2025.12.12: Anybody But Me

I throw a lot of ground balls. I'm a ground ball pitcher, pretty much.
Hey! We're recording the podcast! Gut up!

Good morning to you, wherever you are, because it is Morning Subware!

For December 12, 2025, my name is Bernie Burns, sitting right over there on 12-12. Make a wish.
It's Ash and Burns. Say hi to Ashley, everybody.
Is that how it works? 12-12, just make a wish.

Listen, anytime you see repeated numbers, make a wish. Okay.
That's how it works.

Gambling addiction is real, everybody.

So

this is the big day for the game awards. They were last night.
We have all the winners. The big news is Ashley was right.

Boy, were you right. This Expedition 33

clear lens obscurity

is looks.

Yeah, so Clear Upscar Expedition 33 swept just about every category it was nominated in.

And I have a question for you? As a result of seeing just how many awards it won,

does that make you want to play it even though it's outside your usual genre of choice? Well, I would say, boy, I immediately saw in the comments for I was saying the gaming subreddit.

What's the one that's legit and the one that's like mainstream? Well,

the R gaming subreddit is the like mainstream one. And R Games likes to think of itself as a little bit more highbrow.
Like

a little bit more highbrow. I was in the games subreddit.

we're talking about this, and immediately somebody goes, I can't even believe this is like the JPRG that everyone is interested in when there's so many better JRPGs in the last five years.

So I was like, oh my God, it's like, I do want to try it, but I run the risk of becoming that.

You don't want to be that really? I mean, do you feel like you're going to be comparing it against every other JRPG? Do you feel like that's what you're going to be doing?

No, but that's the end of that path, right? So you set foot on the path. You know, that's out there down the road.
I played these games. Am I on that path?

You're definitely on the path. You haven't reached the destination yet, but you're on the path.
All spectrum actually.

You know, you can go down the path and then just like turn around and come back if you want, right? Like, you know,

yeah, yeah, although technically it's an FRPG, right? Because it's French. Um, but yes, it is done in the style of the traditional JRPG.
No, it's like you're opening the Ruby debate all over again.

What's an anime? But it's a, it's a, it's a big deal. I mean, it was, you know, it's a fairly small team.

It was a new studio. This is their debut.
So, of course, they also won debut indie game and like best indie game.

They had three of like the five nominations for best performance won that one as well. Yeah.
So, you know, it's a lot of categories that they took.

You can look at it there because we have every single category.

Here we go.

And I think they won every category they were in, save. Except one.
So they took game of the year. They took best art direction.

Where they lost was best audio design, and they lost that to Battlefield 6. They won best game direction.
They won best narrative. Best performance went to Jennifer English

for that. Best score in music.
Also, Expedition 33.

Was that all of them? Nope. Best Independent Game also won that one.

Best RPG won that one.

Let's see. Here we go.

I wonder how much this is on the radio. Debut indie game.

It's just, it's pretty mental. What's notable about about the debut indie game in relation to this podcast is that we've talked about the game Dispatch before.
Yes.

And then Dispatch was in that category. It was the only award for which it was nominated, and it lost to Claire Obscura Expedition 33.
Yeah, the other nominees in that were all really good games.

So aside from Dispatch, there was also Blue Prince, Despalote, and Megabonk. Although Megabonk did,

I think that's the one that they...

Can you turn down a nomination? They gave back the nomination. They said this isn't our debut, so we don't feel qualified for this category.

I saw a clip of Moist Critical watching himself win Content Creator of the Year, and it's the closest I've ever seen to giving back the award.

He was just like, while they were reading out names, I guess he was streaming at the time. Were they not doing it in person? Did we not get the chance for the

speech like Greg Miller gave when he won it? I mean, I guess if he was streaming, did he just not go?

From what I saw this clip, he was not there. Didn't watch the game awards.
I think it took place like four in the morning when we were asleep in our beds here in Scotland.

But yeah, he was streaming, and when they read the list of nominees and they got to his name, he goes, please, anyone but me.

That is one of those nice things, too, as a person who's a little bit out of touch. Didn't recognize a single name on there besides his.

The other big thing about the Game Awards, what it's become known for, is it's now also like... one of the big places for announcements.
In lieu of something like E3, a lot of announcements get made

through Jeff Keely with the Game Awards. And so there were a couple of particularly big ones.
Did you follow the big rock in the desert? The like the big statue?

Did you follow that at all on the news? No, but I saw people referencing some kind of statue. Yes.
So that was a teaser for some announcement that was coming at the Game Awards.

There was a lot of speculation about what that could be.

I think it did get spoiled slightly before the event, but that was for a new Divinity game coming out of Larian Studios, who are most most recently coming off Baldur's Gate 3. Okay.

So it's, what's interesting about it is I think their first game as a studio, at least that I was aware of, they did Divinity Original Sin, which was, I think, Kickstarted that

or Divinity Original Sin 2 was.

And then they went on and they've made, they've made Baldur's Gate 3. They made a lot, kind of a lot of, they're like the classic RPG studio now is what I think of them as.

But they're going back to Divinity. They're not making like Divinity Original Sin 3.
This one's just called Divinity, which isn't going to be confusing brand-wise at all. You know,

I think it's

what happens is a genre is very popular, right?

Then it gets unpopular, and no one's really exploring those games anymore. And then there's teams of people that either grew up playing them or have a long experience of creating them.

And then they come in and they make something because they have a great passion for it. And then it blows everybody else away.

Like, I can't think of the last big, like, RPG that existed before Baldur's Gate. Another great example we were talking about, Dispatch earlier.

By the way, connection there with Content Creator of the Year, Moist Criticals in the voice cast of Dispatch. Is he? Yeah.

And so it's like that choose your own adventure narrative interactive, whatever you want to call it.

Like I felt like there would have been a dip in that and then Dispatch came in and scratched that itch for everybody.

If there's a genre I think where someone could come back and do that in much the same way, it would be RTS. Like I don't feel like we've had a really good RTS title in a long time.

There's also, it seems like there's a little bit of dissatisfaction in the like civilization-type strategy game.

And that, um, you know, people don't feel like the newest civilization has come far enough along, yet, usually it's like it releases as terrible, it takes a year, and then it's good.

Uh, and I feel like people have given it what that year, uh, and they're still not really pleased with where it's at. Yeah, was the other one humanity or something that was made for in between them?

Oh, I can't remember. Yeah, and then even like City simulators.
I think what I'm realizing here is that everything sucks right now.

Everything, well, this was an incredible year for games, and yet also everything sucks. It's one of the, it's the dichotomy of video games.

It's been a great decade for the weird narrative about a guy carrying a baby on his chest genre.

That's been amazing.

We've really excelled at that. So there were a couple of other big announcements.
One of them, did you play Knights of the Old Republic?

No, but I lived in a house with somebody who is deep into old Republic lore. Okay.
Well, then they are having a great day because they did announce a new

night. It's Star Wars Fate of the Old Republic, which is, I guess, kind of a spiritual successor.
It is being held by Casey Hudson, formerly of BioWare

with his new studio Arcanaut.

And so.

There's, I mean, there's a lot to be optimistic about there that it could be, you know, first of all, more Knights of the Old Republic, but it's going to be more of an action RPG.

So a little bit more active, I guess, fewer dice rolls, that kind of thing, but really exciting. It's been a really long time since that game came out.
Yeah. Yeah.

And

going back to this Divinity game, too, one of the things I read about it, they're lauding this thing as having more content than Baldur's Gate 3. I mean, which is, I think, a high bar.

I was reading people who said they've had up to like 20 campaigns through Baldur's Gate, and they're still the same stuff.

So one guy goes, Yeah, I just want like, I found some wizard on the beach this time through.

And someone said, Do you mean this person who was apparently one of the main characters in the game that they had never run into before?

I did that.

I had something like that happen where I started playing Baldur's Gate 3 and I got through like a certain point. And like, I put it down for a while.
And then when I came back, I was like, oh,

I wasn't so far along.

So I'm going to go back and I'm going to just, you know, start do, do the beginning body, blood, ship, whatever it is again and i'll just like get through that part and i'll you know be off to the races it's fine and i got through that and then like i ended up going through a tear in reality that i ignored before and i was like

look a wizard right that's the guy that's who he's talking about so i missed the wizard the first time around too so you can just go the whole game and not have this main character yeah i guess so

i guess so um but there's and i I don't know if it's a troll on the part of the developers, but I feel like every now and again I hear one of them comment like, oh yeah, and there's like something in the game that no one's found yet.

And that, of course, sends the entire Baldur's Gate fandom into a tizzy. Like, what could the thing be? Continue combing, everyone.
I love that.

What's the longest you ever heard of something going hidden in a video game? I guess there's probably still stuff that's setting that record currently.

Yeah, I mean, I think there's a lot of like glitches, hidden developer names, Easter eggs, that kind of thing from like the really, really old games that maybe just never got found.

And now, because they're dead media, they never will.

But they're they're still setting the record right oaster eggs used to be really lame like back in the days of atari was the developer's name it was or their initials right it was like their way of like signing the canvas now it's like an extra campaign or something like that or a wizard you gotta spend like you gotta do it on the seventh hour of the seventh day of the month or something like that and you get to see some random ass little big lore or something

so any any surprises are you how about you as a gamer over there are you happy with everything i mean yeah i'm i'm happy that uh expedition 33 got its flowers.

If I was one of the other developers nominated for one of the many, many categories, it might be a little bit like, oh man, couldn't we get one?

You know, so

in that respect, I would have liked to see more games recognized, I guess. Like, winning Game of the Year is like the one, you can share after that, right?

But also, if you are the Game of the Year, wouldn't you also be the best RPG of the year? So I, you know, I kind of get that as well.

Right. How can you win the greater category and that and not win your

own category? Yeah. That makes sense.

I'm excited for control 2, mostly for you.

There's control 2, control resonant that they revealed. I was excited for me for that.
That's one of the most bizarre games I ever played. I know, but you liked it.

You couldn't tear yourself away while you were playing it. Is that true? I never even finished it, I don't think.
Or maybe you absolutely did. I didn't 100%.
Because

my experience of control was watching you play control and going, what the fuck is going on? Yeah, why are you playing in a refrigerator? And you'd be like, I have no idea. I don't know.

I really don't know. I felt like maybe I had a fever that week or something, and it just all melded together.

So is there, do you remember, was there a character in the original control game called Dylan Faden?

Yeah. No.
Because that's this.

Is that the main character? Is that the lady? Dylan Faden? No, no, no. The protagonist of the original game was Jesse.
Okay.

But in the new control control, Resonant, you're going to be playing someone called...

Dylan Faden. And I couldn't remember.
I was like, was there a Dylan Faden in the middle of the day? Some of this rings a bell.

Was this,

Was there a brother involved?

That was such a fever dream. I'd have to go through and replay the game to have any hope of knowing what's going on.
But I'm not sure even that would do it.

Could have been another candidate, for lack of a better term. I don't spoil anything there.
But yeah, so there's a control resonance coming out.

Total War is doing Warhammer 40,000, which I am not big in either the Total War world or in the Warhammer world. But from what I understand, that's a big deal.
Yeah.

But I have no other commentary to offer. I don't either.
Cornhammer, I don't either.

But those are the.

Really watch out where that ends up.

I'm going to go paint minifigs with Henry Cavill. But I, I,

yeah, they're not all Henry Cavill out there, man. They're not all Henry Cavill.
Yeah, they are.

But we talk about, too, like, there's a dip and somebody comes in with a lot of passion and like revives something. I mean, that's kind of allegorically.
the way the game awards worked, right?

Because there was a couple attempts to make this show. Nobody could get it right.
But for awards show in general as well, it seems like Jeff Keely came in with a lot of passion, great team.

I read recently the stat is now that in order to show a trailer on the game awards, it's about, I've read estimates all over the place, but about $750,000.

All right, so we're talking like, we're talking Super Bowl money. Yeah, yeah, you're getting up there.
And it is. It is the Super Bowl of video games, right?

It's the event that, you know, in lieu of all of the other stuff going away, everyone tunes into this every year and then complains about it the next day about how um it you know the flow was off or they didn't like all the announcements or this thing but the point is they watched it and every year I think this thing can't get bigger and then every year Jeff Keely releases like it grew 80% this year and it reached 70 billion people congratulations Saturn is watching the game awards no it's crushing it yeah you know and also they got something really right very simple it's an award show in December there's no better time to have an award show than at the end of the year right yeah like all the ones that are happening February make no sense.

Yeah, the Emmys in September. That made sense when we had seasons that ended in May.

Right. It's like, you know, I, and I hear complaints about a lot of things like this, like Rapt

comes in December. And it's like, shouldn't that be a January through December? Shouldn't we get that at the beginning of the year, recapping the former year? And I'm like, no, no, no.

By the time January comes along, I don't want to hear about the last year. That year is dead to me.
Okay, so you're done spending money.

That's the other part of it as well, right? Yeah. Not spending a ton of cash in January, right? Yeah.
Hopefully. That's my New Year's resolution.
Yeah, that ever holds up anyway.

Yeah, I was going to say, like a million bucks for a trailer will be a big milestone for the show, right? So now a placement in the game awards will cost a million dollars.

But, you know, if it was $750,000 yesterday, you adjust for inflation to today. It could be at a million already.
Who knows? Yeah.

And that said, I think a lot of that goes straight back onto the screen. Like when you look at the game awards, it has all the glitz and all the glamour

of like the really high-profile awards shows. It has the production values.
So that money is going back into the production. It's not like Jeff's buying a yacht somewhere.
Right, right.

Well, you know, he could be too. I mean,

hey, Jeff, can we go over right on the

yacht company now?

I guess that's true. Well, yeah, he doesn't even need to buy a yacht.
He can just go on Gabe's. Whatever happened with that, by the way, did Steam ever come out with whatever they were going to do?

Was that like a whole, or is that just that announcement thing just dead?

it's the way that Steam does things. They're going, we're going to do Steam machines and stuff, but they haven't priced them and they haven't dated them.
Okay.

So everybody was waiting for this big announcement and just they tried to manifest. Was that what that was? They did what Steam always does, which is they go, oh yeah, we're working on a thing.
Okay.

And people were expecting an announcement by a certain day, right? And then they thought they put all this like thought into it as well that Half-Life 3 was definitely coming this week.

Yeah. And then it didn't, which is also the grand tradition of Half-Life 3.
right? Is that everyone is sure that it must be coming, the announcement is coming this week.

It has to be coming this week because of all of these things. And then it doesn't.
That's what Half-Life 3 is at this point, is the guessing of Half-Life 3. Jeff Keely's playing it on the yacht.

That's what I'm hearing from this whole conversation.

So congratulations to all the winners, especially Expedition 33. In answer to your question that you asked me at the beginning.
of this conversation.

No, I probably will not play it, but only because I was in a house with somebody who played that all all the way through, and I didn't pick it up at that point in time. So I don't think I would.
But

this would be a great chance for other people to discover this game who want to play it. I was mostly sat in a room by myself swearing at

the QuickTime events in combat. If I have not played Persona, which you have played so much of, and I have not said, I really want to be a...

cat that turns into a bus or whatever that is, if I haven't done that, then I'm probably not going to pick this one up. I wouldn't say.
Fair enough.

It's fine if the genre just isn't for you, but it is a mind-bender of a storyline as well.

The other big mind-bender happening today is that Disney announced that they're investing a billion dollars in open AI, and they're going to allow their characters on the Sora AI video generator, which is a huge turn for Disney, which has been historically wildly litigious about any unauthorized or

third-party use of their characters. This is a fascinating move.

Because they also fired off a cease and desist against Google for allowing their characters and its generators. Well, I think one motivates the other, doesn't it?

And it actually gives them a rationale or a precedent in order to do so. I guess so, because it says that, like, no, we have a business arrangement with this one and like licensing.

We have an agreement for the characters. You don't have that agreement.
So step off. This is infringement.
This is tortial interference.

You are interfering with the operation of our business now, right? Wow. Yeah.
Yeah. I mean, and that's, that's crazy to me, but in a weird way, it does seem spiritually aligned for Disney, right?

Like, like they have, they've forged business paths like with and for their characters that no one else has done. Didn't they change

fairy or they changed public domain as well? That's what it was. They changed public domain.
They changed it. Well, and a lot of the things are going to head into public domain, right?

So this becomes another way to punt through an entire era of technology at this point, right?

Is they've established something at the very beginning of AI and gen AI content where now they can just say, well, this is new to us. And here's, guess what? Another hundred years, right? Right.

Of this. So, and it's relevant, I think, because Steambelt Willie had just entered public domain, which was the predecessor to Mickey Mouse.
Yeah, that was a year or two ago, right?

We talked about it when it happened. But

what I'll be really curious to know as well is if their investment also means they're going to have a lot more control over what scenarios their characters can and cannot be generated in.

What I will be fascinated to see is if you get any kind of judgment where, say, for instance, a character or a piece of intellectual property is off limits to a specific AI, how do you extricate that character from the training algorithm?

Like, what was it trained on? At what point does it enter that and become a mush with everything else? Well, I mean, that depends.

If it was Meta's AI, I guess it was trained on years and years of porn. Right.
Right. So

is it Meta AI that's getting into

ChatGPT is now getting ready to roll out in Q1 of 2026 the adult version of ChatGPT.

And the only thing that's holding them back really at this point is they're trying to get the age verification algorithms right before they do that. How do you get the age?

verification algorithms of what is essentially what sounds like a porn bot. What are the searches searches that would indicate you're under 18 or under 21?

Also, like, is there really like how you don't have to answer that question.

I would prefer if you did answer that question.

How distinct is the distinction between

how 17 year olds interact with a chat bot and 18 year olds? I think it's like that thing where you're supposed to select the bikes, right?

In the captcha, you know, like how many of the frames have bridges in them or buses or whatever? It's not about what you select. It's the way you select it.

So a 17-year-old is interfacing with the chat bot 18 times a day and a 25 year old is doing like 10 times a day and a 50 year old like

once a week is good.

We're happy with that.

Yeah. So they said that they're, they're just trying to get that right and then they'll be ready to roll out their sexy porn bot.
Man, I don't know, dude. I don't know.

I don't know. That's all I gotta say.
I don't know. Look, I have no pithy statement to make about this.

I agree with you. Like, I don't know, but you can't deny that

typically

horny people and the media they consume have driven a lot of technology over the years. They decided that the Blu-ray won.
Right.

It is hard for me to not try to establish a lens at some point in the future. and then look back upon us through that lens, right? It's hard for me not to do that.
Like, there is a point in in time.

Like, what will history say about this? Somewhere down the road, somewhere down the road where we will be having the discussion about whether artificial intelligences are people and things like that.

We'll have to go through the whole equal rights thing and everything like that with another intelligent species or whatever you want to call it.

Words we don't have because we don't have the vocabulary necessary in order to discuss this at this point in time. And then we're going to look back at all the things that we made those people do now.

And it's going to, that I think that's going to be a gross mark.

I'll just say that. I think it's going to be a gross mark.

I just don't like, I don't. Is that a little too sci-fi? Or do you understand what I'm saying? No, I think I understand what you're saying there.

Like, it's going to be one of those things where you look back and you go,

wow, you people were really shitty. Oh, wow.
You guys pre-announced that. No one said anything about that.
Interesting. Okay.

Everyone was, oh, you were looking forward to it. Cool.
Yeah. Great.
I also learned something else from the comments. What's that?

I just learned that Venmo, in addition to having likes for transactions, does have comments. I've ignored that, I guess, and haven't seen that.

I can go comment on people's financial transactions on Venmo. Ashley, that is my weekend.
I am going to go back. I'll go back six months.
Venmo? Venmo, what have you done?

I'm just going to go back and write whatever people do. I'm just going to write sweet or

nice or whatever just on everyone's financial. I'm going to ruin this.

I'm not going to be satisfied until somebody blocks me or I lose a friend. That's how much I want to destroy this.

Do you get to go back through and just go, just start commenting on things going for the drugs? I don't understand. I'm going to cause chaos this week.

Or just start being like, oh, so you went without me.

No, I don't want to either do that. Just like, just like total creepy, like off on the side.
That's the level that I'm going for.

That's the level.

All right. Well, watch out, Rob Tyree and Kyle Wagner.
Bernie's coming for your Venmo this weekend.

Thank you both so much for sponsoring this episode of our show at patreon.com/slash morning somewhere and roosterteeth.com. All right.
Well, that does it for us today, December 12th, 2025.

We will be back to talk to you tomorrow. We hope you will be here as well.
Bye, everybody.