62: How Evil Can I Be In Kingdom Come: Deliverance 2?

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It's Jesse and Dodger, so give them a follow and see what the geekenders are all about.

Yo, it's the weekend, yeah, it's time to geek out, let it begin.

Go on, stream, and shout, it's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow.

Number one geek podcast, without a doubt.

Yo, another end of another long week.

Got a job and a kid, I know that you all beat.

So, take a second, grab a drink, and vibe.

While we catch you up in just a matter of time on gaming, comics, whatever you're doing.

If you're nerdy like us, then you know you should tune in.

Thank you for sharing our world with us.

Now, follow, subscribe, and turn the sun.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, scream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So, give them a follow, number one, geek podcast without a doubt.

Hello, everybody.

Damn, that was like right in there.

Jesus, this is hello, everyone, and welcome to Geekenders with lovely returning guest Mashish.

This guy, hello.

Wouldn't be my third time if you didn't fuck up the time the first time.

Whoa.

Dropping an an F-bomb at the beginning.

That's going to be edited out so this can go on YouTube.

Thanks, buddy.

Thanks, pal.

Thanks, buddy, old pal, old buddy.

But

you have a really good opportunity here.

What sound are you going to use to cover up the FA bomb?

I will let the editors choose.

That is fun.

Better make it funny.

I'll find out if it's not funny.

I'm not making my lackeys do it.

I hope that it's my own noise going, whoa, and then just my own face over Mathis' face.

That works.

That would be good.

Yeah, that could be good.

That would be really good.

I was trying to figure out the best way because my kid has started trading books and comics with other kids.

And so we were discussing the best way to...

have an identifier in there of like, this is Clark's book.

Right.

And I feel like, sure, you can write your name in there, but maybe it would be funnier to find a funny old picture of my kid cut out the face and make a bunch of just tiny stickers of her of her face and put them in the book you should buy yeah you should buy kids stickers you should like take a goof like take a goofy photo of your kid and then buy go to one of those sticker websites and then make little Clark stickers and then put them everywhere.

And so instead of the name, it's just Clark's face, like,

you know?

You'll always know if a book is Clark's.

I'm not getting,

chat, I'm not getting one of those fancy embossers.

This is a six-year-old.

I'm not getting one of those, like, beautiful from the library of Clarkthorne.

I'm not doing it.

All she needs is that kind of ego boost at six.

But I will.

Take a dumbass picture of her and turn it into a sticker.

That's a good idea.

Yeah.

You got to operate on the Jesse level.

You don't want to go too classy.

You want to keep it low broad.

It just seems so into.

By the way, those embossers are great.

They look amazing.

Just not for my kid.

I don't want to be everything for you, kid, except an embosser.

Except an embosser.

I don't need to be on the first page of Dogman, the poop joke book, to be like

putting fancy flowers that say Clark Thorne on there, you know?

Have you seen the new motion picture Dogman?

No.

I want to see it so bad.

I figured that would be right up your alley.

I want to see it so bad.

My, yeah, my kid read the first comic.

And so I was like, the movie looks so funny.

I'm going to sit down and also read this comic.

They really nailed the tone of like, because it's, it's a comic inside of a comic is the concept.

It's the same creators that made Captain Underpants.

Oh, okay.

So it's the same kids from Captain Underpants, but it's like their first story, which was Dogman.

And it's about a police officer and his dog.

And the police officer's head is dying, and the dog's body is dying.

And the nurse is like, we should just put the dog's head on the policeman's body.

And they're like, nurse, you're brilliant.

That's the whole story.

This is also a horror movie, actually.

It's

I do.

You know what?

I did have questions because I saw a trailer for this movie and thought, it's weird there's just a dog man

how does the world account for that and now that you've explained it to me and I know it's a horror story it's it's he is basically Robocop but a dog

but a la Pokemon the bad guy is a cat who's just a normal cat from what I can tell a la real life

a la real life as all cats are able to um right

you know I've seen cats versus dogs I know how it works cats are diabolically evil and always have been.

That's just what it is.

I disagree.

Yeah.

Yeah, that's because you're in the pocket of Big Cat, dude.

It's true.

We watched you pet one just a few moments ago.

Dude, he's in my lap right now, actually.

That's what I'm saying.

How many people you let me know?

That cat owns you, dude.

That cat owns you.

That's okay with me, though.

See?

I wish you'd pay my bills.

You're the cypher of

this podcast.

You've sold us out to Big Cat.

See, you would absolutely be the cypher of any situation giving you a chance let's be not cats not in this conversation dang if the money was good enough no that cat money yeah cat money

spends cat money i do no uh cat money is that's blood money i don't want that i'm not the one wearing cat ears headphones here

yeah no look i get it but i already know like i know the score with dodger that's fair yeah i'm just shocked to see a friend betray society in such a way

yeah yeah dodger i got like i know where dodger stands keep your enemies close right i get i get it that's why i do this show every week to make sure dodger's not up to any sort of diabolical you know we're going tit for tat in the great war between man and cat yeah

that's a lot there's a lot of lore to this fucking cat

this podcast because you wanted to Spend time with me.

I do want to spend time with you.

Make sure you're not completely in the pocket of Big Cat.

I'm the only one.

I'm the only one keeping you from

putting on like a weird neck collar thing.

Too late.

Yeah, I was like, wait, what?

It's a candy necklace.

I know.

I'm aware.

I'm aware of what it is.

Yeah.

Mathis, how are you doing?

How's life?

Good.

Things are good.

Thank you for having me on again.

I appreciate it.

I've weaseled my way into both of your lives in different podcasts.

So, you know, I'm here.

i've made my way here i'm i'm feeling good uh yeah life's been uh pretty good a lot of a lot of anime actually so

anime yeah

i hear it's pretty good i'm all right

jesus speaking you don't got one anime you watch and that's it i don't have any anime that i watch but i have watched them in the past there's nothing i'm actively watching i hear stuff oh sure i hear things on the street every once in a while i'll see a clip of like uh an old man with glasses beating up a young kid in a convenience store.

And I'm like, wow, that anime seems neat.

Oh.

But I won't watch it.

I'm going to be like, oh,

watching clips of like street crime.

Yeah, it's like, you know, you go on Reddit and you watch Public Freakout.

You see a little clip and you're like, oh, man, we're all weird.

And same thing with anime.

I'm like, huh,

that's neat, but I don't.

Yeah, anime happens.

I just don't, yeah, I'm not into that.

Anime happens.

If you want to.

Anime happens and I just exist around it.

Yeah,

if you listener want anime to happen with friends me and dodger on anime podcast to plug that shit real quick you should go watch anime call me

dodger how many mini mouse how many episodes of that have we done so far like eight or nine now

no yeah yeah the next one's technically well the one that's the one we just did is episode eight we're coming up on episode nine

yeah

I crushed this entire show, the premise, everything, when I discovered that they

crapped all over Cowboy Bebop.

Honestly, you know, well,

honestly, all over Cowboy Bebop.

I just, I gave my anime worth watching, to be honest.

I gave my honest opinion about what I thought it was good.

This wasn't great.

One, two, three.

Yeah, yeah.

There's the one we're going to be recording in a couple weeks is going to be episode eight.

Dang.

Our first episode was almost a year, no, six months ago, over half a year ago already.

Hot dog.

Hot dog.

Hot dog.

Same thing I tell Jesse

In four days, Shalum and I turned seven.

I'm aware.

I know.

Frankly, I don't like it.

I'm.

Can I tell you guys a funny thing?

I might have already told you this.

If I did, I need you to pretend that I've never said it before.

Okay.

So there's a podcast that my kid listens to at night sometimes when she's having trouble sleeping.

It's called Sleep Tight Stories, and it's very cute.

And they've been around forever.

So they have just a million like 20-minute stories.

And she loves it.

I don't know what it is about it.

But

for some reason, Spotify won't, if I have an episode of Sleep Tight Stories going,

it won't just go, cool, that's done.

I'll play the next one.

Instead, what it keeps trying to do is go,

What other podcasts do you listen to?

I'll just start one of those.

So many times now, I've gone in there to grab my phone and y'all chuckle fucks have been talking about aliens.

Yeah, dude.

She's going to believe in aliens and you're not going to go.

Well, now you know why.

Now you're going to know why.

She's going to be like, mom, I met the Nordics last night.

You don't want that.

You don't want the Nordics.

Keeping us safe from the Gordon.

You don't want that.

It happens so often.

I'm like, why is it always Chiluminati?

Why couldn't it be like any of the other ones?

Crab bag, too, because she's sick.

So she could get aliens or she could get like a four-parter about a serial killer.

That's what I'm saying.

I'm like, this is so dangerous.

I don't know why you're all.

It's also marked as like mature content.

So you would think you wouldn't want to go.

Yeah, but it's Dodger's phone.

It's

my...

Yeah, I follow your podcast.

And so it goes.

It goes, you want to listen to the newest Chaluminati?

And I'm like, no, I'm not even in there, dude.

What do you think is a great first episode of Chuliminati for a six-year-old?

For a six-year-old?

Yeah, I'm going to go with the Kentucky Cannibal.

For a six-year-old, I want to go with the episode about

My Brain Just Died.

The music guy, Andrew WK.

That's the best one.

Oh, okay.

Okay.

I was like, we did a couple different music.

Andrew WK is the simplest.

It's so, it likes,

it's just noise.

The kid doesn't need to know what's going on, but it's just pure noise.

It is, it is, it is pure noise.

She might really like the Tomta episode, yes.

Oh, I bet she would, but she liked Demon.

No, that wasn't a good one.

The guest was a little weird.

Guess, yeah, I guess it's strange.

Yeah,

I don't know.

Probably

any of them because they're all great, just like this podcast.

Every episode, great.

Man, you really, really sell your own work real well there.

Every episode,

ideas about how good you're showing.

Classic gold.

Yep.

It's crazy.

That's the show, everybody.

Thank you so much.

And that's it.

Bye.

As long as everyone knows and understands.

It's great stuff.

What are you guys doing for your Valentine's Day?

Eating

candy necklaces.

Yeah.

Sam and I never do anything on Valentine's.

That's right.

Is that a you choice or is that a Sam's busy choice?

I don't want to like go to like a busy restaurant or anything,

But I do want to go like have a nice meal.

So it makes the most sense to wait a week.

Yeah.

So we always, we always do a Valentine's dinner something like a week after Valentine's.

But on the day,

it's become like a silent war.

Every year,

I think we...

Imagine you and Sam waking up next to each other on Valentine's Day, just glaring at each other silently.

I've never heard anyone describe Valentine's Day as a silent war.

so I'm really excited to see where this goes.

We've got the silent war of the fight for our country

fighting like a Valentine's Sunday.

How would you describe your marriage?

It's a silent war.

A silent war.

I feel like they're playing.

Say that, but maybe not for the same reason.

We spent a lot of Valentine's not like really doing anything.

Like, like, maybe Sam would grab some flowers and you know, whatever.

It's now now escalated where

I always get him a bouquet of flowers and try to sneak it into his office.

And then I also get a bouquet of flowers for Clark.

And every year he manages to get

a bigger, crazier bouquet delivered to the house.

And I'm always like, fuck.

I can never get one that's like on the same, like we are not synced up at all about what flowers we're getting each other, right?

He always goes so hard because he's Sam.

And I think, all right, this year I'm going to get like a really nice bouquet, you know, and sneak it in there and it's going to be lovely.

And then the flowers show up, and I'm like, fuck,

I really dropped the ball here.

I don't want to hear about your healthy relationship anymore.

I, uh,

I, can I tell you?

Yeah, I love that you give flowers to Clark.

It's very cute.

Of course.

She's just one of my Valentine's.

Yeah,

she loves her life.

However, have you considered also giving one of those really crappy cards that they give in school?

Will you be my Valentine?

Yes.

Have you considered adding to that?

That would be really cute.

Yeah.

It would be.

I'm just saying,

you should step it up.

You should really, there's a reason why Sam's doing better at this god you're so nothing you're not you're stuck in a box you're stuck in a flower box you gotta you gotta get out of that

man flower box a trap

you are where are you at where are you at in your headspace dodger where were you where were you you went away for a minute what happened there what happened you you just you

i realized i realized that that clark has

two like big dick contest bouquets of flowers that I need to figure out where they're going in her bedroom.

Dude, that is the problem with this escalation training.

Yeah, we should

be a united front when it comes to getting something for Clark, maybe, instead of both individually getting something.

Which parent do you love more, Clark?

That, yeah, that won't backfire in any sort of insane way in 20 years.

Yeah, no, in 20 years' time, that'll be fine.

It won't affect Clark Clark at all.

Pardon me, I'll just combine them all.

Maybe I'll take my flowers and put them in

their ones.

And then, and then it'll be so much.

It'll be so intense.

Most kids grow up with childhood trauma.

Clark is going to grow up with, like, whoa, your parents didn't like argue over who loved you more?

Yeah.

I mean, that's great.

My hope is that it turns into some mean girl situation because I'm really angling for the mean girl.

I know, you really are.

You're really rooting for me.

I angled

to be a mean girl.

To be a secret asshole.

Yeah, I want her to be like the leader of the mean girls, though.

You know what I mean?

Like, she's just, come on, Becky and Becky too.

Let's go.

And they're like, okay, Clark.

And they follow around.

Yeah, that's what I'm here for.

Bro.

Yeah, very Regina George.

That's what I'm looking for.

By the way, we hit the, not to keep talking about my kid, but just as a side note we hit the tooth falling out jackpot both front teeth at the same time oh

i love it so much i think it's so great

let me ask you she's having a really hard time eating food though yeah very important question when she talks or breathes does she whistle no oh

it would be great because she's got two front teeth oh man she does she does have trouble with the

like

noises.

Yes.

Yeah.

Cute.

That's cute.

It's very cute.

You should have a kid, Jesse.

I should have a kid.

No, I'm all right.

Super cute.

It could be fun.

Get the scary stuff.

No, hold on.

Doctor, how old is Clark right now?

Six.

Took six years for this kid to become cute.

No, I can't deal with that.

I'd have to wait.

I might as well do another podcast.

I'm going to waste six years of my life.

Hey.

oh my gosh.

My kid's almost the same age as Chaluminani.

Almost, yeah.

That's actually crazy.

That's very cute.

God damn.

Time.

You can be doing this for like over a decade now.

I know.

I know.

I mean, what else am I going to do?

Yeah, true.

Come on.

Fair enough.

I got limited talents.

And

patience, really.

So this is all I got.

You think your patience has worn thin over the years, Jesse?

Oh, yeah.

I don't, I don't have patience for anything anymore.

Yes.

Yes, order.

Yes, Your Honor.

Order.

I have a question.

Yes.

As to podcastiers,

go up that term.

What do you think?

Because we're in a podcast boom right now, right?

What do you think is

the direction podcasts are going in?

What do you mean by that?

Yeah, I was going to say, what do you mean?

Like, what do you mean, direction?

Like, we've definitely hit the threshold, surely, right?

Like, there are so many podcasts.

Everybody's got a podcast.

Sure.

Yeah.

COVID definitely created a boom of people like throwing their hat in the ring.

And a million podcasts happening for sure.

I guess I'm asking, like,

do you think it's going to continue?

Like, people are going to continue to have all of these podcasts or will it peter out soon?

Honestly, I think because it's free and you don't need,

there's, you know, there's no gateway preventing you from doing any of this.

You don't need any particular software.

You can just do it, even if it sounds like crap.

I feel like we will always have more and more podcasts.

It's very democratized in what it is.

But, you know, like Twitch or YouTube or any of the things where it's like, make a thing and post it online.

There's going to be more and more, more, and more people do it.

But it doesn't mean there won't be standouts, right?

It doesn't mean that you can't start right now.

And if you have a really good idea or premise and it picks up and people hear it, doesn't there's no reason why it wouldn't blow up and make you like a podcast star.

But

yeah, I mean, it's just

there's a lot, but I feel like

that's because it's so easy to do.

The good news is, is there's 7 billion people on the planet.

So if you think, oh, I won't reach anyone,

reaching 100,000 people is very doable in a 7 billion planet person.

Like, it doesn't matter what your topic is.

It could be

why,

God, cats are cool, right?

And that's the show.

And I bet there'd be people, at least two in this podcast that would listen.

Yeah, true.

Yeah, I don't think podcasts are going to like go anywhere.

I think audio entertainment being free and easy and people, the more people travel, the more I think it's easier just kind of listen to things rather than watch them but yeah like i was just you had to be curious the growth of listeners for podcasts really boomed between like 2019 2021 like by an average of 2019 to 2020 podcast listeners increased by 21 to three over 330 million um fast forwarded to this year 23 2023 to 2024 grew about 7.5% over the year prior to almost 550 million listeners.

So we went from 330 million to 550 in about four years in terms of average podcasters.

But the number of people putting out podcasts, I'm sure, has grown similarly.

Yeah, I would wager that much like any other streaming, anything on the internet, the vast, vast, vast, vast, vast majority of people, just to give you perspective, are podcasting to like two people.

Like there's not,

you know, much like streaming, much like YouTube, there's a lot of content creators out there who may be doing amazing work, but they just don't have an audience and they're just putting out stuff.

So, I, you know, don't compare yourself to the hyper-successful people when you, if you want to start doing it, is my advice to any podcaster or whatever, because the hyper-successful people are genuinely flukes.

They like had the right thing at the right time and did the right, you know, and they just became successful and blew up.

But like, there's plenty of people that don't have an audience that I think are very, very, very good.

Again, give me curious.

80% of podcasts have less than 1,000 listens per episode.

Like that's a vast majority.

And for Chiluminati, it would be the same for geek enders, I imagine, with the listenership.

We're not like Joe Rogan level by any stretch, like huge, but successful enough puts us in a 0.5 percentile of podcasts with the number of listeners.

And that's still like, we're a drop in a bucket when it comes to a huge ocean of people that are bigger than us.

Like we're still not that big.

But yeah, there's a huge amount of just stuff out there.

Yes, Dr.

I saw you raise your hand earlier.

That's okay.

I have two thoughts.

First thought is: you know, the website that just shows you a random YouTube video that has no views.

Yep.

Oh, no.

I did not know this existed.

That's a cool idea.

Yeah, it's awesome.

I think they've made a Twitch one now as well.

There's one that will just like take you to a random channel that has no viewers.

There should be one for podcasts.

Yeah.

Oh, there you go.

That just has you listen to a random ass podcast with no listeners.

I think that would be amazing.

Second thing I was going to ask is speaking of podcast listeners, do you guys listen to podcasts?

I know you're on a lot of podcasts, but do you also listen to podcasts?

And what sort of things, sort of podcasts do you like to listen to?

Jesse?

I mean, I used to.

Yeah.

I used to listen to podcasts all the time.

Then they all started doing a thing that I do not like.

And that's why I don't do it often.

They all started going live show-only episodes.

And they would take that, they'd be like, Yeah, you know, they do it for three, four, five years, where it's just them in a studio.

And then eventually it becomes successful enough where they're like, Oh, we can make money doing this.

They start doing live shows.

And then the live shows are just a lot of audience interaction.

It doesn't feel the same, right?

So live shows are great if you're there.

I love doing live shows.

But for a podcast, it does not make the greatest of an episode.

And then a lot of people just start doing those all the time.

And I'm fine doing like,

I'm fine doing a live episode every once in a while.

It's why I do it that way.

But after a while, you're like, eh.

And so I just don't, I don't listen to it as much.

Right now, my podcasts are old episodes or not episodes, but I guess

speedruns from past GDQs or A

games done quick.

Like that's that kind of thing.

Like background noise mostly for you.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, at this point, I don't.

All the ones I used to listen to, I don't listen to anymore.

And even news ones, I'll be honest, I don't do a lot of news these days.

I'm like, you know what?

I'm all right.

I'm gonna turn off the news.

So, yeah, I'm definitely disconnected from a lot.

So, I'm fine with that.

I'm fine.

GDQ is great.

I love it.

I was watching the Grand Pooh, whatever, World 3 run last night.

It was very fun.

I was like, that's cute.

Yeah.

And when you say live show, you mean specifically like cons and like stage stage live shows turned into a show?

No, I mean like just like

there's a lot of shows.

So like very specifically, I, you know, even though I love them to death, I will call out How Do This Get Made as a great example, where it's a great show and then they started doing live shows.

And the live shows are fun.

I've been to one.

It's very fun.

But the show itself, the vibe changed because it was about getting audience

reaction rather than

discussion of the movie.

And it became like a different vibe.

Doesn't mean it was a bad.

It's just an entirely different vibe.

Yeah, yeah.

That's it.

You know,

yeah, I don't listen to as much anymore

because I do a lot of them, but I still listen to a handful.

And I mean, I think it's telling us to like where my comedy, like my preferred, preferred comedy is kind of dark.

Like, I very much love like last podcast on the left, which is

a

much more MX rated version of like, kind of what you Luminati does in a lot of ways, where it's just like a lot of weird topics, including true crime, but their humor is just a little bit darker than

we are.

And then I don't, I'm with you, Jesse.

I don't listen to like

news anything.

I just can't.

Like, I just, I can read a history book and I can tell you what's going to happen a little bit.

But yeah, like I used to, I used to listen to a lot more.

Like back in the day,

I mean, co-optional was on the regular, like this, like years ago, like, you know, LastPod, Co-optional, and a ton of different news ones.

You rotate through them all.

Now, you know, it's like a hand, less than a handful because I'm just on them now doing them so

don't really you know have as much time so

but yeah i love pod the thing with podcasting i think that's interesting is it's it's interesting to watch it mirror youtube in some ways in terms of like

youtube kind of went through like it was 2011 uh 2000 it was like 200 like nine to like 2011 was like the first like the first youtube stars kind of started showing up and then right around 2012 2013, everybody and their grandmother were like, it's a YouTube channel time.

And fucking people just made a bunch of YouTube channels.

And we saw people rise.

A bunch of most people kind of disappeared.

And then, of course, a ton of people are making YouTube channels now still, but it's not nearly as like crazy as it once was.

But we're watching the same thing happen with podcasting now.

And it's funny to watch all these YouTubers who were huge moving into the podcast sphere.

Like every massive YouTuber from gaming or whatever has a podcast now.

Everyone.

So that's not multiple.

That's what I mean.

That's why I was bringing it up.

I mean, but the reason why is very simple.

The gameplay for the vast majority of people was a vehicle.

It was like bread or butter.

It was literally, it existed to be something to put on while they just talked.

The vast, vast majority of people who were doing Let's Plays weren't doing like, wow, look at this thing over here.

I can't wait to investigate what this is.

They were just talking over video game footage.

And at some point, much like Krendor and I, we realized while playing Saints Row 4, I think, that we were like, we could just do a podcast of this.

It's roughly the same thing.

And so we did.

And that was 2012.

One of my very good friends, Ryan Nordline, Binding of Isaac, was basically just a fucking podcast.

Like, it was just thousands of episodes of him just talking about his day or whatever the fuck it was.

And Isaac was literally vehicle.

for that.

So it makes sense.

And the other thing with podcasts too is there's no YouTube algorithm.

You don't have to worry about a thumbnail.

You don't have to worry about fucking tags and how the algorithm is going to pick it up.

When you do a podcast, it is spread across six, seven, eight different services.

And it's a little bit decentralized in that way.

So you're not, it's not just YouTube you're fighting.

You're, you're, you know, you have a lot more easier access to your audience and you don't have to worry about someone having clicked the bell, subscribed, turned on notifications.

If they follow you, they get informed.

End of story.

And the money's better in podcasting too.

Like, not to be like, oh, we, because we don't make like a ton of money, but the ad rate, YouTube, YouTube takes 40%

off the top, period.

It might be 50.

I thought it was 40, but it very well, like before it even goes to an agent, if you have an agent or MCN or whatever, whatever you make off of YouTube, YouTube yanks 50% right off the top before you see a dime.

So like that

isn't as like true.

in the podcasting sphere.

It's weird.

It's just weird.

It's just a weird, it's a different sphere.

i i i don't want to say i'm worried but spotify is very much trying to make an attempt to be the youtube of audio like they have an algorithm now tagging video like they have all these things that youtube is doing that can make you more visible on their platform but luckily they're still you know google play apple podbean

podcast addict you name it It'll be interesting to follow the podcast here, I think, in the next like five years to see what Spotify does and see if they really like scoop up a majority of the listeners.

Anyway, you know so much more about the like back end of that stuff.

I've been living it for like even before Trelluminati, like uh roundtable podcast, which was like our my old video game podcast with Bear Taffy, Northern Lion, uh, Rockley Smile.

Like

it's it's interesting to just like you dive into the back numbers and you realize, like I mentioned for geekenders, it's the same.

You do what, a thousand, two thousand people live but you probably do like 30 40 50 60 000 listeners over a 30 day period uh across youtube and and other other stuff so like the majority of your listeners are audio and it's a very different beast to track that because you're trying to track that over the over like eight platforms and you're trying to aggregate and they all count numbers differently But there is, I prefer the decentralized nature of it all because I'm not, like I said, stressing about getting a giant face on a thumbnail and making sure there's a giant red arrow and a clickabity title so people can click and hope they last longer than 30 seconds so they can get past, you know, all that shit that

is still part of the fucking YouTube sphere.

Even stronger today than it ever was.

I remember when YouTube was like, okay, 10 minutes, that's it.

That's what you want for your video.

10 minutes, it's it.

If it's longer than 10 minutes, the algorithm is not going to give it out.

Now it's like, got to be over an hour.

Well, if it's over an hour, that's what we want.

It's just fucking it's all over the place and i imagine you struggle with that jesse more than i do because i've very much like walked away from the youtube sphere for the most part at this point

bibby i don't struggle

i let it take control i've let it i am i am wired up to the system yeah i am jacked in there's nothing i can do about it so i don't stress

i accept it for the beast it is and everything on youtube the algorithm is like ready to shove you down the right-wing sphere no matter what.

Like, whatever you watch, you like click one video about how you don't like Star Wars and Davis is any like going down the

it's crazy, and still like that.

It's like you watch one video, and it's like, Do you want to know why wokeness made avowed the worst game in the world?

Because they have they/them pronouns.

I'm like, oh god, I just wanted to watch a review about avowed and see what people thought.

Why do I need to know about all this shit that doesn't fucking matter?

So dumb anyway, they just love the drama, Yeah, it works.

It gets people.

They love it.

Oh, yeah.

It's all money for them.

It's all money for them, but it gets people all worked up over dumb shit.

Yep.

Anyway, how's Cis 7, Jesse?

I'm sure it's a fine game, or will be one day.

Hey, I played Civ 7.

This is what I'll say.

It is...

Classically a Civ game launch.

And everyone who says it'll get better later,

awesome.

I hope it does.

I love civ games and I wish it would get better.

It's just, it doesn't feel very civvy.

So in my mind, and again, this is preference.

You may love it.

You may want to be a part of this.

Have fun.

I'm not going to tell you not to enjoy.

Preferentially, when I play Civ, I'm usually playing it A,

while I'm waiting for a video to render.

Or B, when I'm completely like, I'm going to listen to a podcast.

I'm going to listen to a thing and I want to like half zone out.

And so the

idea of things like

automating a scout and have them walk around and explore for me while I deal with building, that's not in Civ 7.

There's no automation.

Your scouts can't wander.

There's no automation.

If I, say, for example, have a start and I want to prevent flooding from a tile, right?

Which, by the way, in Civ 6, it took them a while to get to natural disasters and different things.

That was an expansion.

That's right out the gate in this one, but without ways to deal with things.

So if you have a flood, right?

All you can do is repair the flood.

You cannot in any way prevent that flood.

So for example, in Civ 6, you could build a dam.

That flood just stopped the flood.

And then eventually that dam could become an electropower thing where you can now power your city.

That's not a thing, there's no dam in this, you just can't deal with that.

If you have natural disasters, and like one of your cities is prone to natural disasters, in six, and this again, six isn't even the best one, six is just the most recent one before this.

What is using it as an example?

Considered best civ.

What do you consider your favorite, the best one?

Can I try to answer this based on last week?

Yes.

Oh boy, here we go.

Yes,

I think you said four is your favorite.

Four is very good.

I do love four.

I would say four and five are probably at a tie for my favorite.

Although three has a sweet spot in my heart.

Sure.

Four is five.

But I believe four.

Hold on.

What was the one that came with all the mods?

Fall from heaven, fall from heaven two.

Was that three?

Four.

I don't remember.

Whichever one that was, that would be my favorite.

That would be the one I consider my favorite one.

That's fair.

That was four.

Great.

Then four is my favorite.

Hands down, my favorite.

And so, but like, I played five a bunch.

I played, I got like, even though six is not my favorite, I have five, 600 hours in that damn thing.

So like

I like Civ games.

And this one, all the quality of life stuff just isn't there.

And it drives me crazy.

So for, like, I was saying, in six, you had governors who one of the governors, if you went down the skill tree of the governor, if your city is like tornadoes or hurricanes or uh you know snowstorms or whatever volcanoes you could put that governor in that city and it would negate all damage from natural disasters like they're they handle it

there are no governors in this one so it's just not a thing you can do you have no recourse so

there are times i'm playing it's just fine And then there are times, like when I was playing with Crendor Online, I was between two volcanoes and my cities were always on fire.

And there was nothing you can find.

So there's nothing you can do.

And everyone's like, well, actually, that's good because then it buffs your tiles.

I'm like, Cool,

it buffs them with fire.

Everybody burning a lot.

Yeah, the new Pompeii every year.

There's a lot of little things that just don't make sense to me.

And like that.

Another great example is going back to if I wanted to make a dam to dam up a river.

There is no, when you go to the tech tree, for the two of you, I assume have both of you played Civ a little bit.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I played A Civ with you and Crendor about

seven years ago.

All right.

Then it would probably be six.

So

in Civ, and this is for chat as well, if you go to the tech tree and you see a thing you want, right?

What do you do?

You're on the tech tree.

You see a thing you want.

It's way further down the line.

What do you do?

You click on the tech tree, the tech you want, and then it maps out how it'll get you there.

It's done that for decades.

That is not in this game.

You cannot map out where you want to go.

It literally,

the tech trees are also shrunk because there's three eras now, three ages, and you can't, after every age, it resets.

And you become a different thing.

And the tech tree you're working on is gone.

So you're redoing a tech tree.

So it's like three micro games rather than one big game.

You can't, for instance,

have a giant mech battle archers.

You can't get there anymore.

That's not a thing that happens in this game.

You just can't do it.

Yeah.

So, for example,

if you go from age,

the antiquity age to whatever the middle one is, the age of exploration, if you're playing as Rome, for example, I've been playing as Rome a lot lately because I'm trying to get my Rome Benjamin Franklin win.

right and so play as Ben as Rome you get a bunch of centurions or you get like legions, and you can get a legatis to lead the legions, you do this whole thing.

When the era shifts and you move to the next one, everything resets.

So for example, if you're at war, say for example, when I was at war with Harriet Tubman, the war was going on as the age shifted and the war ended.

When the age started back up, the war was ended.

There was peace between us.

There was no like, oh, well, if you didn't take our cities, guess what?

You didn't, it's over.

You got to re you have to re-establish a reason for war or declare a surprise war and get yourself completely like it's just, so that's a whole thing.

Any units you had, some will vanish completely, and then you'll get different units entirely, depending on what you, you picked.

Like

at its core, it feels, looks, sounds like Civ, but the longer you play, it doesn't feel like a Civ game.

If anything, it's makes it's more active, which again, I can understand how people like that.

It's the difference between, you know, Final Fantasy VII Remake and Final Fantasy 16.

16 is a more active, it's like you're playing Devil May Cry.

It's a different style of game.

And if you like it, you like it.

If you don't, you don't.

That's fine.

Same thing with Civ.

I don't like this like plate spinning, you're constantly doing stuff version of Civ.

It does not gel with me at all.

I'm just not a fan of it.

Another great example is as you play through the ages, right?

When the age starts, it feels like Civ.

You're building, you're doing things, you're declaring war, you're sending out, you know, monks to go convert cities or whatever.

But what happens is over time, you'll start to get crises and the crises will compound.

The best example I could think of is there was a Star Trek game.

I think it's like Star Trek five-year mission or something like that, where it's a board game and you play with friends and each of you are a Star Trek crew member.

And the whole point of the board game is you draw a card and the card has something bad on it.

And so you keep drawing bad cards and then you as a group have to stop it from happening but what goes on is each card compounds and it gets worse and worse and worse and worse

and so every time you play the end of an age you have compounding crises that get worse and obviously historically it makes perfect sense that the crises think again going back to final fantasy final fantasy 14 the idea of like there's a cataclysm and then there's change right and in this much like history there's crises that build and then something dramatic happens and then you move into a new age.

It makes sense historically, but gameplay-wise, I'm sitting there with

the most recent game I played.

I got so much political unrest that then led into a plague, a plague that was destroying everything.

Now, I had no idea how to deal with the plague, right?

Obviously, people were like, oh, go out, move out of your city, do this, do this, you know, like all sorts of things.

But the plague was ravaging my population.

My people were revolting.

Meanwhile, I'm thinking, if I was in a war, if I was trying to achieve an objective, how would I manage this?

It almost feels like it's too much.

And so I'm constantly being just bombarded with terrible things happening.

And then...

the age shifts and all that goes away and you get to start over knowing though that there's going to be more crises down the line.

So now you're planning for crises rather than just playing the game and trying to dominate the world in whatever way you're trying to do.

So it's this constant, like I, for the plague crises, the solution I found when I went online, this is not even a joke.

I went to like the Civ forums, the ones that like everyone goes to for tips.

The crises.

Plague tip was reload and hope you don't get the plague.

That's how bad it is.

And what's funny is everyone in the comments was like, Yeah, Jesse, that is the worst play.

You got screwed.

I've had the plague crises four times now.

Good lord.

If it's rare, it doesn't feel rare.

I'm getting screwed every time.

And it's that kind of thing where I don't feel

like the video I made, I was trying to like, I don't hate the game.

It just stresses me out.

And I don't want to, when I play Civ, I mentally relax.

It is a game for me that is relaxing.

Much like when I play Total War, I'm not playing Total War

as

like an army management sim these days.

That's not how I do it.

When I play Total War, I'm playing Total War where I have literally, I have the best units possible, and I'm going to just auto battle and take over the map because I'm just, I'm checking out of the world for a minute just so I can go do this thing that gives me like number go up.

I feel good.

This is good.

It isn't relaxing anymore.

Sim 7 stresses me out.

And I want to get to the point where it doesn't do that, but I constantly feel stressed playing it because there's always something terrible happening.

And I'm like, I get it.

That's life, man.

But it's not my video game.

I want to be, I want to have fun.

So that's where I'm at right now.

I'm still playing it.

I still want it to be good, but it is not a game that I intend to spend many hours playing because

Unless they change some stuff, it's just not conducive to how I enjoy games anymore.

Are you going to go back to an older Civ after your Benjamin?

I mean, I still have Civ 6 installed on my PC.

It's never been removed.

Someone in chat asked if you felt like there was anything that this one improved on.

Oh, sure.

There's all sorts of little things that are great.

I love, genuinely love the ability to pick different heroes.

Heroes is a weird term, but like leaders and mix match them with different civilizations.

There's some really cool synergies.

I think that's very fun.

I like that if there's a barbarian camp or a city-state, one of the things you can do, especially early on, which is very fun, is you can take them over and then literally send them to go attack another faction.

That's great.

I love that.

So it's like barbarians, leave me alone, go attack them.

Big fan.

There's some really cool objectives and things you can do.

I like the district system.

So for example, as Rome, you need to make a basilica and temple of Jupiter.

But if you put them both in the same area, you get a forum.

And that forum gives you extra buffs.

So things like that where I, I love that.

But at the same time, when it comes to districts, a lot of the city that you're building kind of looks the same to me.

And unless you mouse over it, you won't really remember what you put there, especially if you get multiple cities with multiple buildings going and you have to like mouse over and like, what did I put there?

Like, why do I want to match that with this?

When before, and I know this is preference, this is entirely preference.

In Civ 6, for example, each district was color coded.

So it's like, okay, you know, purple is going to be your social, blue is going to be or cultural.

Blue is going to be your science.

Red is going to be, you know, the military.

And it made sense and you could look at it visually and really quickly just make choices.

In this, you have to kind of,

what, what did I put...

I mean, I guess, because in this, you can overlay things and you can overbuild.

And overbuilding is a whole other concept that you have to understand that you have to read the tutorials for because they don't explain it in the game, but they do have tutorials that will be like, this is how you do it.

And

yeah, there's just a lot of new mechanics.

There's a lot to learn.

I clearly can't give a final review, but I will say it stresses me the hell out.

The game stresses me out in a way that, like,

a great example is I was playing it the other day.

i played it online with credor then played it by myself then then played it by myself again and still had like

when i was playing with credor i was getting so frustrated because online removes any tooltips or any tutorials and i was like well two tooltips are there uh tutorials and it's like uh

i don't know what i'm doing this is a terrible idea I shouldn't have played this online with you.

I hate this experience.

Let me try it single.

Then I tried single player and for a little bit was like, all right, I'm feeling it.

I'm feeling it.

And then, nope, all right, I'm not anymore.

And that seems to be where I'm at is there's a beginning bit that I really enjoy and then it crumbles very quickly.

And I'm like, okay, I don't.

I feel like this sentiment I've seen like around.

Like people are not enjoying Civ 7 very much.

And usually when a Civ game comes out, majority of the people are like, okay, foundation is there, but everything I liked, the other ones are stripped away.

So I need to wait for expansions and updates and then it'll be really, really good.

This one seems like a lot more different where the complaints are like, no, the foundational gameplay loop is not great.

Like something is just, it's not saved.

It's very different and it's just problematic.

And I wonder if we're going to see, because we've seen games do this, where they'll, in a year, maybe even six months to a year, they'll have an update that fucking changes basically the foundation of the game.

It's, it's like a weird vibe because the like Age of Exploration, for example, it wants you to explore.

But exploration is a slog in this game.

Like it just feels sluggish.

You have to control every single person.

You can't automate, right?

So you can't just let them do a thing and focus on something else.

You have to constantly be managing them.

If you send ships out to the ocean, you don't have the right skills or the right tech tree stuff, the ships will just get destroyed in the water, which they always would.

But like you could offset that with like a World Wonder or something.

And

there's just constant things.

And compounding, it makes it worse, right?

Like if it was one or two of these things, I'd be whatever.

It's a different game, different change, but it's all these little micro changes that it's here's the vibe of how I would describe it.

Have you ever been in a relationship with someone and

there's a point where you realize like, I don't think I like this person anymore.

And it's not because something

like that day happened.

It's because micro compounding things over years happened and they were never addressed.

And then finally one day you're like, I hate this person.

That's how I feel feel about Civ.

Yeah.

Like, it's these little, it isn't as a game as a whole, it's not a bad game.

Civ 7 isn't a bad game.

It's just, there's so many micro things that I just don't like that compounds to a, I don't know that I want to play this right now,

which sucks because I love Civ games.

I want more.

I want to love it.

And I see people be like, I'm actually enjoying it.

And by God, I wish that was me.

I really genuinely do.

That's such a bummer, man.

Like, yeah it because there's games out there that do like some of the stuff you're saying but none of it's relaxing in that way too because that's that's the

i mean i think turn-based games in general have that built in because like one of my favorite strategy games is crusader kings 3 but that's real time with pause and it's very stressful a lot like it can be very stressful there's no relaxing like pace to that game really and only a few strategy games have that kind of relaxing pace and civ is like one of

what three that I can maybe think like and they're all like the other ones I could think of are all like Civ like games like Millennium or Humankind which are all just Civ style games it's weird how you it occupies such a what I would think is a popular genre space but there's just not much like civ

out there

and again I think that's

why it's interesting that they decided to go more towards other games.

Like it feels like you're playing a different game.

It doesn't feel like Civ.

Yeah.

But again, that's, that's preference.

And it's because I still to this day play Civ 5 and 6 actively.

And so the difference, this would be like if you went from playing a game, like a franchise you love, and then the next game came out and was totally different.

And you were like, wow, like, I get it.

I get it.

I, that's, it was a shock to me that it's different.

And so I have to overcome that and, and get used to what Civ is now.

Except I'm just not.

And I'm just being honest.

Like,

I'm not going to be like, well, you know, I have my thoughts, but I don't want to share them.

That's exactly what this show is for.

So

I don't think that's unfair, though, because Civ has been around for literal decades.

And there are certain aspects of its core gameplay that have held true through every iteration that don't hold true in 7, it sounds like.

So yeah, people could be like, well, what the, I'm buying this franchise I'm buying, Civ 7, because I'm expecting these things that have been around since day whatever, you know, like getting rid of those things

would throw anybody off, I feel like.

Yeah, it would piss anybody off.

I mean, it's the same, I see in chat Dinosaur Warriors 9.

Same vibe I had there.

Hated Dinosaur Wars 9.

They tried to do it open world.

They tried to do whatever.

Now, Dinosaurs Origins, it's my new comfort game.

I love that game.

It's so good.

Dinosaur Wars Origins slaps in the best way.

In fact, when I was upset about Civ, I went and played Dinosaur Wars, and people were like, dude, you're smiling.

And I was like, yeah.

Because this game's fun.

I'm enjoying every moment of this.

Even though the game is like goofy as hell and and is, you know, the same Dynasty Wars.

What now?

Aren't they all goofy as hell?

That's what I'm saying.

Like, even though it's,

it is, I'm, like, it is a solid.

Every Dynasty Warriors is a solid seven or eight out of 10.

That's like what they've always been.

And they'll always be that way.

And I will always enjoy them.

And I just smiled.

And I like killing a thousand guys.

And I like playing with my spear.

You know, all the things that you do while gaming.

And

yeah, I just love it.

Also, they just released Warriors Abyss yesterday.

Imagine Dynasty Warriors, but it's 2.5D, and it's a roguelite, and you straight up get all the samurai warriors and dynasty warriors.

And, you know, I was playing this Lubu last night.

You fight demons in hell, and then you get little upgrades, and it's a roguelite, and it's super fun.

And it's like cheap.

It's like 20, 30 bucks.

I love it.

It's great.

Sounds fun.

Yeah.

So, like.

I haven't checked out Origins yet, but I haven't played Dynasty Warriors in a hot minute.

So, yeah, it's Dynasty Warriors plus Hades.

That's exactly what the vibe is.

Yeah.

You do the combos from Dynasty Warriors, but then you can get various other heroes to join you and you can execute attacks with them and then do a super move where they all join together in like a cool Dynasty Warrior thing.

You F everyone up on the screen.

It looks gorgeous.

Very fun.

I was enjoying it.

I believe it's,

I think it's Warriors Abyss or Abyss Warriors.

It's literally just shadow dropped Thursday, I think.

Oh, huh.

Yeah.

I want to check out

Dragon.

She fucking Dynasty Warriors Origins because everybody said Origins is great.

So that's kind of where my mind's at with that.

Origins is so much fun.

They do a really good job.

It still has the same like, uh, Lou Boo, we're meeting again.

I cannot wait to battle you.

Like, it still has that, which is fun because it's always the same.

But it actually has, like, you, you know, in past Dynasty Wars games, the Yellow Turbans was one battle, maybe two.

In this, it's a whole ass storyline that, you know, like the Dong Zhuo part, which is maybe two fights, that's a whole that's gonna take you like four hours to complete that storyline.

I'm like, yeah, it's exactly what I want.

I'm having a great time playing it.

That's fun, Warrior's Abyss.

Yeah, I checked.

Warriors Abyss, play it.

It's it's very fun.

I

also played a Hades-like.

Oh, I played a bunch of it.

It got pitched to me really hard when I was on dropped frames and Sam bought it for me because it's a co-op Hades-like.

It's called Sworn.

You guys have heard of that game yet?

Yes.

Sworn.

I may have heard of this.

It already sounds familiar.

When you play this game or look at this game, if you've played Hades before, you're going to be like, oh my God.

Because there is so much overlap.

Notable things that are different.

It is co-op, up to four players.

It's class-based.

So in Hades, you know, you're playing in like the first Hades, you're just playing Zagreus the whole time, right?

And you can swap up your weapons.

In this game, there are four classes.

Each class has four weapons and four spells to unlock.

There's a huge skill tree or like an upgrade tree, I should say.

But it has, there's like

so much overlap in the UI,

in the way that everything looks.

Oh, yeah.

The art style, you could say, is sort of a cross between Darkest Dungeon and Hades.

But

the theme that they went with is like Arthurian.

I'm looking at it now.

It is straight up just Hades, but Cavalot.

Yes.

And Team 17, too.

They have a good track record.

It's really fun.

It did start a really interesting conversation in my chat of like

how different people feel about games that take so much inspiration from another game that like the second you play it, you're like, oh, this is just Hades, right?

Yeah.

I can actually answer that for you.

I actually have an answer.

How do people feel about just taking something that was something else and making it their own?

League of Legends has that answer.

That's just Dota.

They stole that from

Warcraft 3.

So like people love it.

This is what they do.

Well, like the example that

I also immediately thought of is when vampire survivors came out, a bunch of games came out that were basically just vampire survivors.

But the ones, the ones that continued to do well potentially are the ones that added to the format or did something that was like unique to them with the format.

And I do think Sworn did that.

Like somebody was playing Hades and was like, man, I just wish I could play this this with my friends.

Yeah, now they're sworn, you know?

Yeah, there's nothing.

There's nothing wrong with iterating on something that already exists.

If company A won't do the thing and company B is like, we're going to take your thing and make it four players, that's on company A.

They should have done that.

That's their problem.

You guys actually

talked about, what was it?

Holo Live not long ago.

And

I saw that.

I didn't know anything about what that was but i saw it was like a vampire survivor's like and i was like that's

hello care

she's probably got 30 hours in it already she doesn't know any of any of those who these people are what they do but the game was nesty

yeah yeah and she's like i love this this is so good so i literally had to record a whole ass show just to get my answers that's funny yeah no it's crazy i love it someone said also lethal company is another like recent example of a game that came out out and a bunch of people went, this is fun.

I have an idea on how to iterate on this or I have an idea to do something slightly different.

YouTube

Company was like perfect YouTube bait.

Like a perfect YouTube bait game.

It's been fun, dude.

It is.

It is.

The idea of then adding more YouTube-y elements or streamer elements to these games where it's like, now you're broadcasting.

Like that kind of stuff.

Yeah.

Big fan of.

I think it's fun.

I love seeing the new ones.

Same with

what's the game where you had to to go and investigate

ghosts.

Yeah, the ghost hunting game.

Phasmophobia.

Oh, Phasmophobia, yeah.

Yes.

Now there's a bunch of different ones of those.

And each, like, there's some ones that I would consider better than Phasmophobia.

And that's, yeah, that's how it works.

I mean, that's straight up

all the different versions of PUBG that exists.

And Fortnite was just the better version.

PUBG is still successful, but Fortnite's the one that really captured the imagination of people in that genre, right?

Same with like Lord of Warcraft wasn't the first MMO, but it's the one that captured the imagination of people the most at the time.

They were able to distill it down.

I think the conversation specifically in this scenario was like, how does it make you feel to see a game that looks, plays, operates almost identical to another game?

And it doesn't bother me.

The triple A spheres, every open world game is that right now.

Like, right?

Every fucking open world game is like the same.

I think if,

I don't know, maybe, maybe this is shitty of me, but like, say that Hades came out and they were an itty-bitty indie studio and not very many people played it.

And then a big company made a game that looked identical to their game after the fact.

I think I'd have a bigger issue with it.

But Hades is doing fine, guys.

Yeah.

Hades is doing fine.

I can't think of a time.

I'm sure it's happened.

I'm trying, but I can't think of an example where like an indie game did well in a AAA game.

A AAA company was like, let's do that, but with money.

I'm sure it's happened before.

Yeah, sure.

There's got to be an example.

The Fortnite example is always interesting to me because it's just like what that game was on pitch and launch of like a fucking horde-based base building co-op game.

And then they were like, wait, PUBG is popular.

Let's just do this.

And then it just fucking blew up.

Which no predicting that whatsoever.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

Oh, the Nemesis system, man.

I would have loved to see that in anything else.

Like, I would have loved to see another company see what WDWB did with the Nemesis system and then ripped that off and did it in any other game.

And we never saw it ever again.

And apparently, the Wonder Wobby game that was supposed to have it, like recently, news,

because of like their share earnings calls or whatever, that game got rebooted a year and a half ago.

And they were using the nemesis system to turn it into a friend system.

So you'd make like NPC friends that you would save or whatever.

And they were like, it wasn't turning out like we wanted it to.

So we rebooted that.

Because that's a stupid idea.

What is this?

That's stupid as hell.

A friend system?

That's every game.

Like, what do you mean?

A friend system.

The nemesis system was fun because if you killed them and they lived, they'd come back and remember it.

Or if they killed you, they'd upgrade and remember they kicked your ass and be like, well, if it isn't the little bitch, like that was fun.

And it was great because emerging stories.

Yeah.

If I recall correctly, the pitch to like, I don't think that they wanted to get rid of the nemesis system.

I think they wanted to expand it so that you could also potentially add to your team.

If you had a different sort of interaction with a character that didn't wind up being a fight or the fight went differently somehow.

But maybe it added just too much complexity or just wasn't ever

wasn't like consistent, you know?

Yeah.

I'm a systems freak.

So like, I want the complicated shit that has, that gives you emergent storytelling.

Like, that's my shit.

Like right now, like all the games I'm playing right now, it's very,

honestly, it's very TB coded.

Like seven years ago, I came onto your co-optional and talked about Kingdom Come Deliverance.

That game was a medieval open world RPG with no magic.

It was like, it took place in like Bohemia and a lot of simulation elements were like,

but it was very Eurojank.

The game was held up by like duct tape spit in a prayer back then.

It was like constantly breaking.

The sequels come out not like literally a week or two ago.

And I have been lost in this game for like 30 hours.

It's like 200 hours long.

The game is, they just took the first game.

We're like, okay, let's just like hone in on everything and make it all work.

And there's been like no bugs.

It's beautiful.

The game is huge.

Voice acting is phenomenal.

And the world simulation elements are so fun.

One of the things the game does is like, you could see, you can go around to steal and break into people's homes and whatnot.

But if you steal something, well, if people see you, and then you go off and steal something, but they don't see you steal something, but the AI eventually realizes, hey, I'm missing this thing.

If you were the only person around that people saw and you were crouching around, even if they didn't see you steal anything,

they will immediately suspect you and rat you out to the guards.

And the guards will come and be like, hey, we didn't see you steal anything, but they saw you sneaking around.

So we're going to charge you a fine.

And that's happened to me, you know, a couple of times, which has been pretty cool.

But the world itself is very like reactive and

alive in a lot of ways.

There was this NPC I came across.

He was like riddler, riddle or something.

And every time I came across him in the open world, world, he's like, hey, it's you again.

I got a riddle for you.

I want to give you a riddle and we're going to make a wager.

And if you get it right, I'll give you your money back double.

And if you're not, I'm out of here.

I'm taking your money.

I met him on a road the other day.

And it was, I was streaming it when it happened.

And when I bumped into him, he's like, hey, dude, I got a riddle.

And I answered the riddle.

And just as we wrap the conversation up, out of the woods in the right-hand side, these bandits come running out, just bandits that were just like roaming the woods and whatnot.

And there's two of them.

They run up to us.

One of them starts chasing the riddler guy and he goes running off into a field while I'm like fighting this one off.

Takes me a while.

I fucking kill him.

And I'm looking around.

And all of a sudden, I see the other bandit running at me.

And I'm like, oh no, what happened?

So I kill the other bandit.

And I go looking for, like, I hope the Riddler guy got away.

I'd love to see him.

But I found his body completely killed.

And I will never see him again.

And he's a named NPC with like riddles.

And like, I think there's like a story behind him.

But bandits spawn.

They fucking attacked us.

They shanked him in the field.

and i survived and i'm not going to reload it like i'm just going to let it go and uh the game um is also very like strict on how you can save too you can only save the game when you quit when you sleep in a bed that you're allowed to sleep in one that you own or an inn you rent for the night or if you create an alcohol called save your schnapps which you can down for a quick save basically

yeah it's uh and and that kind of like i love that because that gives you the emergent like the emergent story stuff is very much where I love that kind of thing.

And if you're into, if you're looking for a big, big RPG where your choices completely change how things go, like for another example, the character you play, Henry, he's a, he's basically like a lord, a lord's right-hand man.

And the lord you serve, who's like your best friend as well, is just, it's typical medieval lord.

He's like, I'm a fucking lord.

The Bible says, I don't do manual labor because I am better than you.

And he like spouts off like the verse in the Bible that says, like, those of higher privilege don't have to do all this other shit.

And he's demanding this wench in the small town to give him the best food, the best drink, even though he has no coin because on the way in, according to from the story, we got like, we lost everything.

We got attacked.

The bar wench is like, fine, manual labor.

And you can try to convince him to help you.

You can just say, I'll do it on my own.

She wants you to move sacks of flour.

And I was like, fine, fuck it.

He doesn't want to do it.

I'm Henry.

Henry's a peasant.

He's just happy to be here.

He's my lord.

I'll do it for you, bud.

I start moving sacks of flour back and forth.

And about halfway through, every time I come out, he's talking to like an NPC on the other table.

And they're like firing quips back and forth because the dudes at the other table are like, you look like we're covered in mud.

We smell like shit.

Like, get out of here, like leave.

And Hans, the noble's like, I'm a noble.

Don't you know who the fuck I am?

And they're like, no, no, you're from 100 miles away.

We don't know who the hell you are.

They keep getting into a fight.

I come out with my third bag of flour and Hans gets up and they go fucking fist fighting.

And I'm, I'm like, do I go bring this like, can I, because it's a mini, it's a side quest.

I'm like, do I just keep going and like let him fight it out?

But I'm like, no, he's my best friend.

Put the fucking bag down.

I take it, like, I crack it.

I take my fists out and I get involved in the brawl and I defend the honor of my lord.

From that point on.

The bartender won't talk to me like for like a good couple of days.

I owe her money.

The whole town is pissed at me because I like we beat the fuck out of each other.

And Hans pissed everybody off because he's like, I'm a lobble, a noble.

I'm not going to do anything you say, you peasants.

Fucking leave me alone.

And there's, I could have kept doing the quest or I could have gotten like there's a million ways you can do things.

And that alone, like, has that Baldur's Gate 3 feel of like your decisions really truly change how certain things go.

And then the reactiveness of the world itself is, is, uh, brings out these emergent stories too, which I really fucking love.

It's let me ask you a question.

What's the over on like can I be a truly awful person?

Like, I want to play this game, but from the perspective of like

the hound from Game of Thrones.

Like, I want to go into bars and like murder someone for a chicken sandwich.

I want to like, I don't want to, to, if someone gives me a quest, I want to be like, shut your damn mouth, do it yourself, stab.

Like, that's what I, that's what I want.

Yes, you can literally just kill, you can kill almost anybody in the game.

Like, I haven't come across anybody that can't shank.

You got a dagger on you.

You can sneak around and just stealth kill them while they sleep.

Like, you can do, you can pickpocket people.

And there's like a little mini game on how to pickpocket.

You have to be looking at the purse in the back and you have to be very, like, you can be a fucking ass.

And the leveling works similar to old school Bethesda games, where the more you do something, the better you get at it.

So, like.

If you keep using a one-handed sword, your one-handed sword skill is like.

If I just go to town and like start murdering everyone in town, I'll upgrade sword skill.

Oh, yeah.

The more you attack, if you carry over, if you walk around over-encumbered, you gain strength and vitality points over time.

I genuinely want to, like, I'm, when people talk about games

that are, uh, you know, it can be anything, I always want to test it.

That's how I did Baldur's Gate 3.

I was like, I'm going to be a good guy, bad guy.

How's that work?

And it worked.

It was great.

So I want to, you know, if this is a game where it's like, you can live your life and experience, I want to do the most dysfunctional version of that.

Where anytime anyone requests anything of me, like my friend Hans, can I kill him?

And be like, no, lords.

I want to know that.

I don't think you can kill Khan.

I don't think you can kill Hans, but like, storyline

get separated early.

So I haven't seen him in hours.

It's been a long, long time since I've seen Hans.

We kind of got into a fight.

Cause after the fist fight in the bar, you get put in the pillory and like the citizens are throwing rotten fruit at you.

And there's this whole back and forth.

And you have to like chews out your, like, you and Hans are arguing.

And he was being so mean to me.

I gave him the silent treatment after a while because he was like, He'd be nice, but then we were getting into an argument because I was telling him, like, this is your fault.

You got into his fist fight.

We're in the pillory because of you getting into a fight.

I defended you, and you're being a dick.

And he's like, I'm a noble.

You're a peasant.

Do what you're supposed to be.

Happy to help me.

And he's just being mean.

So I gave him the silent treatment.

And every option, I was like, not talking to you, not talking to you.

He's like, that's how it's going to be.

Fine.

Fine.

I don't want to see you again.

After we get out of here, I'm leaving.

And he did.

And he left.

I was like, what if I kill kill him, though?

I'd be cool.

You know what?

I might buy this game specifically for the purpose of seeing if I can kill your starting lord.

I want to be like, no, King.

I don't think you could.

No, God.

Very story-focused.

Like, he's like one of the main story characters.

Yeah.

Well, can I kill him?

That's what the question I have.

You can kill a lot of people, though.

You can kill a ton of different people.

And it's a fun time, but you have to be very ready for the simulation and systems.

Like, you get dirty from being out in the wild, so you need to bathe yourself in a trowel.

What if I want to be dirty?

What if I want to be

old dirt boy, the grimy?

Dude, I helped the grave, I helped the gravedigger carry corpses around for as like a mini quest.

And I went to town and everybody's like, what?

Did you roll around in shit?

You smell awful.

And you just start walking around and people like comment as you walk by them.

And they're like, you smell.

Yeah, but then I'd stab them.

and be like, comment.

And it has that old school Bethesda thing where NPCs will like come up to each other and start conversations.

But instead of it being like terrible random AI Bethesda oblivion conversations, they're just like full actual conversations.

I watch the NPC walk up to the bailiff of the small town and be like, every night, a man with an axe is walking around in my yard and I want you to do something about it.

And the bailiff's like, well, I don't know what you want me to do about it.

Has he hurt anybody?

And it just brings the world itself is this very alive feeling.

I love it.

It's worth checking out for sure.

Careful, you very much execute it if you get too psychotic.

I love that.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I would love to see what happens if

they execute me.

That'd be crazy.

Yep.

Yep.

I've I haven't gotten to jail yet, but I've gotten in trouble a couple of times from being caught stealing.

But in the first game, as Henry, like you can't read.

Half the, like one of the main quests in the first game is learning to read.

Like I said, it's very simulation heavy and there's no magic.

It's all like real world historical, but you still do like quote unquote alchemy and like make potions that heal and and shit like that.

All right, it's very good.

It's very good.

I think you would like it if you can get through the systems aspect where you have to sleep, clean yourself, you can't put on armor until you put a gambeson on, and like your weapons need to be tended to, like that kind of thing.

That's the nitty-gritty that people don't like.

But the game has sold 2 million copies since it's sold.

It's done so much better than the first one.

Yeah, I was going to say, the first one when it came out was kind of buggy.

So I'm surprised that people were like, you know what?

I'm all in on the second one.

The first one's story was excellent.

And when the, when it wasn't like bugging out, it was, it was really good.

But the first one also was kick-started.

More than half of its budget was a Kickstarter.

And then Deep Silver came in and like funded the finishing of the game of the first one.

This one, no Kickstarter.

It was just funded and it made its money back in one day, which is, I'm happy for him because that game is, it's so well done.

And it's also a game that is beautiful and runs

perfectly.

Like 60 frames, no like issues, no stuttering.

It is a beautiful game that just, you can see they put the love in to optimize the fuck out of it.

It's good.

It's very good.

I highly recommend it for anybody who's into that kind of like,

even open world RPs.

Just give it a shot.

Just give it a shot.

It's very good.

The other game I've been playing.

Simulation heavy is, and this is why I say it's very TB coded, is a long time ago,

I can't remember if I was on the episode.

TB talked about a game called, I don't know if you remember this, The Last Federation.

This is an arson game.

AR.

They did AI War 1 and 2.

The idea is that you're like a hydrogen.

I thought you meant it's a game about arson.

I was like, what?

Oh, A-R-C-E-N.

Sorry.

We're good.

We're good.

We're good.

Yeah, yeah.

Last Federation, you were like a Hydra?

Like a space Hydra and a spaceship.

And there were five space empires.

And you were trying to like influence them to start going into a war like stop going into war and tb introduced me to the game and i like is it an rpg or like a forex it's like a it's like an rpg forex management simulation game like look up the last federation it may look familiar to you already on it yeah yeah um so they did that game a while back but they're most well known for ai war one and two

but recently like as in a week ago they dropped in early access but it's it's story complete everything they're doing in early access just more options to around with is called Heart of the Machine.

Now, this game, I had no idea what it was, kind of popped up randomly.

And when I saw this arson games, I'm like, okay, well, this is probably interesting.

And the idea is you're in like a dystopian future, like 21, 20, 2200 or whatever.

And what the world has basically come to a halt.

Governments don't really exist.

Think of it more like cyberpunk, where there's a lot of companies that run things.

There's a military police as well out there.

Shit's kind of bad.

And you are an AI.

The game starts where you become sentient within a worker robot that's working in a factory.

And what you are trying to do as an AI is not only just leave that factory, but spread and grow and build and then eventually take over the city or the world or whatever the case is.

And like you say, you start with one robot and about five or six hours in, now you've got probably like eight or nine different kind of robots that you're managing.

And it's turn-based.

So you're looking at like a lot closer to like a, I guess an XCOM is a way to go, but basically you have each robot has three actions they can take, but you as an AI whole have like energy that you, so like you can move different robots up to a certain point, but once you run out of energy, even if other robots have turns left, you can't move them.

They need both.

turns and energy ai energy to move anyway so you're basically you start kind of like taking over and you start making

you start spreading yourselves, your awareness, you start trying to grow.

And eventually the world realizes you're around because you can't hide forever.

Cults start interacting with you, military gangs.

You start working with corporations, fighting them, trying to work with them.

You decide what you want to do when you start taking over a city block.

There are going to be homeless around.

Do you just fucking kill them all?

Do you like wipe out their tents?

Or do you do what I did and said, you know what?

I'll build you some apartments.

I'll put you in the apartments.

Then we're going to go raid some warehouses for some furniture.

I'm going to build some water purifiers and I'll make sure you guys are fed.

And as long as you guys are happy, I'll leave you alone and you leave me alone and I'll take care of you.

You keep spreading and spreading and spreading.

And then eventually what happens is like the game's like, hey, every hundred turns, a calamity is going to happen.

And by turn a thousand, if you, if you haven't like grown to like to what's known as intelligence class four or five.

then the world ends.

But don't worry, the game's not over.

And what does happen is what ends up when you get to that far down the line if you don't get to a certain intelligence level which you really can't do in one go

the entire map gets nuked most people get wiped out because the government's like hey you you're an ai you're sentient you're a problem we're just going to nuke you and anything around you and just wipe everything out and when that happens you lose everything except you're still around because you're an AI and you're in one robot again.

And now you need to rebuild without being found.

So you start sapping energy from other buildings instead of building wind generators.

You start quietly infecting people's living spaces and start to build.

And then eventually you get to a point where you have quantum level intelligence and you start working in multiple timelines.

So you have your nuked timeline as your first one.

And then as you start simulating other realities, you then start working in a reality two where you start fresh again.

but now you kind of understand how the pace is going to go.

And the reality two timeline can can feed into reality one, and you can eventually send like things back in time.

And it just gets fucking crazy.

And you work with like the developer said, by like the end of the game, you're looking at like working with five to like 10 different timelines that all work with each other.

And it's an RPG at the same time.

You're like making decisions on who you're going to work with and who you're not.

You're trying to influence people.

You're out there trying to steal technology from others.

It is fucking fascinating.

It's a Forex.

It's so cool.

It's a Forex RPG simulation game.

Let me just say, for the record, the reviews of this game are hilarious.

This one right here says, the game is weird.

To be honest, I don't think I fully comprehend it yet, though it's good.

This one says, very much enjoying this Skynet simulator.

So many shenanigans.

This one says, every goblin in my brain adores this game.

This one says,

confusing.

Complex.

A labyrinth of UI.

This one says a slow burner.

Often I'm lost lost and confused.

And then I have a Eureka moment.

I'm, I,

it sounds like your descriptor, the way you described it to us, absolutely sounds like it's insane.

It is.

It's insane.

And that's what this developer is known for: is he takes these like concepts everybody knows of like 4x strategy simulation, but then always does his own twist on it and makes it fascinating.

It's a cool

just to rise as a one AI and then slowly grow and kind of like infect the world, whether good or bad.

And you can do, you can either be very good.

You can either be, you can be terrible, you can just kill everybody you come across,

or you can just befriend as many people as you fucking can or work with a religious cult or work with the company or try to work with the, with the military police, or you can go out there and start trying to get them to fight each other and like be like, well, this area of the map is like, there's a ton of military bases, but there's also a ton of gangs.

Let me see if I can fuck around and get them to fight each other by doing little side missions that point them at each other and eventually like get them to hopefully like weaken each other and shit.

It's really, really good, but it is also extremely fucking weird and complicated.

But if you give it the time to just kind of like crack through, it's not impenetrable.

It really isn't impenetrable.

It's it looks complicated on the surface, but the game doesn't throw it all at you right away.

You know, it's it's worth checking out.

If you like that, that weirdness tickled something in your brain, I think you're gonna fucking love the game.

It's worth it, it's really cool.

I like when, and maybe, maybe this game is deeply confusing, but I like when a game is described to me.

And I think, I literally can't conceptualize how that would play.

Like, that sounds so complicated.

And then you start playing it and you're like, oh, like this.

Okay.

Oh, okay.

Luckily, it's turn-based.

So you're not like, you're not rushing against anything.

You can take your fucking time.

You can look at everything around.

It plays like a turn-based strategy, what it plays like.

But it's just very unique in its concepts and like how you interact with the world itself.

And

yeah, it's just, I don't know, there's not much I can't pitch this anyway anymore to be to make it make more sense.

It's something you need to go check out and play.

And I don't know how much it costs on, it's like what, 20 bucks, maybe a little less or more?

Heart of the machine.

Let's see.

And Hooded Horse is publishing it.

If you know who Hooded Horse, they're like, they publish a lot of like deep Forex strategy games.

23 bucks,

23.99 right now.

It's 20% off because it launched a week and a half ago.

Uh, it's already had four massive updates, adding a bunch of stuff to the game.

So, yeah, check it out.

I love it a lot.

And, like I said, I'm a systems freak.

So, if you like a lot of interacting systems that create fascinating stories, it's worth it.

Very worth it.

Other than that, just playing fucking Marvel Rivals.

Still fun, dude.

I haven't played in like two weeks.

I have like 60 hours in it.

Yeah, I was talking with a friend because, you know, in competitive, there's no cross-platform.

Yeah.

Oh, I didn't know that, actually.

Yeah.

So if you play on PlayStation, you can only do competitive against other PlayStation players.

But I was talking with a friend and because...

We hadn't played together in so long, I sort of assumed that they had also slowed down on playing.

And I was like, yeah, man, you know, I haven't really been playing a ton of rivals over the last couple of weeks.

And they were like, I have.

I'm on the competitive grind, dude.

Oh, no.

I was like, oh, no.

I can't

realize.

I have, I think I've done competitive twice.

It's been quick, straight, quick play for me with a couple friends, and that's it.

I can't.

The competitive grind is too stressful.

I like how they do competitive.

It's like a weird tug of war of like points, but

man, no.

But I will say, I'm sure you've talked about it a bunch.

Marvel Rivals fucking nailed it.

Like the hero shooter, they ate Overwatch's lunch and like ran away with it.

The amount of like stuff that they just free for you to like get.

And even the Battle Pass is not that expensive.

And the shit you get is cool.

Like, I finished the Battle Pass a couple days ago and it's still like 60 days left for the Battle Pass.

And the skins are awesome.

The emotes are sick.

Every hero feels like they're, like, feels like the hero, but is like balanced pretty well.

I don't know.

It's weird that this is a good game.

Right.

Because it feels like it's ripe for just like microtransaction nonsense, but every hero is free.

That's insane.

I also like that they are doing the Deep Rock Galactic thing where like.

they have battle passes.

Yeah.

Like, cause again,

I haven't been playing as much, but I don't have that weird stress that I would get with Fortnite of like, oh, but I paid for the battle pass.

I have to get those skins.

Otherwise, what the fuck did I buy it for?

Because I know that even when they move on to the next battle pass, I'll still own that one.

Yeah.

And I can just do it whenever.

So it's like so, I think that's so like.

consumer forward.

Like it's just so

that's why I'm confused because it's like I don't say confused, but it's fucking what Nexon that made this game?

Like the microtransaction kings like created this game.

But it is so, it is the most generous free-to-play game I've played in a hot minute.

Like

by a long shot.

Again, 30-something heroes, all free.

Net ease, Net Ease.

Thank you, chat.

Yes, Net Ease.

Net Ease made this game.

So they are known for their microtransactions.

And the only microtransactions are the skins.

And a lot of skins come with package like emotes and banners and all this other stuff with it.

And that's it.

Like

the maps are free with updates.

Every single hero released is free.

Like they released a month ago, the fucking Mr.

Fantastic and Invisible Woman.

And another week or two, we're getting Thing and Johnny Storm.

And then every month or and a half to two months, you get a free hero.

They're going to have like a free hero every two months.

There's like a new one coming out.

I don't know.

Like, I hope this period ends because I feel like the long arm of greed will eventually come and grab hold of Marvel Rivals and we'll start seeing cranked up microtransactions.

But right now,

they deserve all the support.

Like this is, even if you don't, you know, if you're looking, if you miss Overwatch, just go play Marvel Rivals, give it a shot.

My brother was an overwatched Sitco, even while like, no, it was bad and people stopped playing it.

He was still playing it.

I was like, just give Marvel Rivals a shot and like, let me know what you think.

And he's like in love.

And one of the things I never realized about Overwatch that Marvel Rivals does is the third person aspect makes it.

way more enjoyable for me to like watch and play and buying and having skins makes so much it's way more enjoyable when you're

makes sense when you can see yourself.

You're an Overwatch, you got a skin, but you're in first person.

Who gives a first?

Yes, I completely agree because I primarily play a lot of Loki.

Yeah, and that first like yucky oil slick skin in the battle pass for Loki.

I was like, I love that every time I go in, I can just look at how gross I am.

Like, I can see the skin.

Like, it's just nice.

It's such a weird but small thing.

You're like, oh, that makes so much sense like yeah this is way like i got the storm i i spent a little extra money and i bought the storm like rock and roll skin or whatever with the emote and stuff and not only is it sick like the victory screen for it is cool as hell emote for it plays like a sample of the the 90 of the x-men cartoon as part of the emote there's so much love And all the voice lines are so good.

Like there's so much of it.

And the interactions between the champions is...

The interactions between the different characters.

Yeah, it's so, it's so the Magneto voice actor is nails it.

He's so just like grandiose and well-spoken.

Everything about it is good.

I know it's been around for a while now and people have been talking about it, but like, I'm surprised I'm still like neck deep in it and loving every second of it.

It's great.

And I, it's, it makes me look at Overwatch and go, what the fuck did you do?

Like, what happened?

Like, how did you fumble this?

I fumbled real bad.

Yeah.

So badly.

But Blizzard was fumbling everything.

So I guess it makes sense.

I'm still not sure if Marvel Rivals is

as good as people are saying

or if Overwatch became so bad that Marvel's Rivals is the baseline.

You know what I mean?

Like Marvel Rivals, everyone's like, it's what Overwatch should have still been.

And I wonder if that's like, I don't know if it means it's great.

It just means that Overwatch absolutely screwed the pooch, like in one of the stupid ways possible i think it's both like as somebody who played overwatch and didn't get nearly as into it as i am in marvel rivals like marvel rivals is just

very good there's a lot about marvel rivals too that that like overwatch never did the maps change like the maps are kind of active and change you can break walls down and collapse buildings down if you know enemies are over there or you go onto a map and there's this aspect of a time magic or whatever so halfway through the game, a part of the map ends up rebuilding into a building that wasn't there before.

And certain capture points, if you kill or if you break like a certain thing in the center of the capture point, walls rise on all four.

So, you can like strategically be like, Okay, we've got the capture point.

I know where they're coming from over there.

So, I'm going to destroy this thing and force walls to come up so that they have to come around the corners.

And there's that like little, little, little things like that make it just a little bit more like, I don't want to say nuanced, but a little bit more um variety in each match even if you're playing the same maps over and over again i do think another thing that marvel rivals has going for it that overwatch was never gonna have is the connection that consumers will have with the marvel characters yes and it sucks because overwatch when it first came out what crushed it in character design like the very first thing that overwatch like i remember is people like loving every goddamn character and the fan art and everything oh i remember.

Yeah, a lot of porn, a lot of Overwatch porn.

Wing a wheel wheel.

But that, yeah.

And

the developers for Marvel Rivals have said it too, where they're not afraid to take deep cuts.

Like, Luna Snow is a K-pop fucking Marvel hero I've never heard of.

Since it's small nobody from one other game.

She was made for like another mobile game, I think.

Yeah.

They're not afraid to just pull like random deep cuts.

But the other, again, the other thing that, and it's something that like League of Legends doesn't do very well, I think, or even like most MOBAs in general, where each character truly feels unique.

Like they, they feel correct.

Spider-Man feels like Spider-Man.

And like playing Spider-Man,

you have to be aware of what map you're going into.

If you're going to be in a building or tight areas, Spider-Man is not a great choice because he's about.

webbing is like literally like slinging around, getting to the back line, picking somebody off and getting away before anybody can see him because he's weak and he's, you know, really quick but if you put him in a tight area he's useless he can't he's just gonna get gunned down immediately and I love that as well like it's good there's something interesting about like going back to what Dodger said about the idea of a

like sort of catalog of all these characters and the backstories and the connections that consumers have with them

Overwatch had that potential when it first launched like

screw first launch, the trailer that they showed at that bliss con where Genji shows up at the end and like saves the day.

And like, that was hype as hell.

The music was on point.

The story was there.

I was ready.

They were like, Overwatch 2, we're actually including a story this time.

And people were excited because one of the things Overwatch had, which Marvels does, in fact, most games do.

They make characters and you're like, yo, that character is hot.

I want to play that character.

Like, that's baseline.

That's lizard brain.

That's where people are like, yeah, hell yeah.

Overwatch nailed that.

They were like, there's a character for everyone to fantasize about.

We got you.

And that was the thing they did but then once you start playing yeah all right i'm in it i like this oh they gave us a little bit more oh i'm interested in what's going on this i need emotional connection to this there was no emotional connection yeah trust me when i say to everyone out there look yeah you might want to bang that person and get with them but if they're weird and boring and stupid you're gonna be like what a waste of time this was that's all i'm saying I'm just letting you know that it love, much like video games, if there's no deeper connection, you're going to get burnt out with it after a while and be like, why the hell am I doing this?

And that's and that's what happened with Overwatch is they kept adding so many stupid monetization things and not delivering on the promise of like a literal story or connectivity between the characters, which they said they do.

And then they took it back.

And then they were like, instead, have more reasons to spend your money.

I genuinely feel like it was just a complete fumble on their part.

And there's a reason why people, you know, going to what you're saying about Marvel, is that's built in.

So they don't need to create the stories of the Marvel characters.

They're there.

You already know going in.

Like, one of the funny things is the whole Sue Storm Namor thing.

People are like already creating scenarios and they're like, oh, man, Reed Richards.

That's because there's backstory there already.

They didn't have to wait for them to release a video or to wonder what it could be or make up their own thing.

It was there.

And that's a huge advantage compared to Overwatch, which they just could have done it.

They just didn't.

For years they didn't.

And then when they finally said they would, they didn't do it then.

I don't understand.

It's insane.

It's crazy.

Yeah.

Rivals has no loot boxes either.

Like that's not part of it.

There's none of that shit, which is so nice.

And what's funny is you bring up like Overwatch 2 and PVE.

Marvel Rivals have already talked and announced that there's a PVE thing coming out.

And there's going to be a boss fight against a giant Kraken monster.

And like, you're going to be fighting with like your friends and shit, which is crazy.

And another small, like little small things that Rivals does that like, you know, really put it above Overwatch, like the little team-up ability stuff.

That alone is a really cool

element of the game.

Like if you play Magneto and somebody's playing Wanda, now Magneto...

can use a new ability gets uh he appears we can and uh turn it on and now his melee attack shoots giant beams of chaos energy or if you're luna snow luna snow will will give uh jeff and somebody else like ice attacks and ice powers like little team ups that aren't overpowered in any way but strategic enough and introduce like hulk and wolverine if you're hulk and somebody's wolverine wolverine can jump into your hand and as hulk you can fastball special wolverine and hurl him you know into an arc and wolverine then gets an attack like that aspect of it as well is really like cool because it encourages team play it encourages like strategic thinking or changing heroes all that stuff makes Marvel Rivals more than just Overwatch fucked up.

Rivals is here.

I genuinely believe Rivals is a much better game than Overwatch was.

Okay.

I mean, I don't know about Overwatch.

Like, that's a, I,

Overwatch holds a special place in my heart, but I would say 100% over Overwatch 2 for sure.

Anyway, I am the touch Overwatch.

Overwatch 2 is hot trash.

Yeah.

Yeah, it's just weird, but,

you know, I'm glad to see a free-to-play game not be complete fucking like highway robbery in order to like play every champion.

You just get to play whatever you want.

It's funny.

We were talking about that with League because League is in like this weird position where there's so many characters.

Yeah.

And when we had Necrid on, we were talking about like the pros and cons to them just being like,

yeah, you have all of them, right?

Like what, what stops them from saying, sure, you can have everybody?

Yeah.

Because what, what's the champion cost in league now?

15 still?

Like, 15 bucks?

Some of them are in the expensive, on the expensive side.

I forgot.

Yeah, there'd be different.

There's some ridiculous bundles and things that are just too much money.

Most of them you can buy with the like blue currency that you get from just playing the game.

But yet, there's just so many.

And it's really interesting talking with different people that play.

And they'll say, you know, well, I specifically won't unlock certain champions because in the game modes where it's only going to give you characters that you have,

you just, if you just don't buy it, then they'll never give it to you, right?

Some of these like really old champs that people don't like to play anymore.

Anyway.

Only bringing this up because like

I am still curious with Marvel Rivals because they're making it sound like they plan to consistently keep adding characters.

Yeah.

And I'm really curious at what point they're going to be like,

now there's a ton.

What do we do?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Or if that'll ever happen.

No, it has to, right?

Like

the flow of content cannot stop.

The machine cannot be stopped.

You have to keep putting things out if you want people to keep coming back.

There will get a point where it's going to be like over 50 heroes.

And like, what do you do?

I would love to see like

a banning option if you wanted to like you competitive.

Like, if it gets to a point where there's that many heroes, there should be an option to be like banning and choosing kind of thing.

You can, I think.

Can't you?

When it's far enough and competitive.

Oh, I've not gotten far enough and competitive where there's banning.

I don't know.

Maybe there is.

I have no idea.

I think only in like higher rank competitive, you can ban characters.

I think.

I have never been there.

I only know by hearsay.

I'm no business genius, but I would imagine they would slow down the release of heroes over time.

I think they're going to have to.

Yeah.

I would, I mean, it just seems like business-wise, flood the zone up front, give people the impression that there's a lot of stuff coming, keep it going for a little bit, and then slow it down.

I mean, they, I mean, they will.

Like, that's just how businesses run these days.

And they'll slow it down.

And then they'll deal with the repercussions of people being like, there's no, there's been a new character in six months.

And then they'll be like, yeah, but think about all those characters gave you before, though.

You know, they'll, they'll, you know, it's what's definitely going to happen.

But for now, enjoy it.

We're in like the honeymoon period where the devs are like fully supporting this thing in a way that a lot of devs aren't.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Two heroes per season.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah.

I'm just looking at the time.

This episode has flown by.

Dirty none.

Goddamn, dude.

Well, Jesse, do we have the news?

So much news.

Speaking of Overwatch, Blizzard

in a stream revealed all sorts of new information about the upcoming future of Overwatch 2, from the return of loot boxes to a new stadium mode that lets you do third person, which we were just talking about.

And it's a 5v5 best of seven competitive mode they're adding.

Also, they're adding a bunch of classic things from Overwatch, a bunch of new heroes, including Freya and Aqua.

And yeah, map voting, hero bands, all sorts of stuff coming to competitive play, and lots of cosmetics.

Really, they're just like, hey, please return is the vibe.

I'm getting.

I saw the magical girl skins.

Oh, shit.

That'll win.

People are like, they're really trying to get me to drop rivals.

Yeah, yeah, exactly.

You know what'll work at least one time.

Somebody's going to come back for the magical girl skin.

Come on.

I believe it was two years ago.

It could be longer where they were like, no more loot boxes.

We're done with that.

They're back.

Now, I believe the reason why there were no loot boxes is because they got in trouble with many countries for loot boxes.

So,

okay.

I mean, they removed them.

I think it was an EU thing, and now they're back.

Break in case of emergency.

Loot boxes have returned.

Also, we talked about Kingdom Comes.

This is very nice.

Embracer Group.

You know, Embracer Group, the company that bought

Tripwire and

all of Middle-earth, and Gearbox, and Sabre, and THQ Nordic.

basically all of Square Enix's US catalog or, you know, North American catalog, all those different things.

Dark Horse Media, the company that bought up everything and spent billions of dollars doing it.

They have, for some time, only been losing.

They have lost so much money that they've had to dump all sorts of the companies that they bought.

And finally, with Kingdom Come.

deliverance uh two

they have a winner on their hands and so in hilarious fashion, the CEO, Lars Wing of Fours, on Thursday, said the following.

And I just want to include this for the world.

The success of Kingdom Come Deliverance 2 is a reminder of our core to bring great games.

I'm sorry, great

products to market.

High-quality teams need to have the resources and the time to execute their visions.

When you have the right teams, this trust benefits everyone, including gamers, employees, and shareholders.

I'm convinced that we will remain among the industry leaders and our core business verticals in the future.

So, the lesson we're learning here:

it's a reminder to make good games.

Yeah,

I believe is what he learned.

Make good games.

Weird.

Make good games, guys.

That's so crazy.

They just figured that out.

I wish them the best.

I'm going to tell Ubisoft.

Yeah.

Oh, speaking of, oh boy.

Speaking of Ubisoft, man, it's like you read the news today.

Eve Guimel, the master of disaster over at Ubisoft, said the following in his Q ⁇ A

at the company's financial quarters results three,

third quarter.

They said,

we never want Jesse to play a Ubisoft game ever again.

I believe it's what they said.

Actually, what they said was, and I quote,

We have been investing significantly for a big pipeline of products for the coming years along our two verticals.

These being open world action adventure, as well as game as a service native experiences, Guimal said.

And that's what we want to deliver year after year.

So can't wait to never play an Ubisoft game again.

Very excited.

So cool.

Thanks for never making single player stuff ever again.

You guys upset me so much.

We got Assassin's Creed Japan coming out.

So my question is, is it's an open world action adventure and game as a service?

Like, how are we going to do this?

Don't like it.

Not a fan of that.

But that's from those boys.

In slightly good news,

it looks like two big Final Fantasy games are potentially in the works.

A remake of Final Fantasy 9 and a remake of Final Fantasy Tactics.

And there's a lot of people on the inside saying it's been in the works for a while.

People remember that a while back, Yoshida, was like, yo, should we remake Final Fantasy Tactics or Vagrant Story?

And I feel like that was a hint, like wink, wink, wink, wink, wink, wink, wink, wink, wink.

So I feel like there's a lot of teams working on those.

I would play the crap out of both of those.

Also,

interesting news comes out of the world of Resident Evil.

The ESRB has classified Resident Evil 5 as well as 6, suggesting we might see a remaster.

or remake of these two games for modern consoles.

Ari 6 at this point is 13 years old.

What?

Yep.

Yep.

13 years old.

I thought I was still like 25, guys.

The remakes of 2, 3, and 4 have been awesome.

Love them.

So I'm very much.

What are they going to do with 5 and 6?

Because they are not so awesome.

Oh, dude.

I want to see a remade Punching Boulder scene.

I want to see a remade Jill Cyberfight scene.

I want five slaps.

I don't care what anyone says.

Five's awesome.

Five's great.

Six

is a mess.

But if they can remake six and make it fun,

I'm down.

I'll play it.

So I want a Code Veronica remake.

I mean, they may do that.

That could happen.

But I very much,

very much wish for both of those to come sooner rather than later.

And that, folks, is the news.

That's the news.

Boo-boo.

Fantastic.

Yep.

Thanks so much, guys.

Look at us.

Yes.

Goddamn.

I know.

Time flies.

Time flies with three professional yappers.

Yeah.

That's true.

Mathis, what's going on with you this week?

You know what's going on with me.

Basically, Chuluminati.

That's basically you got

our first of a huge three-part series is beginning

tomorrow, I believe, or Sunday.

Chuluminati will be covering the Monroe Institute consciousness research and a lot more.

Please check it out.

It's going gonna be a really fun deep dive.

Um, and then obviously, anime cult with myself, Dodger, and Indy Mouse.

Uh, we'll be getting together to record a new one soon, but you can go catch up on all of our episodes at anime cult, spelled C V L T

on anywhere you listen to podcasts.

Um, and I am streaming Kingdom Come Deliverance, like that's like been my thing.

I haven't, I hadn't streamed in like over a year, and Kingdom Come came around, and I wanted to do it.

So, you want to watch me and see Kingdom Come Deliverance?

I've got like 20 hours of it already over on twitch.tv/slash Mathis Games.

Nice.

That's it.

That's all I got going on for the week.

You guys still do like homework?

Are you guys done with that homework thing?

You know, we dropped it.

Yeah, that's fair.

Just like real homework.

That's honest to God.

Yeah.

Fair enough.

Jess, what's going on with you?

First off, people on chat are like, did you watch Day to Play?

No, I didn't watch Day to Play.

I have no idea it was on that show.

I had to be told on my stream that there was a new Dynasty Warriors thing that was out.

And I was like, oh, so I haven't seen it yet.

I don't know what to tell you.

I didn't do my homework on that one.

Yeah, sorry.

I was busy.

I was doing other things.

Hey, you can find a brand new show over on youtube.com/slash jessecox called Tell Me About, where the last episode I had coefficient on to talk about Holo Live, and I learned a lot.

And on that show,

I said, Man, wouldn't it be crazy if we got Koreji Ali to come on Geekenders?

Wouldn't that be so crazy?

Wouldn't that be so crazy?

I guess you'll have to find out at the end of February how crazy it is.

Wink, wink, wink, wink, wink, wink, wink, wink, wink.

Eyebrow wiggle, eyebrow wiggle.

Wink, wink, wink, wink, wink.

So that is a thing coming up.

Speaking of end of February, not next Monday.

Next Monday is going to be another Scare Game Squad, but the Monday after that, we have another episode to tell me about, this time featuring former Geekeender guest, Necrit, to talk about Arcane and League of Legends and the lore of League and where it's all going, hopefully to an MMO.

Because after the conversation we had, I was like, yo, that's cool as hell.

Sounds just like an MMO plot.

And he's like, it does.

So

tune in for that.

That'll be a whole thing.

And if you're wondering, Jesse, my goodness, it seems like you might have more fun guests in the future.

Let me, let me tease you a thing that happened.

Oh?

I said in the last episode, tell me about who should I talk to next?

And everyone said, talk to Bricky about 40K.

Now, I'm sure many people, if you've watched a 40k video, have seen a Bricky video, especially the one where he goes through every single, he's like, these are all the 40k factions, and it's very popular.

I think it's like 10 million views.

Anyway, messaged him.

I'm just going to give you some, some, some background.

Messaged him, like, yo, hey, um, do you want to be on my show?

And he was like, it's so crazy that you, uh,

you, you, you brought this up because I put out a video today for my 10-year anniversary, and I just want to give you this time stamp.

The timestamp, I don't, I think it's like three or four minutes in the video.

But he's like, Yeah, I was working as a security guard, and I had nothing to do, and I was just sitting around.

And so I spent hours watching one specific thing.

I didn't want to tell you, guess what that was?

Co-optional podcast.

And he's like, I watch co-optional podcasts so much, I decided I would like to start making videos.

And now I'll say he's even better at making videos than me.

So

it was very sweet.

I was very sweet.

Oh, he was emergency dispatch.

That's right.

Emergency dispatch.

And it was very sweet.

I couldn't believe it.

And so he was like, hell yeah, I'll be on your show.

I was like,

so

coming up.

More good news.

Ricky's lovely.

Yep.

What about you, Dodger?

Yeah, Dodger.

What's going on with you?

Well, I really wanted to beat Sworn on solo, and I did it.

I did it twice in a row today.

So I guess I'm done with that until it's out of early access.

Urban Myth Disillusion Center is the game that I've been like so excited for.

And they did put out a streaming guidelines thing that said you can't stream the entire game until April 1st.

So I was like, all right, I guess I'll sit on that.

I guess I'll sit on that.

Mind Over Magic came out, which is a game that seemed like it could be really fun, but I really struggled with the demo.

So I'm probably going to check that out again.

But yeah, I don't know.

Just whatever looks fun.

I'll just be doing whatever.

Yeah, I'm on anime cult with this guy.

I've weaseled my way into your lives.

You can't get rid of me now.

I love it.

I know.

So sorry.

Oh.

Yeah.

You know, I'll be sure to let you guys know what random episode of Chuluminati my phone thought was appropriate for my kid next.

If you ever hear us talking about a man by the name of Albert Fish, turn off the episode.

Turn that shit off.

Turn off that shit off.

Just do not play that.

Immediately.

Even if you're not a child, just don't play that episode.

Oh, yeah.

You probably don't want to hear hear that.

You know what?

Don't.

There's some episodes that are too nasty.

Don't listen to it.

That one was a real nasty series.

No, not for, not for Clark.

Not for Clark, and maybe not for humans.

It's definitely not for humans.

I was on that episode and I didn't want to be there.

That was not, that was, that was not fun.

It's fun.

It's fun to drag Jesse into the real depraved true crime series sometimes and just watch

it.

Watch the hope and light fade from his eyes.

yeah it turns out people are messed up and i don't i'm not a fan of it some people more messed up than others and i just want to be like you know

the meteor couldn't come fast enough i'll be real

i'm like that's what we're working with that come on meteor let's get this over with let's let's restart this whole thing we screwed up let's go yeah

Hey, thanks so much for watching Geekenders.

If you want to watch any other episodes of it, you can find all of the VODs on youtube.com slash jessecox.

They will not exist here on Twitch after this moment.

It will vanish.

But we're also on all of the podcasty things.

Lots of places to watch us with your eyeballs, listen with your earballs, whatever suits you best.

But we'll be back here next Friday doing this whole dang thing again.

So thank you so much, Mathis, for joining us.

Thank all of you for watching.

And have a fantastic weekend.

We'll see you next time.

Bye, everybody.

Bye.

Yeah, yeah, you know what time it is.

It's time for the geek in this podcast.

Mega Rand, Jesse and Dodger.

What up?

Let's go.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow and see what the geekiners are all about.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, stream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow.

Number one geek podcast without a doubt.

Yo, another end of another long week.

Got a job and a kid, I know that you all beat.

So take a second, grab a drink, and vibe.

While we catch you up in just a matter of time on gaming, comics, whatever you're doing.

If you're nerdy like us, then you know you should tune in.

Thank you for sharing our world with us.

Now follow, subscribe, and turn this up.

Yo, it's the weekend.

Yeah, it's time to geek out.

Let it begin.

Go on, scream and shout.

It's Jesse and Dodger.

So give them a follow, number one, keep podcast without a doubt.

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