's not like, oh, hey, just dance where your whole body thing is there.

And it's not just like the, um you know do this body gesture it's like no no no the notes are asking you to learn how to shuffle and then learn how to do the running man and learn how to do a bunch of other actual dances and it it's really cool um yeah it it it's it's set up in a way where like because the thing about ddr of course is that you know you get to the highest difficulties of that especially competitively it starts getting weird Well, because you have freestyle and then you have points, you know, and like there's a point where you're just like, this is a billion notes that you're grabbing the bar and going

and like there's nothing resembling a dance anymore, you know.

Yeah, high-level DDR, I've seen a lot of people like lean back and hold the bar behind them so that they can just tap as fast as possible.

Like, well, this doesn't look like dancing at all.

Right, exactly.

And like, as you know, the freestyle competitions are where you get to do that.

But for these ones, it's not.

And here, but here, the actual game is really teaching you like actually how to dance and move and stuff.

And I found that pretty dope.

So yeah, it's interesting as hell, very cool.

and I'd love to try it out more, but uh, you gotta be in America near a round one or in Japan, and that's it.

Because it also turns out that like Konami has exclusively released machines just to this store only, they don't even sell them to like rat regular arcade operators anymore.

Oh, man, um, anyway, so yeah, but that's pretty much it.

If you came out to Hall Matt and I met you, um, thanks for doing so.

Had a good time, very fun.

Me and Reggie got to meet some cool people, and uh, yeah, very, very chill overall.

Good games

on the arcade setups and everything.

Saw someone running a really cool hacked rock band with all the music you want in it.

Oh, that's awesome, and I'm like, damn, I kind of always wanted that.

I didn't know it existed, but it's like, yeah, the 360 version with just whatever, like literally all.

I want it all, all everything you want in it, like set by game.

And I'm like, oh, there's the revengeance fucking OST.

There's Sonic Frontiers, you know, all of it.

So it was very cool.

This week, I am back.

I'm recording this.

He's back.

And I'm going to collapse after this is done.

Tomorrow is going to be Christmas.

And then depending on how much battery I have left, if I get my energy, we might do a two streams or one stream on Thursday or Friday.

Please look to my Twitter and Blue Sky for schedule announcements because we still got to check out Cyberpunk.

Phoenix Wright has one more session, and A Thousand X Resist is going on as well.

So we're coming back with that.

There's a lot, like, I'm going to, I'm not going to get a crack at MVCI and beyond just yet, but obviously that's a big one.

Shout outs to Max and crew for releasing a fucking amazing looking.

This is the best mod pack I've ever seen for it's up there, like just about anything.

And like, um,

it's what, like, the moment we saw that, like, oh, like, you, the Marvel 3

had the ability for people to just, like, yeah, throw in your own cut characters and stuff.

I'm so, I'm glad that, like, Max kind of saw it as like the opportunity with the same thing, which is like, fuck the individual groups of people making cool things here and there in, you know, apart from each other.

Unite it and make one big, awesome effort together.

And then got like, yeah, music from like Alex Mucala and Lil V and people doing all kinds of new soundtracks, like new art for the character logos and like top to bottom incredible

efforts.

So

when we get a chance to come back and take a look at that, I will.

Not to mention Corupt, the other fighting game, just came out too.

So

more about that soon.

But yeah, for this week, maybe one, maybe two, maybe zero if I'm dead.

I might just be completely completely collapsed and out of it.

Streams later this week,

as well as a bit of a season finale for the year of Versus Wolves is coming out too.

So that's going to be on Friday.

Check out my schedule to find out exactly when I'm going to go live.

And yeah, I might just give a half-hearted thumbs up and do like a half-Phoenix right stream and call it a day.

Okay.

Well, you need some nap time.

Nappy time with Woolly is

priority number one.

Fuck.

What's going on?

All right.

So first things first, I don't believe we had a confirmed name at the end of last week's podcast, but I'm here to tell you that this dude has been officially named Caboose.

There you go.

Back that shit up.

He was almost Tras in the Infinite, actually.

He was almost knuckles or elbows, but it is caboose.

What you going to do?

What you going to do with all that junk inside that trunk?

Because he, well, because when he stands,

he just throws his ass around all the time.

And also, Wooly, you were the deal breaker on this

when we contacted you.

So thanks again.

Okay, okay.

Thanks for naming so many things in our household.

Hey.

You're just a little little baby.

Good names are good.

It's important.

No, the image conjured up of a wide load fucking coming through as that ass is shuffling around is incredible and fantastic.

Not to mention, there's a subtle little red versus blue in there.

Yeah, but also when he gets his wheelchair, he's going to look like a little dog train.

There's that.

There's that.

Yeah.

Let's see.

What else is going on?

I played Marvel Rivals a lot.

Yeah, I played, I've started going through the Metal Gear series on stream.

That also came out.

The Delta.

So that came out last year.

Oh, like the collection?

The collection came out last year.

Okay.

But it was so fucked up.

It was super fucked up.

I don't know if you remember that.

But like, you couldn't run it at good frame rates.

It had all sorts of control problems, etc.

Okay, it got fixed.

So it got fixed.

So I'm like, okay, fine.

This year,

in that, you know, that December to February lull,

right?

Let's do the Metal Gear Solid Volume 1 collection.

And Delta 2.

Last night, I played for the first time Metal Gear 1 for the MSX.

Have you played Metal Gear 1 for the MSX?

Yeah, like a million years ago.

I was astonished in just how many elements from Metal Gear got recreated going forward

down to the microwave hallway.

There is a microwave hallway at the end of MG1.

So it's kind of funny because like the old, the first Metal Gear games, like proper, not even, not the Nest, but like proper MSX releases.

MSX show you that like Kojima barely tried with the with the new ideas.

Like he kind of just remade those games.

The same game like five times in a row.

It was nuts with the same twists and everything.

You know, and it's like, it's a wrap.

Like, it's not a wrap.

The same twists over and over.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Snolid Snake in particular is like, it's like, wow, just doing it again.

Okay.

Fresh coat of paint.

But it's cool, though.

It was fucking sick.

Yeah.

Yeah.

No, I am astonished at how solid that game is for 87.

Like, it like, yeah, it's one of those things that you kind of backhanded compliment where you call like an old game like, wow, it's still really playable, right?

Like,

there's like, it's like got an annoying inventory system with the card keys, but like, aside from that, like, no, it's, it's like, no complaints.

So like, it's great.

I remember learning that from, because Ghost Babel was very reminiscent of it, right?

Like when they went, and from having a fun when, from playing Ghost Babel and kind of seeing like, oh yeah, shit, like, this design holds up and does work.

And

I'm, my hope is that, like, okay, we're in a future where

Kojima has gone his separate ways, and that's understandably what it is.

We're going to see Delta come out here, and,

you know, David Hayter is like the face of the series now.

There's undoubtedly going to be more effort to revitalize this franchise and make some money that Konami is going to put forward.

I'm imagining they're going to go back to these games likely and try to spruce them up before they give an attempt at something original, which might go horribly sideways with an MGS6.

I would expect we would see the second volume of the collection first

being 4 and Peacewalker.

4 on PC.

But,

like...

Pops and Acid deserve to live also.

And Ghost Baple.

There are other games they can resell, that they can port, that can be freed.

This is true.

But like,

once we're past the efforts of like porting everything locked,

I imagine the safe move would be,

okay, we did Snake Eater and, you know, didn't fuck around with it too much.

It's like literally just the same, even like the same voice clips, right?

Everybody's getting paid again, and we're keeping all that.

So this kind of thing where like Metal Gear Original and Metal Gear 2 Solid Snake could be like

proper buffed up into more.

I think remaking

Metal Gear 1 and 2 are like is kind of a ridiculous idea considering Metal Gear Solid and Metal Gear Solid 2 are so Metal Gear Solid is a remake of Metal Gear 1 and 2 and Metal Gear Solid 2 is a remake of Metal Gear Solid 1.

Like in canon.

Yes.

And the problem is if you try to make it fit into the existing timeline and such and go back and retcon things aggressively, you're going to run into huge problems where it was not supposed to be this.

Like these games are sequels, but also replacements.

But I think if an attitude of kind of just like, fuck it, we're remaking the first one.

Shut up.

You know,

is still one way to go about it.

And I would rather, personally, I would rather that than

the original crack at six, you know Metal Gear Survive had an original story and and we heard about that Metal Gear Survive would have been fine if it didn't have metal gear on it like there are parts of that game that are cool But the fact that it's like the aftertaste of firing Kojumbo

like

that thing was doomed

And then the and your secret ending that's that fits all the pieces together is fucking wild

But yeah, I could just you know, I could see

an attempt that is basically like the reimagining and or like, don't worry about how it fits in.

But, you know, we're sprucing up those old games.

You know what they should do?

They should fucking remake Snake's Revenge.

That's what they should fucking do.

That would be fucking cool.

Completely non-canon fucking.

But to do that and ignore the others completely.

Yeah, no, do that.

No, new timeline going off of Snake's Revenge.

Brutal.

That hurts.

Right.

The one that had nothing to do with Kojima.

Oh, my God.

He says it's cool.

He says he thinks it's cool.

Actually, a ghost babel

remake

could rock as well.

I still, I still fucking love that.

But anyway.

But yeah, Metal Gear.

Metal Gear is good.

I played a little bit of Metal Gear for the Ness last night and was planning to go through it until I found out that after the intro, it's like literally the same exact game, but worse.

Yep.

It's

a grunt.

So I'm going to just skip it.

It goes straight to Metal Gear 2 tomorrow on Christmas, which was the plan because Metal Gear 2 takes place on Christmas.

It takes place on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day.

No shit.

Yep.

I forgot.

It is one of the only Christmas games.

Bayonetta 2?

Bayonetta 2 is also Christmas.

That's Christmas Day.

And Yakuza 1 and 5 are also Christmas.

Hmm.

Cool.

All right.

There's not that many.

There are really not that many.

Home Alone for the Ness, Parasite Eve, Die Hard.

The Die Hard.

Next Pain.

sure

arkham origins, really.

I didn't know that.

Um,

but that's what's been going on, true.

What's that?

Miles Morales.

Oh, yeah, that is a great idea.

Okay,

uh, so that's been what's been going on on video games.

Been playing a lot of fucking rivals.

That game's so goddamn good.

Um, and I also went back and played some DD, and I have a DD story for you, Woolly, that I would love to hear your opinion on.

So if you'll excuse me, little caboose.

Okay, buddy.

All right.

So

in our group, there's the DM, there's me, there's Paige, there's the Paladin and the Fighter, which are not part of this story.

And then there's a third person.

Let's call them Jimmy.

Let's let's just give them the fake name of Jimmy.

Random name out of the E.

Random name.

Okay.

I heard so I heard some drama went down.

Let's go.

So we do session zero, and in session zero, we're all like, hey, I'm going to be paladin.

I'm going to be this, you know, that kind of thing, right?

And we're trying to do that.

And I sit there and I say, hey, I'm taking notes.

I have a bunch of different ways I can play my character, everybody.

The only thing I want to know,

what are you playing so that I don't play the exact same character.

And I speak to the DM about like my idea and I go, all I want is to not play like the same class as somebody else.

If there's a paladin, I don't want to be a second paladin.

If there's a cleric, I don't want to be the second cleric, right?

That's your only specified.

That is my only ask because it is my first game.

Okay.

Right.

And then I ask Jimmy, hey man, what are you going to be playing?

And they won't tell me what race their character is, which is kind of weird right off the bat, and actually just refuses.

And then says, I'm thinking of playing a bard-like character.

I go, okay,

I'm not playing a bard.

I want to play a warlock.

And that works out well.

We've got a paladin, a fighter, a sorcerer, a warlock, and a bard.

Okay, great.

Now that's a lot of chaw.

That's a lot of charisma, but okay, fine.

And then we all roll our stats and talk about our stats and where we're gonna put our stats.

And you know, I'm gonna put this here.

And that goes fairly well.

And then we run

three or four sessions in which Jimmy has a problem.

And the problem with Jimmy is that Jimmy is a DM for other games.

And that is a problem because when I turn to the DM of our game and go, hey, am I rolling insight or this or that?

Or how does that work?

Jimmy jumps ahead before the DM can say anything and answers for him,

which then precludes me going,

no, but DM, what is the answer to my question?

Okay, a little over eager on that.

And also, he also gets some stuff wrong, so it's not even like particularly helpful as like an answer.

And And then eager and wrong.

Eager and wrong.

So kind of like me sometimes, honestly.

Gotcha.

Okay, okay.

But on top of that, on top of that, when other people are role-playing,

he starts to role play his character on top of your scene by just talking over you.

Okay.

Okay.

Right?

While you're talking.

Yeah, while you're talking.

Okay.

Like interrupting you to talk about your thing.

Okay, okay.

And it's not too bad.

And again, these are private sessions, right?

These are just two guys just playing together.

These are in meat space.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

Gotcha.

And I should mention that he talks over Paige more specifically.

Oh.

And Paige happens to be the only lady at the table.

I don't know if that has anything to do with it, but who knows?

Interesting observation.

Okay.

Right.

So,

oh, okay.

So we continue, blah, blah, blah.

And after the, so he does, he's not super active unless someone else is talking.

And then

in the Facebook group chat that we use to schedule it, we'll just dump like 2,000-word pieces of fan fiction about what their character did when we couldn't see them.

Okay, okay.

Got it.

Right?

Like pages, pages of shit.

And it's like, okay.

Okay.

That's crucial.

That's big.

Okay.

So then we go to the last session, the last session that we were at, okay?

So

me and Paige don't know some of the players here very well, right?

They're people that showed up for the game.

Like we know the DM fairly well, but we're like, we don't know the paladin fairly well, right?

Yeah, so the paladin starts telling us stories about his ex-wife, and these are crazy, these are crazy stories, and we are like enraptured and we're making a rapport and we're having a good time.

And this is the beginning of the session, this is the setup, right?

So, like, the DM is like in the toilet.

I think he was taking a shit while we're discussing this, right?

So, you know, making friends, chatting it up, that kind of thing.

And Jimmy

slams his hands on the table, goes, guys,

we only get so much time to do DD a week.

Can we please just focus on Dungeons and Dragons?

To which I say,

dude,

and I say, I think it was, DM is an inherently social experience.

Like, we're having a social experience.

Also, the DM is not in the room.

We're not slowing down

the game because he's not here.

And he stands up

and he mutters under his breath, what I think he said was, Guess I'm just a fucking asshole then, and storms out of the room to

go angrily smoke weed outside.

Okay.

Okay.

Got it.

And he comes back in high as balls.

Like nothing happened.

Like that interaction didn't occur.

Oh, no.

The road trip is already on its way.

Everyone got in the car and we're moving.

Yeah.

We're going.

So, yeah.

So.

You didn't know who was in the car.

So, hey, can we please focus on D ⁇ D?

I say it's social.

Paige says, hey, don't worry about it.

And then on the way out, he mutterly angry, like mainly to Paige, but to the

fucking asshole and go like panic, smoke, some reefer.

Does right DM weigh in at all?

So DM is coming back into the room as this is happening and is like, huh?

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

All right, so the session starts straight up.

This is the talkie overest, interruptingest session of all.

It is, it is so extreme that, okay, so I'm going to back it up.

You know me and Paige fairly well.

We don't have problems with conflict, particularly speaky, talky conflict, right?

But this is a DD game, and this is like a new group of people, and we don't want to do that thing that we do where we just solve the problem, right?

Okay.

Because then this person will just dip.

Okay.

And then it might be like a whole thing.

So we're socially feeling out.

We're being real careful not to step on toes and be kind.

No,

being normal.

Yes, okay.

But it got so bad that I had to at one point go, I am asking the DM for his ruling on the rules.

I'm not asking you.

First of all, I'm not talking to you, but I'm not asking you for the rules as written.

I'm asking the DM

what his decision is on this rule

because he's the fucking arbiter of the table.

Right?

Okay.

Okay.

So that all all ends up, but whatever.

We actually have a really good time, all things considered.

And then at the end, hey, we're using milestone XP.

So we level up.

This is the first level up.

We're going from one to two.

It's a big deal.

It's a good milestone.

And we go, yay, blah, blah, blah.

And

we're like, okay, so then we're driving home because Paige is picking up and driving Jimmy and one of the other guys because they don't have cars.

So we're doing them the favor by bringing them to the DD location.

And I'm sitting passenger, and Jimmy is sitting directly behind me, right?

This is important.

So I go, oh, cool.

We're going to level up.

What are you guys going to do with your level ups?

Right?

Because I have this, this, and that, and you have this, this, and that.

And the fighter starts talking about what they want to do, and they get action surge, and they're excited about having action surge.

It's very normal, right?

And I say, say, Oh, I'm probably going to put points in this.

And the Jimmy says, Oh, well, you know what?

I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it because all I have to attack is

Eldritch Blast.

And I go, But you're playing a bard.

You don't have Eldritch Blast.

He goes, Ah, well,

maybe I'm playing a Warlock.

And I go,

I go, Well,

I'm playing a Warlock.

I'm

Well, what subclass are you going to be playing?

He's like, oh,

I was thinking about

Great Old One Warlock.

And I go,

I'm playing Great Old One Warlock.

I talked about this

at session zero.

And I go, okay, so what, what, okay, so I'm like, I'm like trying to figure out.

So what, what invocations are you, because the main, the main thing you would get as a warlock to differentiate yourself is invocations.

What invocations are you going for?

And he goes, I'm thinking about Pact of the Tome because there's a lot of good cantrips in there.

And I go,

that's the one that I picked.

And you know that because I've been using those

cantrips.

And I'm just

sitting here going, yep, yep, yep.

Like out of 12 classes, it's mine.

Out of four subclasses, it's mine.

Out of 12 invocations, it's mine.

So I'm sitting here.

I'm like,

it's the same character.

Like this is like mechanically, this is the, it's the same.

It's the same character.

And

I get home and I'm like, okay,

you know what?

I'm going to pull up my phone.

I'm going to go onto the Facebook.

I'm going to go, hey, what

skills?

You know, like deception

are you aiming for?

Because I was planning to be a skill monkey.

Entertain the farce further, by all means.

And he goes, oh, well, just if you don't want overlap, just don't be sneaky or sleight of hand or anything like that because I'm going to go for a disguise character.

And I'm like, so my whole character's backstory is that he's poor, so he has a stealth advantage.

And I was the one who did all the sleight of hand checks over the past three sessions.

So like, oh, so it's everything.

It is literally every single mechanical decision that could be is the same.

And there's been three sessions so far, so there's no chance for all this to be discovered by the whole game.

Everyone knows the deal.

Yep.

And

I'm like, okay.

So, yeah, yeah.

So let's stop here.

Let's stop the story here.

Sure.

I was in bed staring at my ceiling, just like

fuming, like falling asleep,

pissed off.

Okay, okay.

Just like outraged.

you

first of all, for your first game ever, this is the worst possible beat.

This sucks.

Because

this guy exists, right?

A detail of importance.

Most of us are using the D ⁇ D Beyond app.

The D ⁇ D Beyond app in the campaign menu lists your character's name, profile picture, class, HP, passive perception, etc.

Right?

So it's visible.

It's clearly visible.

Except this Jimmy just isn't actually using the app.

He's just singularly deciding not to use the app because of

secret.

All right.

My verdict

is Yimby.

That is...

Oh, I knew you were drawing Yimby.

I knew it.

That is that is what I have decided.

That is what I'm calling right here.

So you have, unfortunately, just landed.

You rolled a one in terms of luck.

Wild.

Absolutely banana.

The person you're going to be playing the fucking game with.

That's insane and sucks because you hear stories about this type of game.

This is actually multiple different subtypes of that guy combined into one.

And like...

What I can't tell is, are you hearing like a petulant bitch who's who's mad about getting talk getting a talking to

right and and and the the fan fiction and all that not being taken seriously and just the you know like is this retaliatory or is it just that's cool i'm that right so is it just the actual child brain so i'm of the belief so there's a detail that uh i didn't put out that he started he's his character is pretending to be a bard as a warlock because

their character as ever since they were a little child, has dreamt of being an in-universe influencer,

which has also raised a heckle.

Now,

what I believe is happening here

is that this person, influencer warlock, has been a meme over the past year.

I don't know, you're probably not familiar with that, but influencer warlock has become a meme alongside stuff like lawful good necromancer and

chaotic evil warlock who has an angel as a patron.

Just like

goofy little bits.

Funny, funny bits.

Yeah, yeah, members.

Right.

Yeah, okay.

So I believe that this is a combination of a wild lack of originality and horrible coincidence.

And here's where the horrible coincidence comes in because my options in this kind of interpersonal conflict are go up top, talk to the DM, see how this can be resolved.

I asked the DM, hey man, um,

so I asked you in person four times that all I wanted was to have a unique character.

Um, did you know that he was rolling this thing?

He's like, yeah, but you, since your characters are different, I didn't think it would be a problem.

And I go, but it is a problem.

And I, I, I, I'll admit, I typed out like an essay.

I typed like, you know, when you're like, when you got it and you're just like, fuck it.

Yeah.

I typed out this massive essay that's like, but now my mechanical and narrative opportunities in this DD game are as the other warlock,

which is not appealing to me.

But also, the two primary ways to deal with this type of double class situation is either to have characters be entwined in their backstory like coworkers.

or intentionally antagonistic style rivals, which I don't want to do because I don't like this person because they keep talking over me.

Right.

And right?

Like, if Paige and I wanted to roll Double Wizard, yeah, I'll fucking like shit fight Double Wizard all day because it's my wife and I know how to back and forth with her, right?

And how did uh, how did our captain respond over here?

So did he, is he going to fix it?

Or did he not know?

The DM offered profuse apologies okay and we actually uh we actually ran into him at the grocery store uh like this morning okay uh the not planned just like oh hey man

and uh the long and short of it is that i get uh i get a free re-roll on the whole character um because we we but everyone is aware that trying to force jimmy to change anything about his character is going to result in some kind of interpersonal disaster

And I am just gonna, I am just gonna fucking dodge that bullet right now.

And I just completely rebuilt the entire character and changed what I needed to change in the background to be a cleric instead.

There's no cleric.

I kept all my roles from the original session and I re-slotted them and I changed the backstory to be appropriate.

Okay, okay.

So, on top of that, the DM feels very bad that while also

like not like allowing this to happen, he actually disallowed a character race for Paige's character because it would require more work.

But now he realizes that he could fix it.

So Paige is going to be able to change her character to something much more appropriate at a later date in some narrative event.

So she's super happy about it.

And like, we're tweaking all the backstory and all that crap so that it

works.

Okay.

I have also gone to the trouble of writing in some racism into my character's backstory because

Jimmy is clearly playing as a changeling, which is a type of Fae, and we're playing a campaign in the Fae wilds.

So, I'm just going to insert some anti-fey racism into my character's backstory, which is going to give me a narrative and mechanical reason as the only party member with healing to just never,

ever heal this person for the entire campaign.

Just never.

Okay.

That's a hell of a response, Salvo.

So here's the thing, I guess.

You're a part of a group, right?

Yeah.

So there are others who are perceiving this bullshit going down and like

can see what's happening, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Um,

do they have feelings on the matter?

Like, uh, Paladin, Paladin has, uh, uh, doesn't, doesn't come with us in the car, so he missed, like, 99% of this.

Gotcha.

Okay.

Uh, and, uh, and the fighter is too chill.

You know, those people that are just, like, too chill?

Okay.

Okay.

That, like, kind of let everything go and always have, like, a smile?

Like, he's just super chill.

Because, like, I mean, i know like circumstances you know you you don't you do what you can with what you got in your role with the punches which you have designed here um

for me just based on the types of stories that i know about people that behave that way and like that from friends i know that play dnd as well and have talked about these types of people like the get out and storm out of the room person yeah is like they leave or the or we all leave like that's so here's where I'm at.

You can't play nicely with that person because inside, no lessons will be learned.

The same mistakes not only will continue to be made, but they just escalate because that person's an asshole.

And there's just no

here's where I'm at.

This is a slightly more complex situation than I'm usually dealt with.

Yeah.

The DD community in my area, lots of people know each other.

And with this being my first game, I do not want literally my first game ever to be marked with me forcing someone to get kicked out or storm out understandable absolutely it will follow me forever that is a very very shitty outcome to yeah starting this out the a bad beat roll now what we can do

is finish this campaign and when they're like do you want to take these characters and roll them into like what's the what's the space one starfinder Starfinder?

Whatever.

I forget the name.

Spelljammer.

I'd be like, nah.

And then just workshop a new game with the DM

with

a highly similar group of people.

Maybe plus or minus.

Sure.

A little bit.

Sure.

Yeah.

Okay.

Roll with, do what you got to do.

There's like two

bonus details here that

I did not know until Paige told me because Paige is like more into

the chat boards and whatnot

in our community.

And that's basically

Jimmy

routinely goes, Hey, man, does anyone want to play Blood Bowl in like the massive group chat to crickets?

And

that was

now that is more clear

as to why that is.

People know.

Yeah, there's no way.

There's no way people don't know.

You know, that much is clearer.

And the other thing is, like, you know, please look forward to the session where the two characters in game are talking at each other and it stops being meta.

And

the real conversation starts happening in game.

So you know what the fun thing is, is that like somebody in the chat said, wow, this guy must really suck to cosplay racism.

And the fun thing is, is that I actually

really hate the Fae in Dungeons and Dragons specifically.

That race slash enemy type is my most hated monster type of all.

They're awful because their whole kit revolves around crowd control, which means that when you fight them, you lose control of your character and your turns get skipped.

And you have to play all their little, oh, I didn't say this, and it's iron and all this shit.

Like, I fucking hate the Fae for real.

So I just decided, you know what?

I'm just going to put my real fake racism

into my fake,

real character.

You are anti-fee.

And you are marching loudly.

That's good.

I like that.

Also, because I'm playing a light cleric, this means if we do hit fifth level, I will be able to cast Fireball, which means I can

cast Fireball incorrectly

to humorous effect.

Because Fireball is a 40 by 40-foot cube of flame,

which

I'll save you casting it on somebody in melee range means that

mistakes can occur with 86.

And

Paige is also around

for

if things ever get a little too heated,

she, I, I like, she can throw the system is

as needed here and there.

The system that is

the DM should handle it, because if the DM doesn't handle it, then I will handle it.

And if I don't handle it, the wife will handle it.

And we want to stay away from that course of events.

That is the last resort.

Oh, my God.

Wow.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Again, I just playing with other people in person is just so interesting.

I mean,

I've heard about that person in the group of people I know that plays that were like, oh, fuck that.

Never again.

In fact, some of the old

club space people know some of the same people and such.

So you might have to do that.

Well, some of the old club space people are some of the same.

Exactly.

So you might even know, but it's just like, yeah, that's the worst possible introduction, man.

So there is.

So I am currently super excited for the next session.

I'm so excited.

Like, I'm excited to play a game, and I'm excited to fucking rubberneck my own life.

But there is a genuinely just super, very happy ending to this.

So I have a bunch of friends that I play Final Fantasy XIV with, and they all run D ⁇ D campaigns constantly and have been for years.

And I've always been invited, but I never went because

of my experience in my 20s where people telling me that I ruined their campaigns.

I was like, well, I don't want to ruin my friends' campaigns, right?

Okay.

Now that I have been in a DD campaign with that guy

and been like, oh, that fear was totally unfounded, I have reached out to my buds and be like, the next time you guys run a campaign, if there's a spot, put me in, coach.

I would very much appreciate that.

So that is going to be in the near future.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah, I think the most telling bit is the, it's, it's the bit, it's the like

DM like paragraphs, you know, in the off-game time.

Like that's where you're at.

Like that's the person that's like, everyone, I'm a protagonist and I'm, I should be, like, that's the focus that they want it to be on.

That's what they're hoping everybody's reading and keeping up with.

I'm actually the hero, but I don't have the personal confidence to act out all this in front of a table full of people.

So I'm going to just type it in a Facebook messenger.

And it really is that, like, oh, something cool someone else did.

No, I did that.

It's the, I'm, yeah, my, my main character is, is a hedgehog that moves really fast.

So I'll tell you what, though, there is, there is a, there is a divine

design.

This is a very strange situation because i was planning on playing a what's called a goo warlock a great old one warlock um i'm familiar with the class mechanically and what i we are likely to encounter there is a line in the sand that i will drop this game on okay

great old one warlock has the potential for the worst main character party griefing possible because at level three they gain the ability to telepathically communicate with anyone they want.

Which means if the player wants to and the DM does not stop them, they can initiate conversations with NPCs that the rest of the party can't hear, which means we will be forced to sit there and listen to a one-way conversation for however long

it has to be.

And if that starts to occur, I am out of there.

Well, I am gone.

On the plus side, fortunately, since they don't have an original thought in their head, they're not going to be able to think of that type of thing.

Maybe, maybe not.

Yeah.

Unless, of course, current clip notwithstanding, you just put the idea in the ether and it might land on ears that might suddenly get the idea.

But regardless, I don't think that's a good idea.

Then, yeah, right?

The entire setup, the whole thing is you thought of something that you're doing with your character, and someone that can't think of that just goes, I made this.

So, what you're thinking of might not necessarily occur within the brain that didn't put the rest of it together.

That's quite uh, that's something that's so yeah, DD in person is super fun, yeah, man.

It's so

interesting.

The lowest rung on your ladder is my highest.

Wow, okay,

uh, as for me this week on the TV show,

let's see.

Tonight, that's the 24th.

The 24th of December, if you're listening to this live or watching this live, Paige and I at 6 p.m.

Pacific are going to be

reading

from

the Grinch 2 script.

So there was a thread on Reddit a little while ago,

which was, what's the stupidest thing your dad ever did?

Yes.

And one gentleman said that their dad wrote a 91 or 92 page script to the sequel to Jim Carrey's The Grinch called The Way I See It.

All stolen jokes

and gets drunk every Christmas and says that the only reason it didn't get made into a movie is because his family didn't believe in him enough.

That's the way I see it.

And then posted

the whole script.

That's phenomenal.

So, Paige and I will be reading from

it this Christmas Eve.

Hell yeah.

Tomorrow's Metal Gear.

Then I'm going to have chat help me get back into Warframe and then more Metal Gear at the end of the week.

That's over.

Twitch.tv/slash Patstares at.

Okey-doke.

Quick break, and it will be our B.

Alrighty.

I have an addendum before we continue.

Yes.

It should be noted that Jimmy from the former story Pad's DD experience also is the guy at the table who smells.

I see.

Just straight up.

Okay.

Here.

I have a yellow highlighter.

I will add a couple of stink lines to the art.

Just

quick.

There we go.

Oh, yeah.

There we go.

Got the highlighter, stink lines, and everything.

All right.

Oh, not weed.

No, it's body odor.

Take a shower, stinky.

Perfect.

All right.

This week,

the podcast is sponsored by

Boot.dev.

Hello, Boot.dev.

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I'm gonna put Yimby back up

It's very important.

You need to Yimby it back up.

Okay, little piggy.

You got to go back down to your bed.

Bye-bye.

Oh, hey, I've been doing something on my show.

I take the dog's like fucked up little arms and I wave goodbye.

Oh,

oh, he can't tell you're laughing.

All right.

So, um,

yeah, thought it was going to be a light week, but there's a couple things going on.

Talk speaking of dogs.

How about Crypto the Super Dog?

You know what?

You don't have that Superman trailer.

That Superman trailer looks great because it has all that stupid, stupid Superman shit in it.

There you go, right?

I'm like, you can't possibly have beef with Crypto the Super Dog.

Like, I saw Guy Gardner, and I'm marking out because Guy Gardner fucking sucks.

Guy Gardner is the ultimate.

It's the best.

I'm so happy they went that way.

And furthermore, it's Nathan Phillion, which is a perfect thing because I'm like, okay, last time we thought...

Is he going to be Nova?

Is he going to be Nova?

Because clearly he works with James Gunn and he could just, he could just jump in if he wanted to.

And it's like, no, he's not going to be.

And it's like, oh, you're going to be a lantern?

You're going to be, because you've got that face.

You can be.

And it's like, I'm going to be fucking Guy.

You know, with that terrible hair.

Fucking haircut.

So it's like, okay, he does not want to be anyone cool he specifically wants to be lame and that's great because yes guy gardner the absolute fucking asshole with a heart of gold yeah but but just a fucking lame idiot i love it huge jerk but he's but but he's he's got it where it counts on the inside i like that we we get to see first of all nicholas holt is lex luthor great nicholas holt's awesome uh but we get to see him in like

what appears to be a Superman-based tantrum.

Like he looks like he's a step away from like thrashing around on the ground going, I hate Superman so much.

And like, yes, please.

I would like to see

a proper actor throw a child's tantrum over how much they hate Superman so I can incorporate that into my heart.

There you go.

And you know what?

Talk girl.

Sure.

Why not?

Throw that in there.

I'm not going to sit here and pretend I can tell you the first thing about Mr.

Terrific.

I looked him up.

I cannot.

He's the smartest man in the world.

Alright.

That'll do.

But yeah.

But yeah, here comes crypto.

Now,

I guess the thing is, I don't know

if there's rebooted or what the rebooted um

crypto origin stories are or what they're gonna go with but i sure hope i mean he's a dog from krypton but i sure hope we just stick with the plaid with the original the original yeah before we set fucking cal El out we just stuck a dog in a rocket first but it hit a it hit a thing it hit a comet and they got there late

I have a strong feeling that it will never come up once.

It's the dumbest dude.

think, I think,

looking at this, this movie and watching James Gunn stuff, I bet where did crypto come from will literally never come up once.

It'll be like, this is just my super dog.

He took a blood transfusion and now he's got no, nothing, nothing.

They're Superman's dog.

It's a super dog.

Fucking

Jor El

stuck a dog in a ship and Leica'd it into space,

expecting it to work before he sent his kid out there.

And that's why crypto is a thing.

Sure.

You know, I think that like retroactively adding characters into a cataclysmic backstory is usually pretty bad, but I feel like Superman, like, how many people got off that planet, man?

Like, a bunch, right?

They were like, the explosion has like 18 different fucking ships going in different directions.

Everyone actually, yeah, everyone had their little pocket rocket ship.

It's fine.

Don't worry about it.

Shut up.

Yeah, let's see.

Let's see where it goes.

You know,

we're about due for a decent, colorful, fun Superman

story.

We open up the door to the Bat Hound

as well.

So

let's fucking go.

There is a non-zero percent chance we will see super dickery based content in this film.

Holding up the water.

No one gets a drop.

Or, oh, fuck.

I always get the planet name wrong, but the.

Do you think Lois will turn into a black woman in this film?

I mean, I wasn't going to imply it, but it might just happen.

She might have to get...

to the bottom of things.

You know what?

It might just be like the report on her screen when like Clark walks over to chat and she turns around to talk.

And just on her screen, it's just like, I spent a day as a black woman.

Just, you don't explain it, but you see it on the

back there for the comic nerds.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Oh, fuck.

I wish I could only pray.

Yeah, but yeah, that's a trailer.

You know, nothing, nothing else to it, but it seems cool.

Oh, I would be very interested in seeing this Superman film.

Yeah.

I forgot.

I'm hoping that we see crypto

dethroat a monster at some point.

That would be pretty sick, too.

Get all that all-star in there.

Crypto at one point fucking goes ham.

What did you say?

Rip the throat out.

I said dethrone out

rip the throat out.

Okay, all right.

right

And with that

I guess we have like

it's not supposed to be like a cinematic universe

But

they're going to Obviously be able to continue I'm

I don't know what they're doing.

I saw James Gunn say, I just wanted to make a Superman movie.

Basically that's as far as that shit goes.

Yes, and he doesn't have the say, but for sure, whatever is made will become a cinematic universe because

money, you know, there's no way they don't, they, there's no way they fucking

don't lean in as hard as they can and fuck that up immediately.

Um,

I heard like there's a Lanterns show coming out on HBO, and like, I don't know if Guy Gardner is going to tie in with that or not, but I didn't even know who knows, man.

I didn't know that was a thing, anyway.

Um,

we uh

yeah.

Some Virtual Fighter news in there.

What do you want to say about Virtu Fighter?

There was an interview with Yamada about Virtua Fighter.

What'd he say?

There's a lot of details in there.

You want the good ones?

Sure.

Okay, everybody at Sega loves Virtua Fighter, and they were really excited to bring Virtual Fighter back.

That's not all that shocking.

They are going to have a very large single-player story component as part of this Virtua Fighter.

And they talk about how

they were able to make

a really big city very quickly for the trailer and how RGG's strengths will be brought to bear in making this game.

So they're going to have like a mini Yakuza series.

Let's see.

Kung Fu influence, blah, blah, blah.

Let me, I want the very special

There's no special moves.

It's very difficult.

Lack of character motivations being in the games is a massive problem and they're going to fix that.

Yeah, that is.

People just show up and they're there.

The karate man does karate.

Judo guy does judo.

Okay.

But the

no arcade release is going to be home only.

But there is one, there's one quote here that is just A plus,

which is

it's not about changing the rules or making, hey, buddy.

Hey.

It's not about changing the rules or making the screen more flashy.

It's about amplifying the appeal of the matches while keeping them plain and serious.

Amplifying the appeal.

While keeping them plain

and serious.

AKA boring.

Okay, okay, so

they won't ask anything of you or simplify anything

or not simplify.

There are like no new systems,

but a fresh coat of paint and perhaps some explosions that don't affect your comments.

So, they have said that there's no reason that Virtual Fighter can only have three buttons.

Ah.

Okay.

Which is really funny after last week's podcast time.

That is pretty funny.

Yeah.

I think, though, we can like the story mode is going to be expected.

It's like, this is literally what the studio specializes in.

Yeah.

Hey, can you give me a second?

Because that dog is going to break through that door to chase a rabbit or some shit.

Okay, Caboose is boosting.

All right.

The boost is.

They also go into that time may have passed

and a lot of time may have passed because, as you can see, Akira looks very different.

So it'll be interesting to see players' feedback as to what they have done with Lao and Shundi.

Those characters are going to be dead for sure.

Yeah,

well, maybe there can be a new Drunken Master.

Yeah, probably.

I think we're going to see a fair amount of casts rearrange, and I think that some characters are going to be a new character that just happens to look and sound identical to the old character.

A combat kid.

Like Stella, basically.

Could do that.

Could do that.

Fourth button is just heat.

It's probably dodge.

Oh, Virtual Fighter.

They're probably going to bring the Dodge button back.

But you didn't need it, though.

Like,

because you could literally just, like, double tap, and it was all in.

It was all there.

You know, it was just a shortcut for something you could already do in a way.

But yeah.

I don't imagine it would be like a button that changed how old moves worked or anything.

So you wouldn't.

But yeah, man, you got to keep that shit plain and serious.

I mean,

yeah, anyway, we'll see with it.

But

I,

yeah,

none of that too, too surprising.

You know,

there is a fun detail where they say they announced the two new projects before Pirates in Hawaii released because they wanted to impress people in the industry with how many projects they're working on at the same time.

God, that's not

a good metric.

That's not really a sign that things are going well.

Like, that doesn't mean anything, man.

I mean, it is for them because they're making 10 projects at the same time, and they all come out good.

Okay.

Well, we'll see what happens to fucking crazy taxi and Jet Set Radio.

Yeah, but that's not them, right?

That's not RGG.

RGG.

Sure, sure.

Yeah.

No, I guess the only other bit, though, is just kind of like

it's clear and understood that this is a vanity fucking ass.

Oh, absolutely.

100%.

Like the higher-ups at Sega and people in RGG just wanted to do it.

This is for

if you're one of the few old fans, if you're one of those crazy Japanese competitors and or just that one guy that introduced himself on stage, this is for you.

This is not expecting to go and crack open the genre and soar to the top of the

FGC competitive scene.

But it will get its time on Evo stage for sure.

All that

is of note.

So one of the things in there is like, well, we know that younger people know about Virtua Fighter, but they don't really play it.

And it's of note is that like VF1 to Final Showdown is less time than Final Showdown to now.

Like Virtua Fighter's entire life

existed in less time time than it's been since Final Showdown came out.

We need like whatever that third to fourth generation,

like amazing quality crunches, you know what I mean?

Or like not third to fourth, rather, fourth to fifth, you know, just that 98 through 2002, like insane run

on the industry.

Like any series that started there, yeah, must have like an entry for every year, and they're all pretty solid or at least decent.

Um,

I think, I think they're gonna change some of the stuff, and I think you know, the waggle for stun, yeah, I think that's gonna be gone, yeah.

I mean, Guilty Gear got rid of it, and I think one of the reasons that if it wasn't gonna be gone before, it's definitely gonna be gone now.

Because I don't know if you played any of

Revo,

but um, because of the way that stagger thing works in Revo, they accidentally gave Eileen an honest to God Infinite.

Oh, what?

So Eileen had down PKP, which was two little taps on your knees, and you had to like frame perfect waggle out of it in order to be able to block before she threw one out again.

So for most people,

it's a straight up honest to God infinite.

Oh, my God.

So that will not be there in the end of January.

That little monkey girl.

She's fun to use.

I like her.

She went from bottom of the barrel to like top tier in Revo.

They changed a lot on her.

Including giving her an infinite by accident.

Like, Virtu Fighter is a franchise that in my brain, I'm like, I always just button-mashed.

Like, I never learned to do anything beyond a couple of, like, recognizable, like, oh, yeah, I know, like, with the monk, I can kind of do a couple of these inputs consistently, but I am fucking just wailing and seeing what happens.

Um, until uh, um, conscientious mashing, you know,

yeah,

cool,

all right.

Well, again, I can see that things are gonna get a little complex because it's like, all right, you always have, you know, like when you get to your Evo main stage, you always have a Street Fighter, a Tekken, and you know, a Guilty Gear or some sorts.

Um,

and then, you know,

Mortal Kombat gets its honorary slot, or does it?

City of the Wolves is going to exist.

2XKO is going to come eventually.

And then Virtual Fighter, like, do we.

Oh, there is going to be a year in which it's Street Fighter, Tekken, and four new fighting games.

So, like, there's going to be something has to get shut out, is where I'm getting at, right?

It's going to be Guilty Gear.

They're going to pick

the group, and something's going to get shut out.

But, like, I don't see that happening with Guilty Gear still releasing content.

Well, the three characters

can get into the corner,

most likely.

Okay, how many games does Evo do?

Nine, you know, you'll get your

Street Fighter.

Although, that used to actually, well, I think less now because of the is it six?

I think it's less now because of the time sync.

Yeah, because of the time.

Well, let's say six, right?

Yes, seven.

Okay, fine.

Let's say seven.

Street Fighter and Tekken,

right?

Guilty Gear, Virtual Fighter, that's four.

2xKO, that's five.

You got room for three flex spots.

Yeah, well, so, I mean, that's kind of what I'm saying.

It's like basically every company gets to wrest game.

And SNK is a part of that as well.

Capcom

gets a rep, you know, Netherom gets a rep, Arxis gets one, Segal get theirs, but, like, you have,

it would be reasonable to expect, if not KOF, then City of the Wolves

as an entry there and how do you think um

street fighter players are going to feel or tekken players are going to feel when virtual fighter becomes like the main game at the at the at the coliseum at the very end just annihilates it right just yeah like how do you think people are going to be upset just eats its fucking lunch you know damn harata in tears underneath the shades

You know, it's really, it's really weird how easy I'm finding to say that.

Like, I don't believe it, but I think part of me deep down does.

And you know what?

I'm happy for you to feel as much joy as you can in this limited period of time.

It's a good time.

Well, I mean, I'm not going to be.

Listen, these moments don't happen often in life.

We're currently in the world.

I'm not going to have time.

Why would I sit here and,

you know, and rain on your parade?

I'm not going to have time to feel joy soon

because Virtual Fighter VI will come out and I will enter into the

apatheosis of my fighting game desire, which is like enlightenment as I discover how to use the fourth button.

There you go.

Yeah, again, I just,

you know, I'm

feeling happy for you, buddy.

And, you know, as long as this lasts, let's just enjoy it.

And it's going to be the best.

It's going to get the most signups.

Everyone's going to love it.

It's going to change the face of the game forever.

Virtual Fighter is for everyone.

Oh, boy.

It's for everyone.

Fuck sign-up numbers.

Who cares?

Anyway, so alongside that,

speaking of imminent releases.

Oh, man.

Hey.

You looking forward to

picking up up Yeese X?

Proud Nordix?

No, Woolly, I'm not.

Oh.

But it's got new features.

It does have new features.

It's true.

It is true.

It does have new features.

It's an enhanced version of the game.

It is a significant upgrade to Yeese X Nordix.

But, Wooly,

I bought Yeese Nordix

40 days ago.

In October?

October 25th.

Well, why are you a plumber?

Why are you bringing up old shit?

Get the new one announced in December.

So, time for the news.

I said this to you a couple days ago because

I couldn't understand

why the two dates were so close.

Like, who the fuck announces an enhanced version of an RPG before the average person can even finish playing their new copy?

And it was there were translation delays on Yeast Nordics in English.

So last year, the original was released or yeah, in 2023, exactly.

And it took about a year for the translation to come out.

So it eventually released in October 2024.

And then the announcement for the updated version of the game, Proud Nordics, was in December, two months later.

So, like,

Atlas.

This is like the Atlas trick.

But the Atlas trick is not two months, right?

No, the Atlas trick is at least a full calendar year after the global release.

We give Atlas shit for doing that, like, a year after you've bought the game.

And we go, what the fuck, guys?

That sucks.

This is approaching.

42 days.

Well, this is that mobile game that announced its launch and shutdown in the same tweet.

Yeah, yeah, it is.

Right?

This is where we're at.

This is like

don't, don't buy Falcom game.

Like, like, new.

Like, are you stupid?

Like, why, like, like, it, it feels like, how could you not be burned by this scenario if you bought that game?

Um,

yeah, Falcom is known for its annual release schedules.

Comparison to Atlas is

apt.

Uh, that

fucking

you, and like, I mean, mean, you could decide to wait, but if you're on that annual release schedule, then you're just like, no, we have to get it out now.

We have to announce it now.

So, yeah, everyone just gets fucked by that.

It just feels like shit.

Oh, so

someone in the chat says, to explain the delays, it's not that Nisa took too long.

Falcom does not give anyone the script to their games until after the game has come out in Japan.

So they can't.

You can start translating today, the day of the Japanese release.

Okay, so stega.

That is ridiculous.

All right, dinosaurs at work.

Yeah, got it.

Okay.

That is even historically

abnormal.

Yeah.

That would have been weird in the 90s if you were planning to release it in English across the pop.

That just reeks of

fuck you, we do it our way, stubbornness, and shut up, who cares?

Speaking of that shit,

how's that PC port of Unicorn Overlord coming along?

Is this even news?

Is it even news?

It's news every time.

Hey, guess what?

They're not going to do it.

Hey, guess what?

Vanillaware and

fucking

HPCs.

They will never.

You can't force them to do it.

They'll never fucking do it.

Shut up.

Get your money away from me.

Leave me alone.

I think every interview with people who work at Vanillaware is the funniest interview ever because the questions always go in the same order.

Hey, how was it making your new game?

Oh man, we ran out of money and almost went bankrupt.

Do you think you'll ever put it on PC?

No.

Like, you're just

holding a keyboard up to George Kamitami, and he's like, ah,

get it away.

Like, I just, um,

I, I, yeah, I think I went a little bit hoarse in the throat talking about 13 Sentinels.

And

you, you, you deserve it.

You deserve it.

If you don't want people to do it, then fine.

All right.

At least they're like forward compatible digitally now.

Like, we'll be able to play 13 Sentinels on the PS6 and stuff like that.

But you don't ever get to complain about the reception ever again, in my opinion.

You just, you just have to fucking take it.

Like, they are one

mid-release away from evaporating.

So, Vanillaware is being more loyal to Sony than Sony is being to Sony.

He's right, guys.

The platform holder themselves have had PC releases, even for promotional reasons.

I can't confirm this in my own mind, but I believe

I believe when 13 Sentinels was coming out, there was an interview in which someone at Sega said that they have offered to just port the games for Vanillaware, and Vanillaware said no.

God.

Oh,

yeah, just dinosaurs at work.

I mean, what is there to say?

It's this, this type of just, I'm bunkering down.

I saw a story that someone had tweeted out that was like,

in Final Fantasy 2, the Ultima spell only does like 500 damage or something and is really weak.

And

it seems like it's a bug.

And then when they asked the programmer who did it to fix it, he went, well, it's an old spell from the past, so it would be weak compared to modern day magic.

And then

okay, but can you fix it?

And he goes, No.

And then, in the code, he also made it obscured so that no one else could then go in and fix it as well.

That's so fucking funny.

That's really funny.

What?

What is this?

Why?

Why do you think this way?

That's really good.

Dinosaurs

at work.

Yeah.

Okay.

Well, look, you know, you can stay trapped in the past, right, in the Triassic era,

trying to program there.

But while you do that, you know, some companies are forward thinking and moving into the future.

How forward are we talking?

Well, I mean, Ubisoft is.

They're gunning.

They're gutted for tomorrow.

Are they?

Yeah.

Have you seen Captain Laserhawk the G-A-M-E?

Yes, I have.

So Ubisoft just released a new game called Captain Laserhawk the G-A-M-E.

And

long story short is you have to purchase an NFT to play it.

Oh, good.

That's how you get your profile going.

And again, we are all the way over on NFTs.

Like, that thing is dead and gone.

It is Christmas Eve Eve today.

We are entering 2025 in less than a week.

And they're releasing this now.

If anyone had any wonder why we just laugh at

the word Ubisoft

when you say it out loud,

what the fuck other, like...

What more do you need if not an Assassin's Creed story or if not

the

ownership

shit going on.

By the way, this is a good idea over here.

You get the feeling

that people at Ubisoft are

disastrous managers, and that tons of their projects are moving forward when they shouldn't be, or stalled when they shouldn't be, or on the verge of being canceled for no reason,

and that they're just just burning buckets of money literally every single day, going, I don't know what I'm doing.

Has the main head been cut off of the thousand-headed hydra, and like everything is just flailing in its own direction?

It's like you, it's like you cut off the hydra's ass, and a bunch of asses spread it up and started shitting all over.

No, not the main ass.

Oh my god, we got an assist from Dad Asna, who found a banger tweet from Ubisoft.

Rayman Together, I don't know who this is, probably a fan site.

Says, what a way to destroy the positive reception of your new brand and frustrate your community.

To which Captain Laserhawk Universe official responds with, it's a Captain Laserhawk game, not a Rayman game.

Anyway, Rayman belongs to us.

We can do whatever we want with them, even replace him if needed.

That's great energy.

Fucking why?

That's great energy.

Why would you fucking respond to that?

Oh, no, no.

That's that's put that out there.

Yep.

One of a thousand asses

just going in that direction.

Perfect.

Saying nothing is free.

Mind you.

Cool.

Holy shit.

What the fuck happened?

I remember like when Blood Dragon was a thing and it was like, oh, Far Cry spin-off.

That's all like Escape from New York and 80s references and synth.

That's a fun bit.

And then they had made the whole extra spin-off that was like,

they had the...

What was the crossover?

With

not Track Mania, but Trials, right?

And then they did a bunch of shit.

And then, like, I guess there was the show.

And I don't know what the fuck any of this is.

Oh, but

I have some suspicions as to what actually happened at Ubisoft.

And it's a ton of different things combining together.

The number one of which

is

Assassin's Creed was really successful.

It was like the most successful thing that ever happened to Ubisoft.

And two things happened.

One, they started to turn every single game they made into Assassin's Creed, like every single one, while simultaneously firing Patrice Desilay and blackballing him from the entire industry.

You know, the guy who made Assassin's Creed, like the director of the really good ones.

And the Assassin's Creed's quality started to go down, but it still made tons of money.

And then Rainbow Six Siege came out.

And Rainbow Six Siege is the start of Ubisoft gassing themselves up.

Because Siege was really successful in the second year.

It was.

And after that, that's when everything had to be either Assassin's Creed or gas.

And what we ended up with was

like 40 games a year that were gassed up Assassin's Creeds.

Including Assassin's Creed.

And then For Honor happened, yeah.

Siege was also their first brazen foray into like NFTing, I think, right?

There was like

gun skins or

something with guns they did like right in the middle of that.

And yeah, Patrice is

he made, he was going to make that Ancestors game, but they fucked him over so bad, it's unbelievable.

That thing just got annihilated.

So, to those of you who are unaware,

Patrice Desolet was like the lead on Assassin's Creed 1 and 2, and then Ubisoft fired him, and then he was under non-compete for a year, and then he went to go work for THQ, and then Ubisoft bought the dev at THQ that he was working on, and then fired him.

And took the project that had started.

Yeah.

And then I think that like overtly personal.

Like

absolutely, clearly personal.

I think he did eventually he founded Panache and then was working on Ancestors, but that, I don't know that we've heard anything from it since.

But

yeah.

Yeah.

Petty as fuck.

Anyway,

enough of that shit.

You guess what's going on in War Thunder?

What?

You'll never guess.

Is it accidental?

Espionage again?

Is it classified shit on the warfront thunder forums again?

To solve an argument about the accuracy of a Eurofighter jet,

leaked documents specifying the components of

a particular jet were posted on the war thunder forums,

this time

classified from the Italian Ministry of Defense.

They need to actually pull those forums down.

They're going to that like and not like oh, we need to protect military secrets.

I mean, like, that, that game company is like playing with fucking fire.

Like, I am 90% certain that these are just spies trading in info using

forms as a cover.

But it's so believable that fucking

military heads

are getting so angry at each other that they're like, whoa,

and they're grabbing files off of the intranets that they work at.

It's so believable, but it happens so often.

Anyway, stop it.

Stop it.

You're going to get in trouble.

And not like a little trouble.

You're going to get in a lot of trouble.

Pretty short, but a simple quip quip here.

Dead Space creators wanted to make a fourth game, pitched it to EA this year.

EA said, not interested.

Yeah, Dead Space remake, the first one,

only sold like a million and a half copies, so they're like,

bullshit.

That's that.

And just kiboshed the second remake.

And are just not.

So that shit's just dead.

That shit's just dead now.

It was

full release, full price, everything, right?

Yeah.

And sold well.

Just not well enough.

Not well enough.

Okay.

Do you have local thunk versus Peggy on here?

Not really.

But obviously.

Did you hear about that?

Yeah, like they're like, because your game resembles kind of gambling, but isn't.

So Bellatra was rated 3 plus in Peggy, and then then they just out of nowhere rated it 18 plus for no reason

um

local thunk went on uh the social media and was basically like maybe i should jam it full of real gambling and loot boxes and bullshit like fifa does so then you guys would give me a three plus rating

and he's right

um

oh hold on clarifying it was the people it was the people that made the callisto Protocol that made the pitch for Dead Space 4.

Oh, well, I wouldn't let them make it either.

I see.

Yeah, no,

no.

Okay, clarifying detail.

That is an important clarifying detail.

Well, they really tanked that shit out the gate, huh?

By the way, I don't know how much of a Callisto Protocol you played.

It's just a way worse Dead Space.

I remember when you reported in on that.

Yeah.

Uh,

okay.

Wait.

Hmm?

Some people are saying no.

Glenn Schofield, the original guy.

So then that correction was false?

Is that right?

No,

Glenn Schofield worked on Callisto Protocol.

Okay.

Did he also work on original Dead Space?

Yeah.

Okay.

And Callisto Protocol is one of those things.

Callisto Protocol really did a great job.

So, you know, like, you know, we're talking to Warren Spector, the creator of Deus Ex, who says you shouldn't credit only one person on video games.

Glenn Schofield always said, Hey, man, I made Dead Space.

Dead Space is my baby.

I love Dead Space.

But then he went and made Callisto Protocol and showed off that he actually doesn't understand Dead Space at all, and that it was the team under him that did lots of the good heavy lifting.

Okay, a little bit of a mighty number nine situation.

A little bit.

Um.

Okay.

So, uh, Arcane.

Oh, man, this fucking story rules.

Was a success, but did not translate to new League of Legends players.

That's crazy.

First season

was a big breakout hit, but they didn't have any tie-in content at the time.

So

they kind of just saw an increase in people making accounts, but they ultimately just kind of left them and didn't really use much.

Do they think it's because there wasn't tie-in content to keep them?

Do you think that's why?

And so this time around, there was a bunch of tie-in content.

And

it was successful by, you know, audience metrics.

And

yeah, it just, I mean, the overall cost is the most expensive animated series, of course, is going to be very high.

It's pretty pricey, right?

250 million, I think, was the figure.

And then they were getting like 3 million from Netflix per episode.

And then it says 3 million for international as well or for Arrogant China.

But one way or another, with all the success of that, the goal of promoting the game and then getting people into the game ultimately did not lead to new players.

So,

I mean,

if the thing being successful on its own is like

good and means that, yay, you can continue that as its own venture for its own sake, then like it is, of course, like way too expensive at that point.

But a lot of the time, the tail end on these things, if you can sell or whatever the case may be.

I don't know.

Like, streamers work differently these days, but like...

A show made at a loss like this,

if it's very popular, can eventually catch back up.

But if it's just about getting new players on League of Legends...

Okay, so there's so many things going on here.

There's so many things going on here that make this so interesting.

Okay, step one.

Hey, Woolly, you watched Arcane, or at least some of Arcane.

What appealed to you about Arcane?

It was a cool world, and the characters were cool.

Oh, it was a cool world, and the characters were cool?

The story was fun.

Okay, so what if we gave you a multiplayer game that had very little characterization, no world, and no story?

Well, does that appeal to you?

It hasn't done it yet, and it continues to not.

Okay.

Number two, Arkane is a legitimate.

So you watched enough of Fallout to be like, this feels like Fallout, like, you know, the vibes, right?

Yeah.

Arcane,

the vibes aren't anything like League of Legends.

I didn't see Jinx and Vi

struggling to avoid getting banned for calling each other every slur they could think of because one one of them went mid.

Right?

Like, it's like, it's the tone and the vibe is totally different.

Number three, there's a bunch of League of Legends spin-off games, but none of them take place in the setting that Arcane takes place in.

The RPG by the Battle Chasers guys takes place in the Sunken Isles.

There's a character action game that takes place in like an ice area.

There's the card game.

Like, none of them are the direct go from Arcane to this game.

I mean, I would say the bigger one being like story analogs makes sense because Edge Runners, I'm sure, did its job in getting

over to cyberpunk.

Edge Runners has the cyberpunk vibes.

Exactly, and you have a big narrative story-driven world for you there.

Keep those words in mind.

But the most important thing, and this is the one that that kicks like it's really funny because like they're not listening to themselves one of the reasons they started with all of these spin-off games for league of legends they talked about this like six seven years ago i'll never be able to find the interview but they said that they believe everybody knows about League of Legends who plays games and they have hit the capacity for people playing League of Legends.

They can't grow anymore because people know about it or have tried it and like it or don't.

So what they're going to do is leverage all of these characters to make a wide variety of new games like a card game or an MMO or a shooter to get people into that or a fighting game.

So they admit there's no one left to get into League of Legends because League is so big and has been around for so long that like, Wooly, you know that PUBG shit where we didn't know about pubg and we're like ah we're not right like you fucking heard about league of fucking legends league of legends is fucking everywhere donut and league are just omnipresent so ff14 continues to grow with its releasing of like these expansion contents and story things that are all like again big narrative driven and time to jump in is now updates and stuff for a game that's not that story driven i think another point of comparison would be like fortnite where they're like here's a bunch of new costumes and tie-ins.

And they constantly remake the game into new shit and the game, I was going to say, and the main game itself becomes completely unrecognizable from what it used to be.

Does League do anything like that?

Not on that scale.

Not on that scale.

They patch it constantly.

League has this feeling of they want to add new characters all the time because that's cool, but it has this feeling of they want to fine-tune it into like the ideal game, right?

And

the final thing, and this is really important.

So I scroll on the TikTok, and there's a lot of Arcane fan cams and shit like that, and people love that show.

People are crazy about that show.

But every single piece of social media content you see from somebody who plays League and plays and watched Arcane is don't start playing League of Legends.

Don't.

Don't start playing League of Legends.

And I cannot,

like,

I would advise you, Wooly, personally or professionally, to fucking spend the 10 hours it needs to dip your toe in because it cannot be overstated what a miserably antagonistic experience League of Legends can be.

It is without parallel.

It has no peers.

I was going to say that this is a wild development with the franchise because the second story here is that they're making spin-offs.

They've announced new League of Legends shows that they're working on, but also direct arcane spin-offs that they're also working on aggressively.

Yes.

So things were, you know, enough of a hit that they're like, let's do more.

Absolutely.

But this tapestry of like league-related side projects all exist, and it seems like the base thing that's built on is the large, large stagnant pool that might end up feeling the worst for anyone that decides to follow the path to its origins.

You know what the best thing about those spin-offs, Willie?

One of the things that I brought up is that if they had a direct relation spin-off game for people to go from Arcane to, that'd be one thing.

Right?

So, like, if 2xKO was out right now.

Yeah.

You could tell people, like, because that's using like the arcane levels and iconography.

You could tell people to go over there.

So

the three spin-offs they've said where those spin-offs are going to occur they're going to occur in ionia noxus and damasia

all three regions which have no spin-off property to connect to

okay because the spin-off properties are in frailjord and the sunken aisles and cards and whatnot so they're all isolated things you're grabbing yeah okay.

Yeah, I mean,

it is something to kind of look and go like, well,

this is working.

This is successful, and we're making more of it.

However, that original goal of getting you to sign up.

That original goal was

a known lie to themselves.

Like, this feels like cope for their investors or some shit.

Because

before Arcane even got green lit, they're like, well, everyone, we got everybody on League that's ever going to go on league.

We got to expand.

And that's what's behind this massive expansion into like 10 different genres and games.

And it's why Valorant is not a League of Legends shooter.

Because they're like, League of Legends players don't want to play a fucking shooter.

So we got to use the same ideas and design elements to make a different

audience.

I mean, those music videos drop, and I'm like, look at that animation, go.

You know, that look at that costume.

Yeah, but at the same time, it's like this can also just, I guess, with its existing player base, stay healthy forever.

With

healthy is a choice word.

I would say the last word I would ever describe the League of Legends player base as is healthy.

Profitable.

There you go.

All right.

Speaking of profitability,

yeah.

Where, where, oh shit, where did that go?

Um,

Frostpunk creators cancel Project 8 and lay off staff amid concerns that, quote-unquote, narrative-driven, story-rich games just don't sell.

Shut the fuck up.

It was conceived under very different market conditions.

So.

Shut the fuck up.

I I mean, look.

No, Frostpunk 2 isn't doing as well as Frostpunk 1.

That's what it is.

And there was another project, and

that is now being.

Yeah, shut down.

Everyone's being fired.

The quote: It was conceived under very different market conditions when narrative-driven story-rich games held stronger appeal.

This, coupled with revised sale forecasts, largely reflecting the changing market environment, raises significant doubts of the project's overall profitability.

Okay, so my impression when I hear that is

like

narrative-driven story-rich games don't sell equals translate through bullshit, filter.

A,

we have investors that are demanding gas and mini buys, and we need to find the right wording to not upset them.

B,

we're working on something that might have been, I guess, like a walking simulator, but we didn't want to say those words per se or didn't know how to describe it.

So in this case, we're kind of just throwing that under the bus.

Meanwhile, mouthwashing just came out and rocked everyone.

Oh, yeah.

You know what?

Story games don't sell.

Tell that to Metaphor, Black Myth Wukong, Final Fantasy VII Reaper.

Baldur's Gate.

They didn't just announce the Witcher 4, did they?

No, I'm not sure what to do with the project.

I mean, I don't know how CD Projects

deal with the fact that Witcher 4 won't sell.

God of 4 Ragnarok.

Oh, that did bad.

Did a stalker game just come out?

Yeah.

I don't know if I'd call that narrative-driven, though.

Stalker games are fucking weird.

Okay.

Well,

they're fucking so weird.

Oh, I love them.

Yeah.

Look, if you're not talking, and like, if you're like, hey, well, we're not talking about these AAA giant releases and things.

And it's like, well, why?

Like, if you're changing the words, narrative-driven, story-rich games and saying, like, that's the fault, that's the reason here,

you're telling a lie.

You're full of shit.

Also, there's like a telling the truth.

There's an underneath here because, like, a huge amount of games would be considered narrative-driven or story-rich across an enormous variety of genres.

So, what I'm hearing is that this game was entirely narrative.

Like, you said walking simulator?

That's the translation, right?

Because it's like, yeah, like, obviously, like, Baldur's Gate 3 being all of those adjectives, but also incredibly in-depth in engine and story and gameplay is great.

And something that maybe their studio couldn't do, right?

You wouldn't want to make that comparison.

Same for cyberpunk.

It's a massive, expensive, insane thing.

So if we're just talking about the narrative element of it, well, okay.

Like I said, we just had a mouthwashing.

Also,

I would say there was a much larger

There is a way larger audience for narrative-driven, story-rich experiences than there are for post-apocalyptic city builders.

So, and but like that's Frostpunk, right?

This is a this is a whatever other project.

This is different.

This is a different project, right?

So, I don't think it was necessarily the city builder, but um,

like, what a stupid excuse that's just a lie.

What a stupid lie, just a dumb lie.

Like, why?

But maybe, maybe some upset or some investors didn't get upset when they heard it, and so mission accomplished, you know?

Well, it's this thing, it's like these people, people that invest in these things aren't necessarily like fans or, or, or enthusiasts about the particular industry, So

they don't feel the stupid lie like we do.

I can feel the stupid lie in my chest the instant you started to say it out loud.

Well, yeah, because said people are like, well, the opposite of narrative story-rich driven games is multiplayer, no-story, mini-buy, microtransaction, service, live service signup.

We got a great chat comment from Pastel Hermit.

Says RGG has fucking made 45 story-driven games over the past 20 years, and they're doing fine.

Anyway,

pretty good stuff there with that.

Good reasoning given.

I'm sure it feels good to

get laid off, hear that as the reason given, and then go look at the game awards this year and see the nominees

in indie and story categories.

So So there's something I bring up every now and then, and I know you've heard me say it a bunch of times, but sometimes people haven't heard it.

Usually you would say, like, his, you know, you can have Critics Darlings, and you have Oscar Bate and winners and stuff like that, that doesn't necessarily translate into sales, right?

Like, I don't know a human being that saw the English patient, but I know it won a ton of awards, right?

Video games are, weirdly enough, actually different.

One of the reasons why gamers, quote unquote, give reviews such a big level of importance compared to music, automobile, film, et cetera, is that there has been shown to be a fairly strong positive

correlation between high review scores and sales.

It is the only creative medium in which there is a direct correlation between positive reviews and good sales and negative reviews and bad sales.

So, when you look at the games of the year for a particular

production, like the TGAs, those games at the top, they fucking did gangbusters.

They crushed it.

Now, it's not perfect, right?

Okami, somebody pointed out, yeah, no, Okami, fucking bomb.

But, like, by and large, good games tend to do well, and bad games tend to do bad.

Um, things that hit Steam and go into overwhelmingly positive tend to also be doing financially well by that point, but in the metrics.

I kind of, yeah, the thing is I don't know what, like, I remember you talked about Frostpunk when you played it, and I know

but I don't know, like, what budget level we were talking about here.

So, like, you know.

Double A?

Okay, not just, not indie completely, per se.

No, in that weird, that weird space.

Okay.

It's about as expensive as you could make a city building like narrative game.

I think they hit like the upper level of that budget.

Like the only thing that would be above them is something like like Civ.

Yeah.

So anyway, um, that's dumb.

Um

speaking of dumb.

Yeah.

Oh, I mean that that come on we could do any story off that.

I know, I know.

That was low effort.

Um,

speaking of making decisions, making important decisions based on bullshit.

Oh, that's uh, that I mean, that's also pretty broad.

But what do you got?

Uh, this one's a little left field here, but uh,

the New York Jets apparently have made hiring and trading decisions informed by the Madden NFL player ratings in-game,

And they avoided trading for a player

recently, Jerry Judy, due to his low Madden NFL rating, despite there being interest.

Woody Johnson, the Jets owner, has apparently done this before and has impacted player acquisitions on the team based on looking at the score of the player in Madden

and using that to affect who they sign and what and how.

I'm seeing, I'm looking up the New York Jets's standings with their own division.

Oh, it's bad.

Oh, no.

No, no, no.

Don't, don't do that.

It's not good.

Don't do that.

But that's fucking ridiculous and hilarious and crazy.

But also, something has been happening in the background because

there was like, I remember seeing when they had like a player that was announced that had like a 99 overall, and it was a big like celebration press release of like yo i got a maximum i got a 99 stat rating i'm killing it in madden this year right jeremy roanick and noun lpa 93 has a 100 rating in every single thing i've never heard of the the player and so it's like it's become like a actual big deal in the nfl for like what your madden rating is but like we don't know who or how or what the metrics are for how that's gathered and what that turns into but what i do know is that it's been notoriously stupid and full of shit because

so you've heard of probably Tom Brady.

Yes, I've heard of Tom Brady.

He's a football man.

Yes, he won the Super Bowl in 2002, many years ago.

He was rated 51

overall that year in Madden.

So for 2024-25 season, the Jets have a win-loss record of four wins to 11 losses.

That's pretty fucking bad.

I mean, just imagine being like,

fucking, nah, we're going to pass on that because

of the mad numbers.

The weird part is that you take this over to Ingerland.

God, this is the same discussion as the War Thunder

topic.

Like, this is the same.

Real life bleeding into the game.

Yeah, like.

So you take this overseas, and here's the thing.

Champ Man, Championship Manager, for a while now, has actually been used for

low mid-acquisitions on teams and shit

because they have this system where like thousands of scouts around the world all contribute and they observe their like what the player ratings are from all these like small leagues in all these different countries.

And there's like a kind of collective of like what the ratings are and that go into the game.

And so the whole thing is backed up and is used to affect real life football hires because of how they gather the data.

They're not doing that with Madden.

That's not what's happening here.

You know?

Anyway, yes, that's all that is for now, as it's called.

That is dumb as shit.

Good times.

Um,

anyway,

uh,

that's all fine and dandy.

Let's take some letters.

Hey, if you want to send in a letter to Castle Super Beast, go ahead and send it to CastleSuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

That's castlesuperbeastmail at gmail.com.

Let's take one over here.

All right, this one comes in from Chris, who says,

Yo, Chris, what up?

Dear unreliable religion, Pat, and this is this too is about racism.

Wooly.

Last podcast's discussion about naughty dogs intergalactic reminded me of Wooly's reaction to metaphor Refantasio in episode 290.

When Willie was going, wow, look at this RPG heavily featuring racism as part of its world building.

My initial reaction is, what is he talking about?

That's almost every RPG.

That's almost every Western RPG.

Then I realized what I meant was, that's almost every Western RPG.

From Elder Scrolls to Baldur's Gate to Dragon Age to Witcher to Pillars of Eternity to Divinity to Greedfall, et cetera, et cetera.

Societal, racial, conflict, and tension is more the rule than the exception.

He's completely right.

By contrast, JRPGs are a corrupt church hierarchy and false religion, which

are heavily trod through ground, though it shows up a good amount in Western ones as well.

Neil Druckman isn't so much purely being crazy by claiming a false religion is new ground for gaming as it is reflecting that he probably just plays no Japanese games.

The way Woolley's reaction to metaphor reflects that he doesn't play Western RPGs.

Okay, so of the games on the list that he provided, have you played any of those games?

None.

None.

Yeah.

See, like, like, we had trouble when you were talking about Cyberpunk and you were like,

well, where you people were saying, oh, it's your first open world Western RPG.

You're like, is that even true?

But he just listed off like a huge amount.

All the things that were listed there, I have not played.

Therefore, I don't have a bunch of those are good.

Yeah.

And a bunch of them, and they're, and they're all about racism.

Oh, yeah.

No, dude, Skyrim has a fucking fucking white supremacist dickhead going, Skyrim is for the Nords.

It is a massive theme.

Yeah, so there you go.

Neither's a problem.

Just thought it was an interesting minor mirror dynamic.

I mean, that makes a ton of sense.

Witcher is probably

the series in which race and discrimination has like the largest

focus in the forefront.

Yeah.

I'm like,

it's inescapable.

I will double down on Chris's point here about me not knowing and say that I brought the same energy to FF16

when I was like, yo, the racism though.

Yeah, and then they actually kind of fumbled it in a weird way because it's.

They're not used to it.

They're not, but there were, I think there were some decent sticking points that they got to right before the last

chapter.

um

there's there's one thing i saw i think it was haddock that pointed it out that like it kind of broke me because i didn't i didn't pick up on it when i was playing ff16

which is the anti-bearer racism is so extreme that they're not even valued as property right

Like even like people will just kill each other's bearers, which are like

load-bearing like labor in their household.

And they'll be like, yeah, fuck that guy.

I hate bearers.

It's weird.

Yeah.

I thought that they did get into like,

taking the concept and then adding that there, the specific flavor of like, and it can happen to you.

Anybody can have one.

Adds that extra layer of like

super hatred for a mother that gives birth to one and then goes, ew, get it away from me.

I don't remember where it is, but it is in FF16 somewhere, but it's never shown to the player and it's not part of the story.

But like, I feel like it might have been like a bigger deal that

the bearers had like a like a normie cleansing war like in the far past that led to their treatment.

So that's what I'm talking about when I'm saying, like, I thought that they closed it off with some good lore bits because prior to going to the fucking final nonsense battle, battle, whatever, that last continent where you're reading about the orphanage and you're reading about.

Yeah, okay, it's that one quest has that.

You read about the orphanage and you read about the war that took place and what the actual hierarchy was in the past, you know, and then this is the counteraction to that and the over-correction.

And that's the stuff that I found particularly interesting.

I feel like

that should have been earlier in the game.

And not avoidable.

Sure, sure.

But that's a pretty good, pretty astute observation, Chris.

That might explain why Druckman said, yeah, we're coming after the church this time.

Now, metaphor is like, metaphor is excellent and goes for both.

Right, right.

Metaphor is what if the church was outrageously corrupt and

the source of systemic racism.

You're like, oh, that's pretty bad, actually.

Don't like that.

Hey, Bill Burr, don't you think that you went a little too far when you went after the church?

Don't you think the church went too far?

I love Bill Burr.

All right.

Let's take one over here from Al.

Hey, Al, what up, man?

Hey, Pat and Woolley.

Quick question.

Do you have any examples of advice that people get or give

often in games that actually turns out to be super unhelpful and teaches bad habits?

I have one right away.

For example, a lot of people say ink your base when you start a Splatoon match.

But it's actually a rookie mistake that can hurt teams a lot.

It forces the rest of the team to get into a 3v4 battle in the middle of the map, and it usually puts you on a losing position trying to reclaim mid in the first half of the game.

Worst, your team gets wiped, and the enemy just inks all over your spawn during that, undoing the work anyway.

The correct move is to toss bombs and spray a little ink as you race out of the spawn area, then slowly cover it over the course of the game.

Pros will often just ignore it entirely until a full team knockout, then use the enemy respawn time to go back and cover their own base.

So, I have two, actually.

Chad actually reminded me of one.

Number one is a fighting game one,

and it is like I, you and I have heard it forever, forever, and it's horrible.

It's the worst.

Hey, I don't know what character to play.

What should I do?

Well, you should try every character on the roster and see which one you gel with.

No,

don't do that.

Oh my god, ever, don't ever do that.

Oh my god.

Oh,

imagine, imagine saying that in a MOBA.

People say that in a MOBA, people say that in Overwatch, people say that in Marvel Rivals.

No.

Pick the character that's cool.

Pick the cool one.

Holy shit.

You see a character you think looks cool?

Pick them.

You bought the game or you're booting the game up if it's free to have fun.

Look where the fun is and click on the fun one.

Click on the one that looks like fun team.

Pick on the one you think looks cool and fun.

Don't do the thing that doesn't seem like it's going to be fun.

So, hey.

Somebody in the chat asked the perfect follow-up question.

Is that advice really that bad?

That advice is terrible because that gives you the situation where people load up Street Fighter and they start playing matches one character at a time and have a miserable fucking time for 20 matches and never even get to the cool character on the roster they wanted to play and they quit.

Why am I doing this?

This sucks.

I don't enjoy it.

You're telling people to go not have fun.

And the thing is, is that like there's some genres of game are games where you boot up and there's no choices to make except for like, I guess, kind of like maybe customizing your own like character or so.

But you're going, you, but you're going in and

the game will reveal itself to you.

But in games where you're just given this big choice right off the bat, you just have to lean towards whatever you think looks cool.

You know, rule of cool is the only way.

Like, any time spent losing and feeling shit or whatever, or not getting what's going on and being confused while you also don't like the character you're using, you know, it's terrible.

That'd be awful.

Terrible advice.

I have a second one.

Sure.

The second one is

everyone in the world who has played Final Fantasy XIV and told someone

about the Cure 1, Cure 2 interaction known as Free Cure.

So if you cast Cure 1, It heals for, I don't know, a couple hundred potency.

And every now and then, it'll give you a free cast of Cure 2, which means you won't have to use MP, which is nice.

This is a trap.

This is a built-in trap for healers because Cure 1 doesn't do enough healing output and people will die as you are fishing for Cure 2.

Ah.

It just literally doesn't do enough healing to the point where I would tell people to take Cure 1 off the bar.

Throw the whole move in the garbage.

Because time matters.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

I don't know, like, if it counts if it's official or not, but

Mario Party telling you to fucking grind your palm onto the stick is probably a bad idea.

You've seen people with the mark, right?

Ripping your flesh off the palm.

Yes, the mark of the fake one, of the liar, you know, of the beast.

Like, just don't do it.

Don't do what the game tells you to do.

Those games are bad.

Winding up your fucking little shy guy toy or

tug of war, right?

The one where it's not even like, oh, do this to a certain amount of computer speed inputs or so.

It's literally outdo your friends

to see who can break their palms first.

Yeah, no, don't do that.

Do not listen to Nintendo.

Don't do it.

The Mark of Mario.

Yeah, man,

pick every character at least once while you start the game and you've never played it before is so like

the worst part about it is it sounds reasonable.

So here's like another way of phrasing it is don't put homework in front of the person who's playing for the first time.

Yeah.

Right?

You want to like you you start learning something that you think is that you're interested in,

and like that process is fun and doesn't feel like homework.

But what does feel like homework is the grindy bits, the studying, the da-da-da.

Don't tell people to go do homework up front.

That's stupid.

Anyway, yeah, I mean, I'm basically running a career on trying to undo that bad advice.

All right, now we got one here from Brooke who says, quick question.

I went to a funeral funeral the other week and I got into a strange semi-argument with my family about the dress code.

Okay.

It's my belief that proper dress attire for a funeral service or a viewing is black.

My mom and brother disagreed, saying that you just have to dress nice.

My brother wore a really bright, almost casual outfit that made me really embarrassed.

I settled with my mom on the agreement that bright clothes are okay as long as there's some black or muted element to them.

What do you think?

Okay, so this, okay, so I doubt it's in the email.

This is cultural, right?

Step one.

Are you a white person in North America?

This detail matters.

Step one is, yes.

Like in China, I believe,

I'm not sure which countries in Asia specify or so, but I definitely know that in some Asian countries, you wear all white, right?

Yeah.

That's the thing.

If you're Irish and you're having a wake, the rules are totally fucking different.

But we can talk to North America here where we live.

Yeah, you're right.

You should be wearing muted clothing.

My understanding and familiarity with it is all black.

It is a somber event.

You should be wearing primarily black.

And if you don't have primarily black nice clothes, it should at least not be bright in any way.

Fancy is way lower on the priority list than dark and/or black colors.

If you have a dark blue suit, that's probably, you could maybe get away with it, but you should not wear like a Trogdor t-shirt, though.

This is technically a black shirt.

It's also got Trogdor all over it.

That would be inappropriate.

Not everybody

has, you know, a ton of expensive formal wears, so it's understandable if it, you know, is

not going nuts there.

Don't wear your fucking haggow mind break sweater.

Don't do that.

But you, but you can go full goth outfit.

That is exciting.

Goths are always ready for a funeral.

Absolutely.

That's the deal.

If the goth kids are doing it, then that's what you should rock.

Yeah, you're mom and brother.

You should not dress in a way in which you could perceive yourself entering into a curb your enthusiasm episode.

You should not wear a

Ruroni Kenshin Hawaiian shirt

to a funeral.

I don't think you should do that.

I don't think that's appropriate.

And so, what this person might say, but that is a really nice, that is dressing nice

in your Kenshin Hawaiian, okay?

But it's still not appropriate.

Yeah.

All right.

I didn't think that would get you.

I can just see that conversation.

Well, I'm wearing my nice Kenshin shirts.

It's a button up, mom.

It's a button up.

You said get a button up.

There's buttons.

All right.

Last quick one.

So, hello, Dr.

Versus and Mr.

Starzat.

What's up, man?

Valve began when a bunch of developers left Microsoft to form their own studio, and they made Half-Life.

We all know what a big deal that was and still is.

Got me thinking about the best games from developers who left their studios or were fired or laid off, et cetera, and formed their own.

Another example is Medal of Honor forming Infinity Ward and making Call of Duty.

That's probably the most important one ever.

So that's the big one.

And here's the thing is that what you're describing is the history of the video game industry.

Like this is the type of question where you might notice it once or twice because I take it by the two examples given that you are a first-person shooter.

Oh, it's cost.

It's fucking everything.

Every genre, everywhere, all the time in the entire industry.

All it is,

every franchise that's currently big

likely started because it came off of someone who either quit or left or was fired from a studio and then went, I'll do my own version better.

Blackjack with Hookers, the video game industry story.

BioWare to Black Isle to Obsidian.

Like

the fucking

guys who left Capcom to go make King of Fighters and Fatal Fury.

Respawn.

You know, like it's just.

Oh, yeah, no, it happened again.

After Infinity Ward, people left Infinity Ward and then created Respawn.

Fucking,

you know,

the

Yacht Club Club from

Wayne Ford.

It's endless.

It's endless.

Harmonics.

Capcom to like 10 developers.

It just,

it keeps happening, and it will continue to do so.

And then the people who are the most talented ones that make the shit that's pretty fucking good

would love to go do that again without pitying people who don't know what they're talking about breathing down their necks.

It's the history of

industry, you know?

And then sometimes you get

a Capcom to Clover to Platinum to Seeds to Clovers, in which the company at the top was right, and that maybe making games that make money was important.

Maybe it was important to make money.

Did you get all the steps in there?

Capcom to.

No,

you missed a step.

Okay, Capcom.

Team Beautiful.

I forgot.

I forgot about that.

Team Beautiful to then

Clover to Seeds to Platinum to Clovers.

Yes, right.

Okie doke.

Oh, and our newest,

the guys at Net Ease that were working on distribution for Overwatch and World of Warcraft

to Marvel Rivals.

Word, that's where they came from?

Remember Net Ease and

Blizzard fell apart?

Like four years ago?

Yeah, I remember when we reported on that deal fall apart.

So no more Overwatch in China, no more World of Warcraft in China?

That's who ended up being the rivals team.

Well, here comes fucking Chinese Overwatch, and they got the Marvel license.

How's about that?

Holy shit.

Okay.

And the spite.

And the spite inside.

Absolutely.

Oh, yeah, Tango.

Absolutely.

Yeah.

Literally.

It's the story of everything.

It's infinite.

It's infinite.

This is not a special case.

It's literally just the way the industry works.

All right.

That'll do, everyone.

Happy holidays.

Merry Christmas.

Have a good new year.

Take care.

Bye.