Castle Super Beast - CSB304: Corpomath

Starting point is 00:00:00 ["Sailor Moon Theme"] I'm okay. I apologize to the live viewers for being slightly late, but the chat has informed me that if I show them this dog, I will be forgiven. So the deal has been made. There you go. Also, it doesn't matter. This grief is temporary and it erases and then the MP3 is forever and that's all that

Starting point is 00:00:58 matters into the future. And then we'll be dead. Yes. But, but the temporary grief of the few in the moment that will be forgotten before the hour is over has very little weight and meaning. So what's up, man? What's going on? How is your temporary week of grief and excitement ready to fade into the ether bin. Well, apparently talking about Weight and gravity and what does matter I've seen The only thing that seems to matter is gaycation. Oh

Starting point is 00:01:36 The gate you saw about the gaycation. So I'm like what I what why is all this noise about gaycation now? Yeah, well, I mean and to be that time of year and upon further research And looking into the gaycation and realizing we're not talking about the 2016 television series Wait, that's a what really apparently by vice. Oh Know that apparently not talking about that Talking about the current discussion about the current discussion of the gaycation which all straight men do once a year which I

Starting point is 00:02:15 Have discovered and now I refuse to believe it's real change my mind So I refuse to believe that post is real. I don't. So Paige went ahead and she did an Am I the Asshole stream a couple nights ago where she discovered the post like Am I the Asshole for telling my husband he can't go on a gaycation with his brother-in-law. Ah, gotcha, gotcha. And that's why so much news about the gaycation now. Well, I

Starting point is 00:02:45 believe that story is fake and gay. So, I mean, as gay as thecation. But there was a roller coaster because it reads like cult shit and it's like, you know, you have to surrender to the gaycation lest be destroyed, mind, body and soul. But at the end of that stream, she went back and found like all the earlier versions of the gaycation story. So am I the asshole for believing that, for not believing my boyfriend who said that he had a gay experience in Utah because of the altitude? Okay, okay, okay.

Starting point is 00:03:30 And then like going back like six, seven, eight, nine years of various variations of gay-cation storylines. Different posters? Which all like, what's that? Different posters? Different posters, but they all read like they're written by the same person. Okay. Okay. Gotcha Yeah, cuz make no mistake like the premise is eternal, right? This is something that will be asked

Starting point is 00:03:56 Into reddit for as long as the internet will exist, you know Is this mysterious? man only You know, is this mysterious man-only retreat that my husband is going on, is this a real thing? Do other guys know about this? Is this a bit or not? That'll be a real question. It is a bit.

Starting point is 00:04:16 I mean, that is accurate. But is it a bit of a... Yeah. It's in a bit of it. Oh well. Oh Yeah It can be a bit while being real I suppose but my only thing is just to say that The the verbiage of giving your surrendering your soul to the gate to the gatecation or else be destroyed that That is the author's touch on a shitpost. That is the end of your... you write with your plume and the feathers. You wave it into the air when you stroke that ink onto the page.

Starting point is 00:04:55 I think the reason why the gaycation story is so compelling is that you have run into at some point in your life people who just have convinced themselves very deeply of a completely insane nonsense reason for why something must be, right? Like the classic like straight version is like, I didn't even love any of those girls, baby. They don't mean nothing to me, right? Yeah, I was account. I was just fucking them I make love to you. Yeah It's just bros. We're just jerking off into tornadoes. It's totally it's so straight. Hey, just bros hanging out J Oh bud all right looking yeah looking for a J. Oh bud. How am I supposed to recharge my crystals woman? my crystals woman yeah no no that's that's you know and then and then you the confusion of like I guess like this could be a thing internet it could be a

Starting point is 00:05:55 thing I mean I'm not I'm not in the I'm not at the the bro sesh you know is this what they do when they're talking about Call of Duty and the football? I feel pretty, I feel a little bit sad though that we never quite found out the follow-up to the tornado, Bud, because... Well, I assume someone answered his ad and then they went and jerked off into tornadoes and they were good friends. Perhaps, perhaps, but like, was that the end of the movie? You know was it was it two backs? Facing each other as the tornado comes in and then we just cut to credits and they're and they're wrapped around the pipe

Starting point is 00:06:34 Yes, they're belt like in twister. Yes, because that was a very crucial detail was that The buds needed to tie themselves to a pipe to make sure they stayed secure so that they can handle the tornado as it passed through Cause you don't want to fly away, you want to be like Helen Hunt like, you know, secure like Bill Paxton, one of the only movies he doesn't die in But you have to be close enough to make sure that the release never hits the ground No gay stuff

Starting point is 00:07:02 Of course not, who's talking about that? No, you have to get it going right into the air and let nature do its thing. Yeah. That's natural. Like a tornado. It's a force of nature that would destroy you if you do not submit. I mean, to witness the power and the might, you know, of like a real finger of God, as they say, the F5. And to think to yourself, not I wanna chase it and I wanna capture it on film and I wanna get the readings.

Starting point is 00:07:40 Nah, I wanna fuck that thing. I wanna get him pregnant. I wanna get him pregnant. I wanna get Tornado-chan pregnant. Get over here. Just Tracy Morgan. If the sky is green, it's time for peen. Come on. I mean, it's just... That comes from deep, deep inside in a place that no one can follow. You know?

Starting point is 00:08:04 Ah. Deep inside in a place that no one can follow you know Am I writing down tornade us see no, I'm not I'm not telling you to do that all right. No. I don't do it all right oh What's going on so aside from your impending vacation? What's up? Well, yeah. I mean, you say that. I did. Well, yeah, not too much. Played some more cyberpunk. And can I just say, holy shit, automatic love. What an awesome mission.

Starting point is 00:08:47 What a fucking cool... Oh, you're now past me. Oooooooookay. I don't care. I don't give a shit. You talk whatever you want to talk. Alright, alright. Fair enough. Yeah, it is, it's a nice early tone setter. And it reminds me of the moment you walk out of the

Starting point is 00:09:11 whirling in rags in disco and you let Shivers take over. It's one of those, right, where you go, okay, okay, I see what's possible with this game right now. That mission, it's called Automatic Love, I see what's possible with this game right now. That mission, it's called Automatic Love, it's the Judy mission in the, yeah, early in chapter two, sells me on where this game can go and what this, at the very least the story can be so far. It's fucking great. It's essentially a mission where you're

Starting point is 00:09:47 tracking down your... you're tracking... you're trying to get back in touch with the person who set you up on the original job in chapter one and you know so early cyberpunk spoilers but things go wrong and you're trying to piece together what and so to get your leads you basically find out about a doll club you know and that's basically just like a brothel but in cyberpunk standards what a doll is is really fucking crew properly dystopian creepy interesting, because in the world of cyberpunk, prostitution is my body is being rented out and my brain will just, I'll just check out

Starting point is 00:10:33 and then the AI will take over, the algorithm will take over. Oh goody. And I'll just go to another place and then come back and then be like, cool. All right, I got paid. Collect my money. Done and done. and then come back and then be like, cool. All right, I got paid. Collect my money. Done and done.

Starting point is 00:10:46 It's proper horror, right? Like super dark and very, very like, yeah, this is where you want to build your world and then go like, what does each facet of the world look like when you take it all the way down to the bottom? Right? So you get to this part and um, uh, because of my stats I was able to i'm basically trying to figure out a crime scene and place i'm while i'm hunting for this person who's missing

Starting point is 00:11:14 and uh, because of my stats I was able to like Like walk into a room. I otherwise wouldn't be able to open and just figure out the mission right away but Uh as as I walk out and I go, all right, I've got everything I needed to, it's like you can still go ahead and play the John in this scene where you have to go talk to a doll and pretend that you're going to hook up and take it as far as you want to, and see where this goes. I'm like, all right,

Starting point is 00:11:42 let's see what Cyberpunk has. You sit down in this room and you meet the doll. And it's one of these settings. It's one of these moments where the first thing you do after you kind of get your choices of like, oh, who do you want to hook up with? Like, according to our scans, this is the right person for you. You can choose between angel or sky, you know, you have these two different people that are, the two different dolls that are working. And then it goes, all right, before you go in,

Starting point is 00:12:11 pick your safe word, all right, and let's go. And so you walk in and you sit down, and then the doll turns and goes, oh, hello, Valerie. Is it. So you're dying, huh? It's like your options are like what and say forward, say forward just immediately, you know, and it's this fucking like you, like you, you can just, you can immediately be like, Nope, I'm the fuck. I'm out. That out that's it we're done and then you're like wait what what is that name and it's like oh it's what the name V actually is except nobody but you could possibly know that oh and it's like okay this is on frame one as intimate as you can possibly get.

Starting point is 00:13:07 And you just, and so you could play along and be like, yeah, okay, Robo hooker. What do you got for me? Huh? We're going to play therapy. And then you have, I mean, and while you have the, and I get to, I'm going to bring another disco reference here, but a Joyce Messier conversation. You have the most insane, like introspective just sequence with the doll as it's the closest and most intimate thing. And they're just kind of talking and getting closer and lying there and just, and like you're reaching into like, like, what what are you paying for are you paying for like all your deepest desires and it's like it's it's reaching into your innermost fears and thoughts and and bringing those to light and you're like kind of like

Starting point is 00:13:59 nervously scoffishly being like I'm just here to find out about the mission whatever and it's like what are you afraid of? And it's like, you get into the parts where your character is like, you've died already. You've seen the other side and there's nothing there. And you're afraid of dying again, because the first thing you found out upon returning to this world is that

Starting point is 00:14:20 you're immediately going to die again. And it's like, yeah, that's a horrifying realization for your character. And like all of the tough act strips away of like, oh, I'm from the outside, whatever. I had the corporal background, but I'm sure like whatever it is that's there, it's like, yeah, fuck all of that.

Starting point is 00:14:41 This is real. This is super duper real. And you're talking to this, again, like algorithm, you know? And then after this insane, like incredible sequence of just breaking your character down, you eventually you just have to kind of like you're like, you're basically you're like, yeah, I don't want this to end. But then all things have to.

Starting point is 00:15:03 And then you just you have no choice, but your safe word. And then as soon as you say it, the whole thing shuts down. The, you know, the algorithm pieces out and then the host takes back over their own brain and is like, what, what's going on? Where are we? Huh?

Starting point is 00:15:17 You know? And you're just like, oh yeah, you know, whatever. And you're just like, what the fuck is this world? What is this game? What is this setting? You know? And it's like, it's just the intro to this mission and it's fucking powerful It was really really cool it was always interesting to me that when you have your cyberpunk dystopia the issues of drug abuse and prostitution in your cyberpunk dystopia and your particular flavor of nightmare are

Starting point is 00:15:43 Always gonna come up at some point in whatever game. And I did not know that's how it worked in cyberpunk because my only, my number one thing is my knowledge of how it works in Shadowrun that got re-kickstarted and had a couple games out in which the primary form of prostitution slash drug abuse in that is something called a BTL. Which is a better than life chip in which you are like Johnny Mnemonic like slotting in someone else's memories. Oh yeah, brain dance. But much like a brain dance, the difference is in Shadowrun is they crank it up past human

Starting point is 00:16:24 tolerance. differences in Shadowrun is they crank it up past human tolerance so it feels twice as good and twice as real okay wait and so when you come out you get into like an inception situation where you're horribly addicted because real life now seems dull and fake yeah okay that's literally that's also cyberpunk as well XBDs are in there and they like one of the you know, one of the things is you can again you experience like the Like the extremities and if you go into the memories of someone dying You know that is one of the most insane possible strength and moments of all All chemicals firing everything your brain must be going through at that point And you capture that and then give it to a junkie.

Starting point is 00:17:06 So yeah, it kind of hits on that as well. And then yes, editors can coordinate it and pull it back or amplify things to make your feelings, to designer drug your high. So yeah, that's all part of what's available in the world here. But with this element, it's, yeah, it was just a really, really strong start to, yeah, I guess, where this plot is going. And I guess to your expectations in, I'd say in a lot of media like in games or movies where It's like oh you got to go find You know the the drug dealer or the rat or whatever you got to go past you got to go pass by the badda-bing

Starting point is 00:17:54 right, we're gonna head over to the strip club and I guess I sort of expect to just kind of see like look at our cool lighting as titties are flopping around and then there'll be a fight that'll take place in dark light and you know, the battle be an interesting thing but I'm not expecting a whole lot except for like, oh yeah, it's the bat. It's the John wick with the with the club lighting action scene in a way, you know, I kind of just expect that when you go we're going to the strip club, it's going to be a couple of asses shaking and then it'll be a cool set piece for your explosions. And I really did not expect it to just become

Starting point is 00:18:30 this beautiful existential moment. It's really interesting because like, so CD Projekt did three games back to back that were the Witcher games. And the Witcher games are like obsessed with otherness in society. And it's like a social context, right? Geralt is just like a lens and he's viewed as non-human or less than human.

Starting point is 00:18:56 And so then the idea is like, well, can the less than human person be more human than people in regular situations? And that society actually sucks shit. Yoko Taro. And it's fascinating because cyberpunk is like nearly exclusively internal. I was like, well, what does the society look like when no one is human anymore? When like that, when that humanity is just like completely fucking gone. Yeah. And replaced with iPads.

Starting point is 00:19:23 And when like life is as rigged as it possibly can be from the jump. And I think I mentioned it last time, but doing side missions and picking up logs and stuff, you kind of get a picture that it's like, yeah, even being like even being part of the system, you know, like does not give you any advantage over those who are not part of it and getting crushed by it. Everyone's getting crushed by it, you know. But no, so anyways, it was pretty, it was just a very, very strong, impressive moment and has put a memorable impact so far into that. And I will say that, I mean, I don't know if it's a matter of each character's quest lines having different quality to their writing or to the strengths of what the topics are,

Starting point is 00:20:22 but that coming from, I guess, Judy's quest line makes me very very interested in that Obvious Judy reasons aside. She's awesome. I Can't speak for for cyberpunk but for a lot of big games that have this many quest lines It seems very common to like divvy them up according to various writers I would like I know for I know for New Vegas and Oblivion and a bunch of those types of games that it's like, you get all of this guy's quests and you get all of this guy's quests

Starting point is 00:20:54 and then you get the miscellaneous quests, et cetera. And it does also feel like, a couple stories do this, like Game of Thrones kind of has it where it's like, the world is here, you know, the, a couple stories do this, like Game of Thrones kind of has it where it's like, the world is here, the government, the king, the rulers, et cetera, are a one tier and then everybody underneath in society is here. And then there's the people that slip through the cracks that everyone kind of forgets about. But like underpinning all of that is the sex workers, just street walkers,

Starting point is 00:21:25 literally the brothels, those are the people that are truly aware of and the undercurrent of all society and everyone comes to them and they know everything and they're the real power. And depending on your setting, you could also institute the homeless as this underclass. So if you're playing a Like a Dragon game, the homeless know everything. They see you with their cameras. What? Yeah,

Starting point is 00:21:52 don't worry about that. But I would say the difference between the way a Like a Dragon setting would put time in is just like the homeless are observing everybody and that can be the same network that David Cage uses amongst the the the noble hobos. Yeah the no. That it's getting more mangled every time we say it over the years. The noble hubos. Yeah but but the naho be nos. Yeah young man. But the Nahobinos. Yeah. Young man.

Starting point is 00:22:26 But no, in this case, like, everyone from the, you know, from the kings to the poppers are all, like, taking a load off and heading down to the brothel. And, you know, letting their whispers fly in their, you know, when they're in their moments of weakness or whatever. And so like, there's just that kind of underpinning of society. And I feel like the mocks are kind of like, yeah, Arasaka shitbags, politicians, and fucking, I forgot their name, the Tiger Claw gangs alike used to kind of run the show here,

Starting point is 00:23:07 and eventually, basically all the sex workers got together themselves and said, fuck this, we're making our own gang, and we'll protect ourselves, and we'll fuck you up. And they're like, okay, got it, cool, we got the tech, we got the brain hackability, we got everything in place, and like, yeah, got to answer to them. So yeah, pretty cool so far.

Starting point is 00:23:34 I'm also happy that even as I started a mission where at one point, Panem was like, hey, get in the car. And I was like, OK, cool. And then ended the session there. And then even as the objective was get in the car, I was like, yeah, I'm going to go open world for a bit. Fuck around. And then did so.

Starting point is 00:23:55 And it's like, yeah, OK, cool. And the car's still waiting. And whenever you're ready for that mission to start, there it is. So it was nice to just be able to have that kind of freedom as well. So it was nice to kind of just be able to have that that kind of freedom as well And and you know play and play the radio get a bit listen get used to some of the different radio stations and hear the the music overall I

Starting point is 00:24:14 Realizing with cyberpunk that like the only real full Well, I guess no I think there's yet two games that come to mind that I've played where it would have been like you have a radio station that you're fully browsing through where one would have been GTA 3 original but I played that on my PC and the version I played

Starting point is 00:24:34 had no radio in it so I had to put my own mp3 files in a folder. So that was my weird radio experience with GTA 3. And then... It's very weird. Yeah, and then I guess, shit, what was it? The black and white one where you're, the black and white one where you're taking out the Nazis in 360 era, old school.

Starting point is 00:25:06 Not Mad World. Not Mad World, the Saboteur. Oh, the Saboteur, right, okay. The Saboteur, the Saboteur. I think, yeah, I think that's like the only other one I think where I would have had that. So, you know, cause I haven't really done a lot of, a whole bunch of the, you know,

Starting point is 00:25:20 I haven't really done GTA games. Yeah, we're in a new world for that, where we're like, hey, you know what? You could have you could have like a Walkman or something or like a you Cuz like it used to be like well, obviously music's only gonna play in your fucking car You're in the car 80% of the fucking game Right and then as you know cyberpunk you're on foot like all the fucking time And also it's like and each of these is gonna have like a big detailed long original radio station recording track that's part of this.

Starting point is 00:25:49 Oh yeah, hey welcome to KBBL99 where your brain is fake but these tunes are real or whatever the fuck. I mean I heard like with Grand Theft Auto like for a while there was yeah there's like the Laszlo radio stations. Yeah Laszlo's great man. Yeah so that's one of the things I remember even hearing about without even playing You know and like playing play like one of the reasons like pages been streaming fallout and one of the reasons that pages like a VOD situation on her twitch publishing situation has been so fucked up is Cuz like playing fallout without the radio is pointless Like it's it's like abjectly worthless like don't bother

Starting point is 00:26:22 But when you stream it like it just gets pinged like every fucking 10 seconds it goes these fucking muted muted muted muted muted So at a certain point twitch just said you know what we're not even gonna auto publish these fucking things anymore you can just fucking do with them as you will and then you take the The fucking local recording and you throw that on YouTube, and then it says it's blocked in Russia and who gives a shit Yeah, yeah That's where that's where I guess the multi-track, you know things could come in handy But it's still annoying because obviously like, you know Well with fallout it's really bad because you end up humming along or singing along songs that people can't hear and sound like a fucking

Starting point is 00:27:00 Side that makes it a really annoying thing. Even if exactly, right? It separates it later. Yeah. No, there's no real winning on this one, I think. And as long as Twitch and YouTube kind of treat it differently or have different guidelines, it's always going to make the double upload a pain in the ass. Oh, it's the worst. I remember I streamed Dead Island 2 and in the options menu, it's like hey DMCA mode removes copyrighted music and so I turned it on and it just dropped most of the music from the game and replaced it with dead Silence including the main menu. I had the weird club in cyberpunk already, you know, thankfully it's limited but like there's that but I

Starting point is 00:27:40 Guess maybe not afterlife but the club before that that you go to Where it's just like yeah, like you walking in you just hear fucking nothing. You know This club is bumping to the tunes of nothing. I guess everyone's just doing a silent disco Yeah with their headphones go what you can do right now right I guess you could Yeah, no and then and then there's the, well, I talked about also the fact that YouTube is way stricter on the innuendo implication, nudity, not nudity guidelines versus Twitch,

Starting point is 00:28:21 which is like, if it's in a game, it's fine. Hey, listen, are you staring at titties for 15 minutes? Maybe don't do that. But well, in this case, it was the puddle underneath the dude. You know, you couldn't see anything. He was just in the like, he was on his hands and knees, and all junk was covered. But like, there was a puddle underneath him.

Starting point is 00:28:40 And that, contextually, is like, flag that shit. I want to give a shout out to two games. One, as somebody in the chat mentions, Hi-Fi Rush. Oh my God, A+, A+, forever. It's the best solution. Some of those songs are better than the songs they're replacing. I brought it up every single time. It's unbelievable.

Starting point is 00:28:56 Double shout out to Vampire, the Masquerade, Bloodlines, the game that has the most stringent copyrighted music situation that every single video I have ever uploaded from that game has now been blocked worldwide Wow Okay, yeah, there's your other because what they did is they got not a late 90s club music for real in that game So there's a bunch of like prodigy and shit every time you walk into a nightclub. Sick. Okay. Yeah, I, I, God, I don't even remember what it was, but recently, like,

Starting point is 00:29:34 it's been popping up more and more, but there was, there's something, something we uploaded recently where like some fucking fake techno group decided to claim it or whatever. Every single part of my Metal Gear playthrough, every single one has been claimed on Twitch for muting that is not them. Assholes. The problem with the Hi-Fi rush win is that when it doesn't work out, for example, Guardians of the Galaxy, you have a situation where yes, there's an alt soundtrack for streaming, but if it doesn't fucking slap then

Starting point is 00:30:12 That's not the Guardians of the Galaxy problem the Guardians of the Galaxy problem is that the Star-Lord playlist I think as somebody calls it is is okay. It's not nearly as good, but there's tracks missing So I played that game for a sponsored stream and during the first, like, big spaceship sequence where you're escaping from the planet, it was like dead silent. There's just nothing there. There was no generic replacement track. And yeah, so it is a lot to like expect, you know. Well, don't just have dead silence.

Starting point is 00:30:45 But if you're gonna do a replacement soundtrack, that's a lot for just the streaming process. But the streaming process is so important now. We'll talk about the streaming process in a little bit because I'm playing a game on my own time that is like a fucking indictment of everything to do with social media. Fair enough.

Starting point is 00:31:03 I just know that I don't feel like, it feels like if I were to look at a game and be like, hey, can you please spend time and resources? For me. For me. Like I'm like, I understand how they can be like, no, man. We're playing, we're making this for people to play on their own time. And if you happen to be online, that's a you problem.

Starting point is 00:31:28 Hopefully the situation will get better with the fucking platforms. I can get that point of view. To be fair, Hi-Fi Rush does have a specific reason for that. It's not just so that we can play it on stream. It's also because the tracks they picked are expensive and popular and eventually those rights will run out and they want to be able to just segue and the game music is so important. They want to be able to turn that off, turn the key and be like, you know what? No more nine inch nails music. You can still play the game. It's still totally good, et cetera.

Starting point is 00:32:06 If the licensing was temporary. I wonder. Because those are big songs that they picked up. And temporary licensing is much more affordable than permanent. But then I guess I wonder for games like BPM, not BPM, but the other one, Hellsinger. Metal Hellsinger?

Starting point is 00:32:23 Metal Hellsinger is all completely bespoke unique music Eve oh no I know it's not with licensed tracks I thought a no I thought I'm gonna go check BPM is original and I think man hold on let me go check I'm gonna go okay I don't know how singer my cuz I like metal Hellsinger it's great my impression is that BPM is the original one and that metal Hellsinger. Because I played Metal Hellsinger and it's great. My impression is that BPM is the original one and that Metal Hellsinger is all licensed. Okay, hold on. Uh, no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no icons such as Sure search tank in Randy Blythe, Alyssa White, they worked with the the big big artists, but the music itself is for the game. Got it. Okay. Yeah, that's a pretty solid way that is a great solution. That'll do it too. Also, Metal Hellsinger is incredible.

Starting point is 00:33:21 It's fucking great. Oh, there is the essential hits pack which gives you feel-good ink Uprising personal Jesus, etc. Okay, but that is a DLC pack because yeah When you have to think about like a time limit on any of these things then like what the fuck happens to the game? Well, cuz nobody wants to fucking deal with the nightmare that harmonics dealt with mm-hmm Yeah, I just it just sucks though that like Mm-hmm. Yeah, I just it just sucks though that like You know that this system feels like it's not changing anytime soon Like oh no, like it's kind of locked as a place after the last DMCA updates occurred

Starting point is 00:34:03 You know and like I think there was some hope when the initial like revenue sharing thing was like Oh, it's a pile of fucking shit. You know, you're like, they're like, oh, we're working on new ways to fix these platforms and stuff and like... No, you're not. Yeah, no, no, you know, entire... I get notifications every single day going, somebody's using your footage. And it's like, because I played a game

Starting point is 00:34:18 and I happened to be like the first big channel to get the YouTube of the intro up. And they're like, that's your video.'s your video and like no, it's not Yeah, you can flag everybody if you want you can take the powers in your hands. You can be an asshole right now Click the button. Hey look. Yeah That's not mine. Yeah, like I think um God what was it was like I think discussing gun grave Gore at some point when there was like some footage I had on screen or so,

Starting point is 00:34:45 it was like, oh, do you want to claim everybody's Gungrave gore discussion videos and trailer footage or whatever? And it's like, no, no, I don't. But you can. Gore, maybe, maybe I do. Yeah, maybe I'll get paid from Brandon Heat. Yeah, it is absolute shitbaggery.

Starting point is 00:35:04 And I've had entire show ideas that I've had to just trash Because they never followed through on what they said they would do with which was like Changing the rules around how licensed music would work on on Twitch and on on YouTube, you know, I had stuff that I scam Yeah, yeah fucking sucks so anyway. But still make make the game for me though. Do it do do make add a giant extra budget. Like do do more to the game for me. Look how much we sell for you look how much we. You know what actually this is this is there's never gonna be a better time To talk about this. Can we switch over to my week for one game because it's this topic hit it

Starting point is 00:35:51 So I like Josh Sawyer. I follow him on social media. I think he's a really smart guy He helped make a bunch of my favorite obsidian games He's like the gameplay and lead director at a bunch of projects over Obsidian. The number one thing you would know him as is like the director for New Vegas, right? I like pretty much everything that Josh has put his hands on to some degree. And there was this long back and forth with like the reality of full level voice acting in games. So I think we talked about this briefly so I'll just go quickly over it, but Pillars of

Starting point is 00:36:29 Eternity 1 was a Kickstarter game and had fairly limited voice acting. It would basically just be flavor when you met new characters kind of thing. And then Divinity Original Sin 2 by Larian came out and had full voice acting. And so then when they're making Pillars 2, the decision comes down on high that says, hey, do full voice acting. And they're like, that's really hard, right? So they did it and what were the results? So one is streamers hate it when there's no full voice acting. We did have this discussion two weeks ago. Streamers hate it and that's bad for marketing. Players love it when it and that's bad for marketing.

Starting point is 00:37:05 Players love it when it has full voice acting, etc. However, planning for full voice acting and paying for full voice acting, particularly for heavily narrative text-based games, can be really, really expensive. And it can be a lot of extra work to integrate it, right? So, all that being said, that was a postmortem for Pillars of Eternity 2. Here comes Pentament. So, Pentament is, you know when you play a game

Starting point is 00:37:33 and you're like, oh, this is someone's baby? Yeah, no, I'm looking at it, because when I look his name up, first I see Avowed, and then I see Pentament. So, you're like, oh, this is someone's baby. This is someone's like toying around in their margins for years. Pentament is a game in which you play an aspiring young artist in 1518 Bavaria in a small town where you work at the local Abbott's Scriptorium,

Starting point is 00:38:01 copying books as well as following up your own art. And there is a murder, which essentially gets you stuck in this tiny little hamlet for 20 years, as you get to know the populace and over a very long portion of the game, attempt to solve the murder, figure out what's going on going in the town talk to a bunch of Abbots and and monks and nuns about God and the nature of the of Martin Luther and the Holy Roman Empire and all this shit right wake up and get hit with that I want to make some shit no one's even thought of remotely once in the human history of this plan now ever there is a definite disco Elysium feeling in that it is a very small game in which the it is

Starting point is 00:38:45 based around passing conversation checks and getting to know an extremely small area of the world to the point where when you start the game the very first quest is pay your rent okay like you walk downstairs and they're like I need you to pay your rent. Right. And so the first series of quests is basically begging for money. It's right. Um, and Pentament has no voice acting at all. And as a result of Pentament being extraordinarily text heavy, like crazy

Starting point is 00:39:20 text heavy and having no voice acting at all. I didn't cover it despite being a massive fan of the studio and the people behind it and a lot of people didn't cover it and the last I heard it did okay but it was also one of those games that Microsoft bought when they bought Obsidian and so it's kind of like a Game Pass add-on so it did fine but like nobody talking about Pentament like no nobody talking about Pentament and I nobody talking about Pentament. And I'm playing Pentament and two things jump out. One, boy, it would have been hard to voice act Pentament. So first of all, every single character is like German or like pre-Germany German, 1518 accented,

Starting point is 00:40:00 and there are like five or six different fonts for specific people. So academics, priests, peasants, farmers, and laborers all have different font styles appropriate to their station and level of education. As dialogue fills in, there will be spelling errors, which you will then see an invisible editor scratch out with a stone and correct during dialogue. Okay, it's a writer's game. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:40:33 It is writing. So I speak to the shepherd, and the shepherd speaks in the peasant script until you find out he can read. And then a pumice stone comes and scrapes off all his dialogue and replaces it in the educated font. Which is easier to read. And then when you talk to the abbot or the brothers at the monastery,

Starting point is 00:40:58 they speak in the clergy thing, which is high gothic-like style text, which is actually a little difficult to read yeah okay so playing with dialogue and text and script it's it's hard text though the actual adventure yeah right like the very first thing that you do in that game is you scrape off a Greek manuscript to draw your own art in it right like it is obsessed with the written word. And I completely, completely, completely understand why this would have been prohibitively expensive

Starting point is 00:41:32 to voice act. And even if it had the budget, there's a bunch of other challenges you're describing here that like. Yeah, design issues alongside it. And all I can think of is like, wow, what an incredible good use case for why something shouldn't have voice acting It should have still had voice acting

Starting point is 00:41:50 Because you couldn't cover it because I couldn't cover it and nobody covered it I just saw somebody in the chat say I have never seen any one stream pentament Yeah, I barely see anyone talk about it and every time someone talks about it they got one incredible game It's so interesting. It's the most amazing game. I can't believe it and from my couple hours with it. Wow, it's amazing It's absolutely incredible. Yeah, I remember you giving it its flowers sometime last year when you first came when we're talking about it and No, it seems fascinating. It's just this is an insurmountable problem in a way, you know? As far as covering goes.

Starting point is 00:42:28 There's a text to speech option, but it's like Microsoft Sam. Sure. And I was looking into the possibility of, oh, if I was going to play something like, ah, God, it always escapes me, but really long word count, what can change the nature of a man? Planescape Torment. Thank you. I was looking into the possibility of like, what if?

Starting point is 00:42:50 Fuck that. Well, here's what I was looking. I was like, what if I had the script next to me and then I had a text to speech that I could paste into that? So here, you get it. There's like multiple different problems that show up and I saw them in Pentament and in Planescape Torment you do get minor voice acting and this is a problem right away because you have like Microsoft Sam read it, well what you're going

Starting point is 00:43:16 to hear is the Nameless One talk and the Nameless One sounds just like Ron Perlman and he's incredible. Before, just, you jumped in the middle of there before I finished the thought. I don't want anyone thinking, no, clearly that's a dumb, that's not an idea that's happening. That's completely, that's not practical. But I was, I wanted to, I was looking at how to address this game and how to play it and what ways there would be. And I'm like, could that even be a thing?

Starting point is 00:43:41 And it very quickly revealed itself that no, that is not a thing. So I see people going like- I briefly streamed Planescape Torment for like two hours and I think it was actually like more difficult than disco interesting so what I did do was read a fucking book and then play Phoenix Wright and just make it so that if I ever were to do this I would just take the hit and do it which could happen I'd have to see but like that's a that's a pretty insurmountable problem and so yeah with a game like this you have to know going in I guess how old is this is it's like two years old, right? By this point in design,

Starting point is 00:44:26 you're talking whenever it started development, you know, 2018, maybe 2019, at the earliest if it was a thought, and then it became a concept that they executed on in 2021 or so. Like, the landscape for a small game, just it's not impossible, but boy is it fucking hard to thrive if nobody can stream your game

Starting point is 00:44:48 At the same time as like relying on word-of-mouth to get out there about it. You know Yeah, that that's a huge we're part of the system now man I Mean how did people think about think about unknown nine Uh-huh Yeah, the the that's the Witcher spin-off that didn't take off. No, it's not what the fuck Okay, this is such a perfect example Okay What I'm talking about so before you so I was looking through stories and I was putting together and seeing what's going on.

Starting point is 00:45:29 And here's where I don't know what's going on. Yeah, nobody does. That's my favorite part. So I saw an article that was describing that a character from the Witcher TV show, I believe Anya was the name. Yeah. Was supposed to have their own spin-off or series. And it was making reference to Unknown Nine, or that was being discussed in it. And I was going through and I quickly saw the story.

Starting point is 00:45:59 I didn't get the whole thing, so that's what I was just asking. I think that might've been one of the actors. They were talking about the person from the TV show. I understand. Okay. So I read, yeah, I was reading a story quickly and then, uh, yeah, that was one of the parts. So that's why I was just like, Oh, is it connected to this bit? Gotcha. So unknown nine is a game that came out like a couple of months ago, I guess. And, um, I never heard of it, even though I went back and looked and like you and I both watched trailers for it at various

Starting point is 00:46:26 game shows it would just delete our site I think we even talked about its title because the name is unknown nine awakening and it's it's one of those delete titles unfortunate if you're if you're storm gate yeah if you're watching the industry too closely you hear these names too often And it's the story world and by the story world They mean it had like two podcasts and two books written for it before it came out And all that shit and it's enduring legacy is one of the only games that like I think Gigaboots failed to death stream because he just got too bored Just we're gonna do a death stream ah fuck it's not worth it I

Starting point is 00:47:20 Okay, okay, okay, so we know that the multimedia Okay, okay, okay. So we know that the multimedia Like property can work if you start in one place and then expand into others, but like has the Simultaneous push like worked at any point in the last no never never never 20. I I saw The only one that people will tell you it worked is Dead Space 1 because there are a bunch of motion comics and comics that came out before Dead Space 1 to set it up. I remember the motion comic because I watched it in Dead Space Extraction, which I also enjoyed. But Dead Space was going to be fine because it looked like Resident Evil 4 in space.

Starting point is 00:48:06 Yeah, I saw someone say Fate Stay Night and I'm like I remember the timeline of when like I guess Tsukuhime was over and then they were like announcing the next thing and it was that one like it was a key key graphic of like You know the yeah, whatever the fates day night announcement, but I think that even came out as like one thing and then slowly Started working into other mediums. I don't think it was a multimedia blitz from different things at the same time I don't I saw somebody say Chronicles of Riddick and I think that's really funny. The idea that, well, you remember that I made those Vin Diesel movies before putting out Escape from Butcher Bay to like hype up Escape from Butcher Bay? Yes, of course. Pitch black and what not.

Starting point is 00:48:58 Yeah, I remember. Totally. Yeah. Oh boy. As part of the story world. Yeah. Okay. So.hack absolutely fits into the description that we're talking about here. But is anyone going to stand on business and say that.hack is good as a whole? Because I'm not under that impression,

Starting point is 00:49:21 but I've seen.h-hack slash sign and Liminality and I've been that was it for me now I know that there's some games that are that people like and or some of the things but when you put it all together Is it batten? 500 what are we batten here? I Don't know but it feels as if as time know, but it feels as if, as time has gone on, it feels as if it has been more bad than good. I'm seeing mixed feelings from everybody though.

Starting point is 00:49:53 Okay, okay. Yeah, some work, some don't. 80, 20, okay. Well, that's good. It is also one of those series that is, you wanna talk about the Kingdom Hearts putting it all together level of batshit. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Try to put the.hack time length together.

Starting point is 00:50:11 The situation is always the same. It's like, oh, you know what? Look, Kingdom Hearts and Nier Automata and all these things, look, they have these wide sprawling things that can keep people involved even between development. You know what we should do, before the game even comes out or the movie comes out, let's just flood the fucking airways with comics about something no one's ever heard of. Yeah, let's fucking do it. Stop the episode you're on. Go play this game up to chapter two, now resume. Where you were. Did I tell you how insane the reading order for the Witcher series is? You did, you did.

Starting point is 00:50:51 Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like that's the worst one I can think of. I think I think dot hack can get dumber if you're trying to piece it all together sensibly because it involves you starting and stopping multiple things to switch back to a different thing and I saw an insanely cursed Like a dragon timeline in which you play through games until you get to Flashbacks so that you can order up the flashback as they happen. Oh god. Oh god So you play zero, but then you start to play one,

Starting point is 00:51:27 but only the 1995 section, and then you play this until you get to the flashbacks that take place before 1998. Oh my God. That's so fucking stupid. That's painful. Yeah. I think looking back on it, seeing two.hack related things.

Starting point is 00:51:52 The soundtrack to hack sign, excuse me,.hack slash sign was good and the rest was bad. I did not like it. And then Liminality was even, I didn't, it felt, okay. I remember watching this, oh, it was, yeah, it was like a partial OVA series and like, there was- Oh, yeah, yeah. Somebody put it in the chat, there it is. And it was so wild because the characters

Starting point is 00:52:23 in the real world were like going into the game, but this series was based on not showing you the in-game stuff. So you just focused on the characters with the headsets on talking to each other as like music was playing and they're like, oh my God, hold on, watch out. And it stayed on just the characters going, oh no, wait, what?

Starting point is 00:52:43 And you couldn't, you were not allowed to go into the thing because, yeah, anyway. All right. Hey, don't jump the gun before you know if your thing has any juice, how about that? Yeah, you're as packaged with the games and so you're supposed to switch between the two to fully get the big.

Starting point is 00:53:01 I can only think of one project in which the core product was a dismal failure, but the pre-project story world, like extra material, was good enough on its own to make it worth it and it's Kingdoms of Amalur Reckoning. Ah, right, right, right. Okay. Because Copernicus never fucking came out, because Kurt Schilling's a fucking fraud ass bitch. But Kingdoms of Amalur was alright.

Starting point is 00:53:36 I learned how to air combo without expecting it. Um, that, that... Yeah, there was some depth to that combat system that didn't expect to be there. So yes, for the hack-a-manality that was packed with the PS2 games, you play the games to see what was going on there. Does it make showing the characters wearing the VR goggles and making that the crux of what's going on any better or or not? Man, I don't know. I don't know nothing about.hack. I know there's a guy named Orca. Okay.

Starting point is 00:54:10 Who's really strong in the first.hack game. That's it. That's all I got. That's literally the entirety of information I have about.hack. Oh, and also GU is hard to find and expensive to buy. The OP for hack sign one is fucking sick that Opening this is such a good song. It's a banger It was good. All right. Anyways, but yeah, no Pentamons incredible should have voice acting I know why it doesn't have voice acting and those are all great reasons made by smarter people than me But shut up. It should have people talking in it so that I don made by smarter people than me but shut up it should have people talking in it so that i don't so i can do it shut up just do it thank you

Starting point is 00:54:52 okay um that this makes me set it for disco and we were super right about disco so hey uh this makes me sad about pentamid and now i'm kind of like oh fuck there's a i kind of want to know, you know. Play it yourself. Yeah, I guess so. I guess that's a sleeper hit and unfortunately fucking, yeah, the culture we propagate makes it worse. Yeah.

Starting point is 00:55:19 It's not my fault, it's the consumer's fault. If Twitch chat just learn how to read, I wouldn't have to read to them. From this tiny little screen in the tiny little text window. So you asked me this a little while ago, man. And you asked me what language I play the Like a Dragon games on. I said English because it's so much easier but there was actually a breaking point for that where I at some point go oh so such a it's hard to read out all this fucking dialogue and all the Japanese dialogue can't you guys just read this shit on their subtitles and the answer is not on my fucking phone I can't it's

Starting point is 00:56:01 like a single line of pixels and then then I'm like, Oh yeah, well actually, no, you actually totally can't read text on the screen at all. Shit. The shit is. Please look forward to the computer plugin, which you install, which recognizes text on your screen for accessibility purposes. And we'll just read it all out, you know, essentially like a, yeah, blind assistance tool, and then you just stream with that on, so that a Siri, British voice can.

Starting point is 00:56:32 I mean, I need a blind assistance tool to see items on the ground, I don't think. Yeah. You need a Reggie there. Just be like, hey, what's that? Oh yeah, shit, oh fuck, right. Anyways. What else do you got going on, bro? So played some tech and eight went back to the DLC on that

Starting point is 00:56:53 because I hadn't gotten around to it in a minute. They they put they put Hey Hachi Lydia and Clive in that game. And that's all really cool Definitely dead, but more importantly they put the ability for you to select your main character main menu Person in that's good. And now you can go and grab who you want and stare at anyone. So if you don't want Kazza is titties or DLC faces, you can go into your outfits and pick the Reyna with the glasses and put that as your main one. And then she's going to be there every time you go to the main menu.

Starting point is 00:57:38 It was high... Yes. Exactly. And then they added like, yeah, some other online features, training online and stuff like that. Going into it, it seems like, hey, guess what? Hey, Hatchie works pretty well in a system he's always worked in, except now you can do super dashes when you activate heat. And Tekken has decided, I touched on it a little with Eddie, but they've decided there's

Starting point is 00:58:04 a clear design philosophy with all DLC. You know how every time, you know, there's always something different and appealing that's more than just a base roster character with a, you know? Oh yeah, it's like, ooh, it's a new one. Ooh, what's going on here?

Starting point is 00:58:19 The only exception is if they should have been a base roster character, then it's like, oh, thank goodness. There's, but like even the things in like Street Fighter where they're like, let's give them a taunt that unlocks some extra crazy bullshit, right? Yeah. Like with Bison or Akuma. They're coming with new music that's different from the style of the rest of the game.

Starting point is 00:58:37 Poison systems on Akki or homage extra specials for Terry. And I'm sure Mai will have you know she has her super taunt and there's all these little things where they're just like we're gonna put a lot of extra effort in and and in some cases like have a very obvious sort of new system in place. And it makes sense because the base roster means it's like two dollars a character or four dollars a character or whatever but the DLC characters is more like eight to ten dollars a character so you got to really increase the value.

Starting point is 00:59:06 Yes, people are also referencing, so the Smash DLC meter, when you pick a Smash DLC character and you see like, okay, ready, or the little meter, or the hero drop down, there's always that little extra bit. Yep, that's a DLC character right there who's got a special function.

Starting point is 00:59:34 So Tekken is like, we need to sell you a character and there needs to be a number under the life bar that makes you feel them powering up. And it's like literally all of them have it. And in some cases, it's drastic. And in some cases, it's very minor, but it always is a part of the DLC. So Eddie Gordo came out, and they gave him, I called him Mandingo points, but it's like the Mandinga stance, where he goes into, you're getting it, you're getting it,

Starting point is 01:00:00 catch up, catch up, all right? All right, all right, Mandingo points. So you go into the Mandinga stance stance where it's the banana tree stance. And then you can do a couple of different kicks when you're upside down. And it's okay. You're all confused. If you're the Dory Tekken, we know what we're talking about. Just keep up. It's the most Tekken fucking conversation ever. It's okay. Just move past it. It's okay. So you flip upside down and he can do a couple of unique moves from this stance. And every time you do certain sequences

Starting point is 01:00:30 or combos with him or certain moves, at the end of it, he kind of goes, he leans back and goes bam, and you see like a big power up, you know? And the number underneath his life bar goes up, right? And you see it go to level one and level two and then level three and like, you kind of feel like, oh, he's getting stronger. And nothing's really happening. It just makes a couple of moves from this one stance get a little bit better.

Starting point is 01:00:55 It's very subtle, you know, they become pretty good moves. But it just feels like your DLC character is really getting stronger, you know, because that number went up. And it would have been very minor if he did or didn't have that little effect, you know. So Heihachi comes out and he's got a meter as well. It's a number. And it's every time you activate heat with him, you know, his the once per round, like sort of ability that Tekken 8 has, that number goes up by one. And when you finally get it to three, you can then do a big old explosion and he gets powered up.

Starting point is 01:01:37 And now he gets access to better versions, better frame data, and safer versions of normal things that he does that are kind of like old hay hatching. So it makes him really, really good, but it's still a very subtle thing compared to the feeling of, bah! You know? But it's there, and you watch the number go up,

Starting point is 01:02:01 you're like, yeah, he's getting strong, you know? Lydia has a number, right? And do you know what that makes you feel? Man, up, you're like, yeah, he's getting strong, you know. Lydia has a number, right? And you know what that makes you feel? Man, it makes you feel like, man, I bet it could totally be Kazi if they won another round. Oh, if you won another round, it was, yeah, he stopped him, yeah. And then, and again, competitively,

Starting point is 01:02:18 you get to that point with him, and you can do all kinds of insane pressure, and people get blown up. But yeah, Lydia has one as well. And then of course Clive, he's got the Odin meter, right? Where you build the levels up and then you can do the dimension slash, you know, and as you sort of use, because he switches weapons as you fight with Clive. So all of that and those at level four or five you do like fucking insane damage if you do the cash out move that he does. So Zansetsuken. Zansetsuken, yeah. So it really is just like, all right, every one of these characters, you're going to see that number

Starting point is 01:03:00 going up as you play and you're going to feel like, yeah, even if you use it or don't. And I think Harada has like locked in on that specific feeling for the whole season. Fortunately, I guess I can say that when Noctis came out, it did feel like, you know, kind of what it felt like you drop a character in, you give him some very annoying buttons some very Simple, you know to to to to to to to you press you press it you get a very oppressive series of weapon combos that are just fucking you up and In this case, they kind of pulled back on some of that where it's like you has a bunch of weapons he's Dante in in the middle of Tekken he feels so much like he should be in Soul Calibur. But yeah. But it's not

Starting point is 01:03:50 as it's not as ridiculous as Noctis felt at least just for a beginner. But he does feel like a really cool faithful obvious like you know version of the character. The the attention to detail they put into Akuma and Geese and all that they they've put into Clive and as you're kind of uh doing stuff with him it's um yeah like when you when you have little things where you switch to um Bahamut and you're off the ground so the wings come out and you know like you're doing the floating stance with him and if anyone goes for a low it automatically gets low parried. Of course it does. You know because you're off the ground. Why that shouldn't work right? You can do

Starting point is 01:04:32 your titan giant titan punch and that's his big armored take the hits and then blast through it move you know like it takes all of the icons and just puts them around the places where you know the the this is what an armored move would be this would be a tracking move would be so if you try to sidestep he does the Garuda he does like a like a slash, you know kind of sideways and it's like yeah, right The Garuda kind of serves that purpose every time he jumps you see the little wind on it It's very it's really cool. You know, I like them

Starting point is 01:05:04 So I think that Street Fighter is done like a pretty good job with its guest characters in that there's Terry and Terry fits in great but like Putting Terry Bogard in the Street Fighter is like putting jelly into your peanut butter sandwich It's like the most no-brainer no effort shit ever like yeah, okay We know how Terry would work. Tekken has been putting like all these weird fucking characters from like 2D fighting games, non-fighting games, and has kept them very, very accurate to their feel. And it's very impressive. Yeah, well, I mean, I feel like somebody who could walk along and be like, wait, Terry

Starting point is 01:05:44 wasn't in Street Fighter already? and that would be a normal reaction. Oh, I thought he was in Capcom versus I think yeah, right, but I think because Bandai are the same soul caliber, you know folks They know themselves how wild guest characters can get and how that can be like soul caliber is dead So like there's at least one guy who moved teams probably and is like, well I know how to make weird guest characters. We put Jedi's in some of our fighting games. Well I mean, Harada had a big threat talking about exactly how and why Soul Calibur is currently dead.

Starting point is 01:06:18 It was a really good discussion and he kind of broke down that essentially just a strong team with a clear vision that was willing to kind of ignore the higher ups, you know, and just like plow through. And they kind of competed internally, Project Soul and Tekken Project with each other as almost like Team the Arxys, you know? But the yeah, the series that like championed, invented, and you know, like I mean honestly perfected the guest character in that first one. Soul Calibur 2 with Link, Spawn, and Heihachi was absolutely. Gangbusters. Totally agree. Killed it. killed it. Smash Bros. is an entire franchise about guests, so it feels kind of like an unfair comparison in a way, but I feel like that first one was a slam dunk that we almost have yet to top.

Starting point is 01:07:19 But nonetheless, Final Fantasy, big Japanese franchise, you can find... It's not the weirdest fit. As long as we can keep it not AMC's The Walking Dead, I think I'll be okay. I think I'm on board with wherever we go from here. And then there's the ones where you kind of just don't even remember they happened like Cole in Street Fighter X Tekken. Cole is like a more interesting fighter than Street Fighter X Tekken deserve to keep for just themselves.

Starting point is 01:07:56 Is he? Yeah? Yeah. Damn. He's got like a wide variety of electricity powers. He's kind of like Clive in that respect of like he could have done like tons of weird shit but

Starting point is 01:08:10 Do you remember the kerfuffle about his look going into infamous 2 What might have been the most dog shit gamer thing that's ever happened I don't So Cole in infamous 1 Looks like a bald space Marine wearing like a yellow jacket. Shaved head man. It's like 360 man, like to a T, right? And then in the second game they're like, we're going to change up Cole's look for something new and exciting. And then they just made him into Nathan Drake like like white guy with short brown hair

Starting point is 01:08:46 from 360 military guy like yeah to Nathan Drake And people like fuck that no we love classic cold the coal and so then they changed him back to Bald weird looking space marine man, and it's like oh yeah Okay, okay, what hot sauce do I want? Ketchup or Ketchup? Like, holy shit. It's like we went from Afro to Killmonger, back to Afro. Okay. It's terrible, like unbelievable.

Starting point is 01:09:20 For me, I'm just, all I remember really is the infamous prototype like Like what what is what who is who cats and dogs? What world is this? confusion and then I'll tell you what infamous is a way better game. I love prototype way more because of the toot more yeah because of the dude no well no bio-organic nightmare thing powers and how fast you would go were more fun than well-produced good playing electricity

Starting point is 01:09:54 powers well I remember what I remember seeing them both and going one of them feels like your venom and the other one feels not like that right yeah well because it's the guys who made prototype made the Hulk ultimate destruction destruction games mm-hmm And then there was the DLC Infamous campaign where you had the paper ability that looked pretty cool. No was that it no that is not right No, was that it? No, that is not right

Starting point is 01:10:30 Ancient ps3 knowledge war the ps Infamous 2 had a vampire DLC setting And then the third game called infamous set second son that was the crazy one because instead of electricity powers, you had smoke, paper, neon, and television. Oh, okay, okay, okay. It was an infamous DLC. It wasn't the second game. It was the third game, yeah. Gotcha. Okay, okay, okay. But that was infamous, right? Yeah, okay, right. And I remember being

Starting point is 01:11:00 excited about that because I like read or die. And then they had a second Infamous second son spin-off that was a Neon because you played as the neon girl Okay, not paper. No, okay. Maybe I'm just thinking too hard of read or die. I like I like I like I Feel like of my brain is I think the worst part about infamous second son is that the enemies get the power of concrete? Which is awesome and you spend the power of concrete, which is awesome, and you spend the entire time fighting concrete dudes, and then you get concrete as the final upgrade when you beat the final boss, but then you can use it and there's nothing to use

Starting point is 01:11:36 it on. Oh, boo. You're like, what the fuck? And they teased paper, but then you never got it? Okay, so I saw something that made that put that thought in there Yeah, okay, okay. They teased it and then fucking didn't do it boo Paper control is so cool. That's such a cool. I'd like power but not and would not would specifically a process something of

Starting point is 01:12:08 specifically the process of converting paper into papyrus into fucking... I'm gonna say something so brave. Are you ready for this bravery? Because I went back to Ghost of Tsushima this week and been playing it and I cannot believe that the team that made Infamous and Infamous 2 and Second Son are the people that made Ghost of Tsushima. It is such a fucking quantum fucking leap forward in quality. It is so unbelievable. How open world, I guess, in scale, were the that was was how open world I guess in scale was the or the infamous second son Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah, the infamous games are open world. Absolutely. You had three islands. Oh shit. Okay, okay Like it's um

Starting point is 01:12:59 Oh my god, there was that Naruto character with the paper control. I was yo, I'm thinking of Yomi Ko Redmond y'all Maybe maybe you are anyway, um So yeah tech and DLC check Yeah, very cool. I like live Lydia was doing cool shit. She was doing traditional Polish karate and She hears you. Is that a thing or did they just make that shit up? So I was kind of I feel, and I might be getting this incomplete, but I feel like I was like, wait, because she's like the most Polish pride ever, right? She's the prime minister and she's speaking it, and she's killing it, and she looks so cool. And I'm like, and so what about, is

Starting point is 01:13:39 there not a style that is most appropriate for her to do besides something Japanese? And it's like, no, no, no. There's actually a really strong martial arts community in Poland that has been doing it for a while that kill it. So fair enough. It makes sense. I remember a long time ago- And then she takes you to the Polish dimension when she does her super. Back in Tekken 3, I remember reading an article with, I don't know if he was even credited as the director, but it was probably Hirata. I was like, how do you guys figure out what new fighters to have? And then the answer is they pick the country and then they go, well, what fighting

Starting point is 01:14:17 style fits this country? And then they're like, what would a cool person from this country look like? And then they just do it and that's it. That's the whole design process. Yeah, yeah, you know. And like, and in some cases I know like, like so Tarada did a whole thread on like how Josie came to be and how they like, you know, tried to go as accurate as possible and stuff. So they put more research in or, you know, of course like you get Fokum Rum with the Muay Thai and stuff. But in this case, yeah, you just like you go. We it's the Polish Prime Minister and

Starting point is 01:14:49 She does Shotokan and she brings you to a Fucking Tsukuyomi. That's all white and red And you're all the people can do that. Yeah, that's it. You know that's how they communicate with each other They have the Polish paths they can You know, that's how they communicate with each other. They have the Polish paths they can They can all talk and suddenly while the world is on a normal timeline all Polish people appear in a desert That's all white and red and they can talk to each other That's true anyway um no she's

Starting point is 01:15:31 pretty cool always always thought she mix it up a bit, and I got fucking annihilated by some... I played a couple games where you jump in and you realize, okay, everybody's about the same skill level here, and we're all having a fairly normal match. Everyone's, whatever, KD is where it's supposed to be. But then there's just one Hawkeye that's just murdering the entire game. And you're like, oh man, if you have good aim, you are the game.

Starting point is 01:16:23 You're the whole thing. No, you don't have to have good aim, you are the game. You're the whole thing. No, you don't have to have good aim. That's why Hawkeye is good, because the hitbox on the headshot for his arrow is like a full character size. Is it easier to land a headshot with him than other characters? Yes, absolutely. Oh.

Starting point is 01:16:42 The headshot radius on the arrow is like five feet. It's like a five foot sphere on the head of the arrow. Interesting. Okay, because I've been playing him to try and see him like, let's fuck around with this and see if I can get my aim better because I've always had bad aim. And I'm like every once in a while, I'm like, oh shit, I'm actually landing it.

Starting point is 01:17:02 That's nice because I feel as if every arrow that whiffs or like just hits a body or so, I'm like, oh shit, I'm actually landing it. That's nice because I feel as if every arrow that whiffs or just hits a body or so, I'm like, damn, that could have been a kill. Yeah, so the trade off from Widow to him is that Widow is hitscan but requires pinpoint accuracy whereas he actually fires a projectile, but to accommodate that, the projectile is actually like 10 times the size that it looks. Okay. So, I mean, the Hanzo comparisons aside, did Hanzo also have an increased headshot hitbox? Yes.

Starting point is 01:17:37 Yeah, it did. And the other thing about Hanzo is Hanzo didn't have to look at you for a couple seconds to power up the power of his shot. There's that part of it as well. That's why Hawkeye has that exact mechanic, so that he doesn't turn into Hanzo. Okay. Did Hanzo always have easier headshots than everyone? Because I feel like Hanzo mains as a meme has always been, you have fucking terrible aim, stop picking the character that requires you to have good aim.

Starting point is 01:18:01 Now I'm unsure, but I know that when I played hanzo 35 years ago Amy I thought I have to shit it I thought the whole bit was aiming is hard you don't have the skills stop wasting no no aiming is hard so pick hanzo because this hitbox is big okay well don't don't don't pick Widowmaker because aiming is hard. Pick Hanzo. So yeah, messing around with with him and such. And I you know, I'm like, I do. I do feel like every once in a while when you get into it's like, oh, fuck, that's cool, that's nice. And it is a nice, like, I wanna play it more, not only to like, because that's incredibly useful to have from the back line and stuff, but you can,

Starting point is 01:18:56 but like, yeah, I need, what's a, it's tracing, right? Practice, where you just like following the target with your mouse or with the, in this case, the joystick, you know, that it's a different motor skill with twin sticks than it is from like WASD and mouse, you know, tracking and leading, yeah. So that's been particularly fun. And then on the complete flip side of that, messing around with Cloak and Dagger. Cloak and Dagger, great. I love Cloak and Dagger.

Starting point is 01:19:30 Us against the world. Just like, hit the Winston electricity button. You know, alright, switch it up. Fuck out of there. Get up close. Annoy. But don't be the- Don't aim.

Starting point is 01:19:44 Fuck that. Yeah. annoying but don't be the don't aim fuck that yeah but also then like there's been some games where like the dagger immediately switches over to cloak and starts rushing like a DPS yeah you can you can be a DPS for two buttons but if you if your team needs healing you should probably stay on healing duty more than you know what you should do is you should be What you should have is your cooldowns should always be ticking because you've used everything up at all times And if you overextend you also put yourself in a squishy bad position because well, that's why you've got The arm invisible no one can see me on cloak

Starting point is 01:20:21 I mean like I feel like something I have learned over some Overwatch lessons back in the day and then to now with rivals is healer duty, do stay on heals, do your job. And if everyone is looking pretty healthy, try to take some picks, try to take some shots, contribute to the fight. And if someone comes after you, fucking survive, do what you got to do. But the times to overextend and chase down a kill and go all the way in are extremely rare and holy fuck you better land the pick. I have a piece of information that I learned from Final Fantasy XIV and it's applicable

Starting point is 01:20:53 to all games in which damage is going in and out. Doing more damage is also damage mitigation. The enemy cannot hurt your team if you killed them yes that that is day that is cloaks purpose but when you're racing down if you someone's life bar and like like if you're if you're trying you're chasing down like a venom and venom is like thanks yeah what I we're still just don't you know what I mean like The fuck you doing right? Yeah No, cloaks best ability is his his e which is the fucking damage debuff that makes everybody purple the big the big We're all can use it They get in here. Mm-hmm

Starting point is 01:21:41 Yeah, so you know that's that's that's fun messing around with that and cap to some degree as well It caps so goddamn weird It feels like it feels really fun though to have like someone that moves that fast and can jump that high and just as mobile Compared to the rest of the fight be super annoying be as annoying as you possibly can but if you run and jump Be as annoying as you possibly can. But if you run and jump, then you are probably not holding the line, so be smart about that. And you know, when you properly- I didn't quite realize it until I'm getting in there, but the system of landing a couple melee hits and now you can throw the shield out is a pretty cool way to do it.

Starting point is 01:22:21 You know? He's like, you can't just sit back and plink the shield around. You gotta get in there, but once you do- But on your way out, you can go, pew, da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da- Mm-hmm. You can kind of do it with What you may call it as well and read actually yeah, because of his fridge mode It's spider time button so much it's so Thor and strange yes was strange in particular You can do the fly unfly and then drop your eye of agamotto You know in a very like jump right over the the line and then get behind it and get everybody so dive tanking is like

Starting point is 01:23:19 I'd say like half of the tanks are meant to do that Pretty pretty cool anyway, yeah, so that's pretty much it. I like that game a lot. That Marvel Rivals is great. Yeah, yeah, and I saw some of the new costumes and then I saw the next round of upcoming costumes and they look really cool and you're also like oh yeah this game was made in China. Oh yeah, it's the same cycle. You get new costumes, second batch of new costumes. Yeah. Hey, it's a Chinese game. Yeah, yeah. Like Chinese, Dr. Strange looks cool as shit. And Chinese Moon Knight is doing it and we're getting the, what

Starting point is 01:24:02 you might call it, the Lion Lucio Ball game they just kinda showed the trailer for. So, yeah, with the Chinese New Year celebrations, all those outfits are dropping. And it's like, oh yeah, so there's probably gonna be something like that for the entire cast, I imagine. Eventually. Eventually, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 01:24:23 And you know what? And you eventually eventually yeah, yeah, and you know what um I? Am I will gladly take all of that while Street Fighter delivers nothing? Well listen you have to buy Street Fighter This is true Cosmetics are the lifeblood for cosmetics are the're right, you're right. It's not the same comparison. That is true. However, you're seeing the cosmetics go to the other side of the game with an increased frequency that makes you go, well what the fuck are we doing here? Didn't we have like a discussion where we talked about how like someone on Capcom said that like

Starting point is 01:25:02 like most of the money no going to I our cost I was I was I was Theorizing that because that was your theory would only make sense given the decisions We've seen them make right they're putting so much emphasis on it that one has to think oh this makes a ton of money They're making all these costumes or they think. Or yeah, like this is a game plan they're following through on because we can't follow the logic otherwise. Everyone is like waiting for the main, you know, costumes for the characters in this stager. We'll get another batch of costumes

Starting point is 01:25:36 after this season passes over. Mm hmm. Anyways, that's pretty much it. So yeah, no streams this week, as I've announced, gonna be over at MagFest for the rest of this week until the weekend. So yeah, come through. There's gonna be a... You have to go to MagFest, lest you be destroyed.

Starting point is 01:26:03 Lest you be destroyed? There's something deep inside of me. Is it fellas? Concerned wife here wants to know, do the boys have to go to MagFest? Is this a thing? Is this real? No, so there will be a series events, and I've posted the schedule on my Twitter, but, um, Friday at, uh, 4 p.m. in Panel Room 2 is the Dokapon Incident.

Starting point is 01:26:34 Uh, then, uh, at 9.30 is Versus Wolves Live, and then there'll be a signing on Saturday as well. Um, and then, yeah, I'm gonna be be doing an event with Sonic Fox as they play Mortal Kombat 1. And I just sit by and go, whoa, damn, shit, that's crazy. Is he still like the undisputed fucking God King? I would assume they're still the undisputed God King. And if not, it's like, give it a week. It's like, it's, I remember they were talking about, it was Sonic Fox that was like,

Starting point is 01:27:07 I'm not even good at this game. Y'all are just trash. LOL. LOL, LMAO, probably, I believe so. Like, I don't even really, yeah, cause I mean, look, there's only so much attention you're gonna pay to it. And at a certain point, it's like,

Starting point is 01:27:23 as the servers dry up and you sit in the throne there's only so much to do, you know. There's a real throne of an empty world metaphor going on here like Shao Kahn. Anyway, so yeah come hang out at MagFest, should be a good time everybody. Alright, what's going on? I beat Metal Gear Solid 2. So I beat Metal Gear Solid 2 yesterday and I got to the part where we installed the virus worm on GW on Saturday, simultaneous to TikTok going down. And it's like, let me tell you, man. You did it. Man, that shit is even more like future telling-y than you remember it being. Oh yeah. Hideo was righter than ever.

Starting point is 01:28:26 There's like a specific, the one that got me is that you're talking to the president and he's like, well the Patriots wanted me to make a space force, so I had to make a space force. That was the Patriots' idea. And you're just like, wow, I fucking forgot about that one? Damn. That's crazy!

Starting point is 01:28:44 Okay, but what I really wanna know, and this has been bugging me for a while, but I've never just gone to check. Yeah? How did the katana on the second stick feel after all this time? Shit, it feels like garbage. Shit, fuck, it's not good?

Starting point is 01:29:03 Oh, it feels like trash, dude. Oh, god, I want it to be good in my memories. I want the katana on the right stick to be good. I want it to be cool. It feels really bad. God damn it. I was talking about this yesterday. I was like, oh, this sucks.

Starting point is 01:29:18 And when you do left, right, up, down to try and do a Raiden inexplicably like tilts to the left on every sword swing. So in the Solidus boss fight, if you try and do like five sword stripes in a row, Raiden will actually turn 90 degrees to the left and stop hitting him. God damn it. Okay, it was just revengeance then. Yeah, no, it's really bad. You know? It's really bad. As someone who's like, I got one eye squinting and peeking at fucking Fight Night 3 with the uppercut motions of like moving and leaning.

Starting point is 01:29:53 Oh, that was good, though. Yeah, and jabbing and stuff and using the stick. I was like, I'm always like, hey, a button is a button, and that's the simplest way to input your moves in a fighting game, and that's important. But how fucking interesting and fun is it to be able to lean and swerve and hook you know on and fight night three? And then I'm also squinting and staring at the other I had fucking bariki one

Starting point is 01:30:15 Where it's like use the stick to do your moves and use the buttons to move around The weirdest game on sir hunter one and see how that system is. I remember hearing the nightmares about that. But I just, I'm like, damn, I remember swinging that stick around, but I don't remember if it felt good or not, and I was hoping it was. Ah! No, no, it sucks, dude.

Starting point is 01:30:35 It sucks shit. Damn. It's terrible. Okay, okay. And like, you know what, you know my favorite part of this is, you know what I discovered replaying Revengeance a little while ago I discovered that

Starting point is 01:30:49 Using the analog stick to cut in that game also sucks Compared to just aiming the whole Camera with the left stick to overlap it because you know when you get into sound dots, too There's a line that starts it off? Yeah. Instead of aligning it with the right analog stick, just use the left analog stick to line it up. Tilt the camera.

Starting point is 01:31:13 It's super fast. It's way better. Oh, just move the camera instead? Yeah, okay, okay. And then you get fucked, cause you've been doing that the whole game and then you get to Armstrong where it demands that you use the right analog stick and you get blown up all the time. Yeah, I don't remember at this point Unfortunately, but I do remember like, you know the slash slash slash on Datsu shit being very fun to do, you know Yeah, absolutely. It was it was it was it was enjoyable of

Starting point is 01:31:41 Man and then there was also like making it non-lethal by flipping it from red Yeah So if you want to be an insane person and go for your extreme big boss ranking like a psycho and you still slash But you're hitting them with the back of the blade right or whatever knocking out these arsenal 10 goos man But we don't want you to not have fun by swinging the sword around and it was such a big like it's like oh You get the end of the game you fun by swinging the sword around. And it was such a big like, it's like, Oh, at the end of the game, you get access to the sword. I think, um, I think, uh, so I said this at the end of Metal Gear Solid 1,

Starting point is 01:32:13 and I'm now going to say it at the end of Metal Gear Solid 2. And it's, I remember us having conversations about this that lasted for hours by the end of Metal Gear Solid 2. Once again, every single thing that comes out of Ocelot's mouth is either a lie or not true. Like, 100% fail rate on truth telling. Literally every single thing. Some of the things that he believes is then later explained to be wrong. Like, not even like he wasn't lying. He was just wrong well hold on there was one truth His name is Adam

Starting point is 01:32:50 Now I'm talking to the end of Metal Gear Solid 2 okay, okay, okay? We are now at a 100% fail rate for Ocelot telling the truth mmm, and and I am reminded everyone had a fun time with this, when the last time you ever talked to Liquid, when he talks to you on top of Rey at the end of MGS2, and he says that's why he chose Ocelot as his host. For the all. Yeah, yeah, that horse shit. Which four.

Starting point is 01:33:23 And you're like, what the fuck? You were a corpse in the dirt liquid you're fucking crazy i just remembered i think the reason why i was so invested in the sword being good too is because in vr missions you could control ninja yeah but the sword was super unsatisfying it was different too you couldn't do much. It was it was just a modified version of the snake combo You know the punch punch kick, but it was like it was but it was very very slight And it didn't feel like you were fucking swinging a sword around so when they okay Yeah, that's like I have I have a great there's a fantastic statement. That's in the chat right now

Starting point is 01:34:02 Which is someone saying it's never explained why liquid's voice comes out of ocelot actually it is but it's different on what region you're playing the game because so many people in my chat did not know they're like hey how come it's a robot arm later but it looks like a real arm now because it is a real arm in MGS2 and he is being possessed by a ghost, but he removes that arm and fakes it later. He's faking it later. And that's why in English in MGS2 it changes to Liquid's voice, but in MGS4 it doesn't. No no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no

Starting point is 01:34:40 no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no no No, the retcon in four erased it so that in two we found out he was faking it. Fuck you, he was really possessed. Fuck you! It was real in two. No! It was real in two. You're wrong.

Starting point is 01:34:55 No way! He removed Liquid's arm and replaced it with a synthetic one and then hypnotized himself to think he was still being possessed to fool the Patriots. I shut the fuck, I can't. I refuse. No, no. Four told us that Two was bullshit.

Starting point is 01:35:15 No, Four tells you that he switched to a synthetic arm later and hypnotized himself. laughter laughter His sister was a witch, Doug! Get it together! You know my favorite part about that video is they're both holding knives. Have you noticed that they're both holding knives during the argument? She came down in a bubble, dog!

Starting point is 01:35:51 Like they were ready to get into a fucking knife fight over that shit. Oh, fuck me. No way, no how. I can't. I can't be litigating Kajumbo in 2025. Oh, shit. It's so stupid. It's so stupid. It's so dumb. I love Metal Gear. I love Metal Gear so much. Nothing like it There really isn't there's nothing like nothing like it Let's go back to Tekken for a second because I have like a genuine question as to whether or not we're hip hypocrites The answer is yes, but go on.

Starting point is 01:36:26 Negan, Walking Dead Man in Tekken, boo, lame. Daryl, from Walking Dead Man in Death Stranding, ooh, thumbs up, thumbs up. Hold on a minute now. Norman Reedus from Ride with Norman Reedus in Death Stranding, ooh, good, good. Oh, okay. Okay, okay, I see.

Starting point is 01:36:53 Monster in. Norman Reedus then, as a whole, being existing and being a part of a PT. Boo, bad. being existing and being a part of a PT. Boo, bad. So, so. I just wanted to say it. I just wanted to say it.

Starting point is 01:37:14 I just wanted to bring it up. Okay, that's fine. Well, look, if Jeffrey Dean Morgan shows up anywhere in any project whatsoever. I like Jeffrey Dean Morgan. I really like. Hypocrite. Yeah. Boo. That actor is not allowed to be a part of

Starting point is 01:37:28 any game project ever. I also did a sponsored stream for a game called Smite 2. I've heard of this. Which came out. Are you familiar with Smite 1? I have seen and have heard of the Smite. So Smite, for anybody who doesn't know, it was that other MOBA. You know how there's Dota and League of Legends, and then later there was Hero of the Storm? There's always room for three. Well, in fact, there was actually room for four. Just enough. And Smite had like, I looked up the, I was so curious after I did the stream, like, what's the Smite numbers? Like, what's Smite had like, I looked up the, I was so curious after I did the stream, I'm like, what's the Smite numbers?

Starting point is 01:38:06 Like what's Smite like doing? It's minimum popping because every single game show has a big Smite booth that has a lot of people at it. So what Smite is doing is it is doing consistent, loyal, reasonable numbers, unlike League and Dota and all that shit, which was just like, you know, big old explosion shit, right? And I was like, but why, right? Like, what is the big difference?

Starting point is 01:38:38 Because I had not played it prior to being sent a contract and an offer to do a sponsored stream. And now I know the reason why. One, it's pretty solid. Like, it's a fairly solid, good MOBA that has all the things that you would want for MOBA. But the number one thing it has is the ability to play it with one of these. Which I am holding up a PlayStation controller. Smite is the MOBA if you want to play a MOBA on console.

Starting point is 01:39:05 Are none of the others? Zero. They never even bothered? No, never. Huh. It's the only one. Huh. Interesting. And how does that work? How it works is that instead of being a top-down RTS, it's a behind-the-back

Starting point is 01:39:21 third-person game. Yes. The fact that it's third-personperson I do recall because this is the one where I realize I'm like every time I see it it looks like the character banner wallpapers that make me go, oh is that a League character? And it's like no, it could be a Smite character, but when we get to actual gameplay it's like World of Warcraft. Yeah, so I'm going to correct myself. People are saying, what about Pokemon Unite? You know what?

Starting point is 01:39:47 I completely forgot about that. So instead I'll say Smite is the MOBA you can play on all consoles and personal computer that don't say Nintendo on it. We're just going to shit on Guilty Gear Overture? We are. We are going to shit on Guilty Gear Overture until Daisuke apolog apologizes but he won't because that's a dream he will never apologize apologize because that's the one he wanted to make you apologize for not buying it so I hop into the the smite too and so so I have now tried all of your major MOBAs

Starting point is 01:40:23 to some degree so I have I have put you, I've gotten an ankle in on all of them. And the first thing that I noticed is that Smite 2 is not a complexity nightmare. Like Dota is and League is and even in its, or like it's, it's, it just went into open beta. It's, it's like, it has usable menus and understandable. The screenshots I'm looking at feel like otherwise. Hold on, but wait for me. Wait for me.

Starting point is 01:40:53 Yeah, yeah, yeah. So it loads you in and it goes, hey, listen, here's a tutorial and it has a real tutorial and that's nice. And then it goes, okay, here's what we're going to do. When you start, options are going to be as such Auto-level and auto-buy are just gonna be on So when you Not when you start okay, so when you start your very first game

Starting point is 01:41:17 It's gonna go okay We're gonna level up your character for you And we're gonna tell you what your character is good, like in its base state and recommended like leveling path. And also when you start, it's going to give you a bunch of choices and it's going to go, do you want to be a basic attack, basic attack auto attack build? Do you want to be an ability build? Do you want to be a tank? And it's different for each, each character and you click on one and it goes, okay, when you come back to the store, it'll auto buy things in the correct order for your game. And so the very, very first game that you play, you have to just worry about playing it.

Starting point is 01:41:55 And like playing it and not fighting its menu. And does this become a feature where you can continue doing that until you hit a difficulty wall where the skill requires you to now learn how to do that properly in shop? Pretty much. The Smite 2 is not there yet and people are asking for like, can I put my own builds in there to choose? But it has a bunch of starter ones and they're fine. Now if you're a really good Smite player player like I see somebody in the chat saying that the auto build thing sucks You're probably right

Starting point is 01:42:29 However, and this is the important thing the auto builds can't be worse than what I would put together on my fucking first 100 games not knowing the system fucking at all. There's absolutely no way And is it like, go ahead. No, after you, after you. And like, yeah, the net decking aspect is like, because in Deadlock, it's like pretty simple to pick the character, go to the shop, and then you're like, here's the most upvoted

Starting point is 01:42:55 current thing, net deck. Yeah, here, when you have that shit on, it's just like, it's literally like part of the console style interface. It's like, hey, what kind of build would you like to try out? And it's like, it's very easy. On top top of that they try and push you for your early games into a mode called arena Which is no lanes. It's a big fucking team fight the whole time It is just a 5v5 fucking brawl. Okay, no creep and it's like, okay

Starting point is 01:43:21 So I don't really have to worry about laning I can just fucking get in there and fight and learn how characters play no no creep or No, no, it's it's an arena. Just fight against the other team. There's no other it is a 5v5 fucking fight No, eat a fight. Okay. That's interesting and then I also tried a one called joust which is a single lane with 3v3 Which I used to like practice. And then there's also duel, which is one lane. And it's one v one. And I fought somebody who didn't, who absolutely knew what they were doing. And then on my second duel, I fought somebody who absolutely did not know what they were doing.

Starting point is 01:44:07 And those matches went exactly as you would expect. And it felt really nice to have like a ramp. To actually start playing the game, because Dota has like it's it's help a player learn thing and tutorials. Dota's ramp is a sheer cliff up that goes like backwards at some points in complexity. It's like infinite. It's so ridiculous. And League is not quite as ridiculous, but I remember when I did streams for League, I was like, I don't know what to buy in the shop. And the advice I actually unironically got was, well, before you start playing, you're supposed to learn what every item in the shop does.

Starting point is 01:44:50 I remember this insane tip. To which I said, I don't even do that for fighting games. Why the fuck would I do it for the shop in a fucking MOBA? Also you work in the user voted versions of it and then there's like just infinite variability there. Yeah. So I'm looking at some of it here, and I'm also being reminded of like, while playing a couple rounds of Deadlock

Starting point is 01:45:14 did make a lot of sense to what the screen's elements are with the genre, and I can see like, okay, here's where the team is at, where's the other team, and you know, I can I can piece together most of what I'm looking at here. I'm reminded that that initial look at the mini map when you're unfamiliar and Everything's going is terrifying

Starting point is 01:45:41 Deadlock is is crazy Deadlock is crazy. Deadlock is probably the hardest one now. Like, Sejian put out a video a couple months ago called teaching new people to play Deadlock is rough because the way that you would learn how to play that game is the opposite of how anyone would learn how to play a game because just getting in there and playing ends up you getting stomped out and losing your team the game

Starting point is 01:46:04 and just being the most actively miserable experience possible. But deadlock is asking you to do all the stuff. And then it's also asking you to do all the shooter stuff also on top of that. And the mental stack is like absolutely crazy. Meanwhile, over on smite man, that mental stack is nice and low on a lot of that. Like one of the things it's like, since you're maybe unfamiliar. So hey, let's talk about creeps, right? I'm not sure if they've updated this since, but you know when you're jungling, are you familiar with your jungling?

Starting point is 01:46:38 I guess now I am. And my frame of reference is deadlock because I think that's the one I put the most games on. All right. So let's imagine you're playing Lye from a League of Legends is deadlock, because I think that's the one I put the most games on. Alright, so let's imagine you're playing Lye from League of Legends' Arcane. The punch lady with the pink hair, right? Her job in League of Legends is not to go down the lanes. Vi? Yeah, Vi. I thought you said Lye. Go ahead. No, Vi. Yeah, yeah. Vi from the League of Legends.

Starting point is 01:47:00 Your job is not to go down the lanes, but to run around in the jungle and kill mobs to get really strong so you can, you know, snipe out or, you know, push in various opportune places, right? So, um, well how do you know when the mobs re-pop? How do you know when they're back? Well the answer is that you run a mental timer in your head. Oh, fuck. Oh shit. After you kill them. OK, it's not an icon on the map that'll pop up. No, fuck that. No, learn it. And then, oh, they have timers now?

Starting point is 01:47:35 Great. Fantastic. Because one of the things that showed up when I was playing Smite 2 was that I killed a bunch of mobs, and then I got to see a little timer start going around on the spot That would tell me when the fucking mobs would come back Thank you because when I was playing League of Legends, I was using a fucking overlay to show me those timers. Okay So I don't yet have to pull up a screenshot of deadlock to compare the mini map in that to this one But I'm looking oh, it's a fucking night, but the smite one is essentially like, yeah, it looks like a game of like

Starting point is 01:48:06 Chinese checkers or so, but there's just, well, yeah, all the different colors and you know, things at play are happening and it's, it's. I'm sure not that bad once you, you know, learn it and stuff. And again, I, but that initial like kind of was like, well, not that bad once you learn it and stuff. And again, but that initial kind of was like, whoa, what is that thing over there? There's so much information to parse from that.

Starting point is 01:48:33 And again, as someone who is excited about fighting games and talks to people about, hey, this is how you can ignore this stuff. You can't, and this is stuff you should just go have fun with or whatever. In these games outside of Deadlock, if you just pick a character and start going down your lane and try to do your job and keeping it simple

Starting point is 01:48:52 with the auto shop and stuff. You will lose to even the most beginner-est beginner. Okay. But losing or winning aside, are you like grasping it? Are you picking it up? Because forgetting about winning or losing, are you just absolutely tanking your team? Or are you just treading water and getting pulled under?

Starting point is 01:49:14 It is a really complicated situation, because the general, I would like to play League of Legends or Smite 2. I'm going to start playing it, usually leads to, like, just miserable outcomes. Just at, like, like, okay, you know how when you play games, you don't have to win to have fun? Yeah. But you do have to feel like you're playing it. Yes. So playing Rivals now and, like, basically being parts of games where I'm like, all right, we did not win.

Starting point is 01:49:46 But did I do my job? Is my, are my numbers good? Okay, cool. I contributed. I'm not the best at these things, but I held my ground. And that's kind of what I'm wondering about in these cases. Yeah, with these, like, can you, can you get that feeling here? Or are you just the weakest link and we're losing until you go do the homework?

Starting point is 01:50:12 Um, I would, I would say, um, that the, the, the goal is actually, Hey man, for like a while, and I mean like a while play human teams versus AI, right? Like, like a while. Right. Like, like a while. Right? Like, there is there, there, the basic level learning curve is so high that, like, yes, you actually do need baby games against robots like a like you know like think about like when you're like hey let's get into fighting games and you pick any fighting game that you have familiarity with but some people in the chat don't have familiarity with and you can just make it so that they don't get to fucking play at all yeah does our matches 45 minutes here as well no they're not okay they're 15 to

Starting point is 01:51:02 30 way good good that's a lot better for that. Most of the matches I did were 20 minutes. And once you graduate from bots, then you go into casual matches where you don't go ranked fully, but you still get the feeling of fighting human opponents and stuff here. Low stakes is also fine, right? Anyone who gets super mad and rages out in a casual match is kind of just a I mean They're gonna rage out over anything crazy person Like if you're if you're if you're going

Starting point is 01:51:34 Gg easy tank diff in a casual match like what the fuck is wrong with you. It's casual You know But yeah, okay you it's casual it's like you know but yeah okay I think playing quick match and rivals has has shown me like just how toxic people can be over matches that don't matter it's so fucking funny it's so fucking funny it's so nuts to be like that like to yeah to go absolutely ham on like quick play it's it's the it's the funniest shit ever. I love it. It's like you look at the other team and they're like six DPS. What are you talking about?

Starting point is 01:52:11 This isn't real. This is, you know, a glorified trinity mode. I will say, and I don't know if you're getting that in Rivals, but I have found that in all of your team games, you never have to worry about the opponents being mean. The call is always coming from inside the house. It's always your other team members. Oh, well, team chat. Team chat is the real fight. Oh, yeah, the blue text. Never mind the brown.

Starting point is 01:52:41 It's all about the blue text scrolling by. But I will say, rare, but I've had the opposite of toxic. I've had, whatever, flower blue. I don't know what the word would be. But- Nice interaction with human. Nice interaction, but someone who rallied the team and was like, okay, we went down one round and was like, okay, here, guys, we can, I think we can do this and that and stuff. And like not in a really shitty way. And it was like, Hey, your DPS isn't working. Join me on the tank, brother. All right, let's do it this way. Good stuff. And the positivity actually turned the second game around. And it was like, good adjust.

Starting point is 01:53:20 And everyone was like, oh shit, that advice really worked. It's like, all right, we can do this guys. Let's go third round. You know, I love, there's a version of that person that starts. They, they don't, they don't respond to the situation that way. They start that way. Um, and I've seen that person in guild wars and wow. And if a 14 where they're where you're multi and battlefield where the, the, um, very large scale PVP and it is just the funniest thing in the world to me to people who start up their multiplayer game and go, okay, I'm going to play the worst real time strategy game known to man where I just yell at my units and my units don't do what I tell them to do and I just get mad for an hour because the

Starting point is 01:54:07 units won't do what I tell them to do and it's so fucking funny. It's still PVE to me damn it. Yeah, yeah. There's just, god fuck. The, no, this positive chat type of thing that you know, it's it's rare but it is cool when it happens And you know at the end of the game like You know, it's like even in those cases you kind of have the like, okay Well, you lost and it didn't work out but it was close and so no one's kind of like getting too upset by that They're like, ah shit. Okay. Well good game Whatever and then you see the up votes in the loss screen. You're like, okay, most of the team, except for the person who queued up right away,

Starting point is 01:54:50 was pretty okay with how that went. You know? So I think it's not a lost cause. I think I've played enough multiplayer games that are five and up and all that shit. that are five and up and all that shit that I feel like I can distill like my single largest complaint with every team I have ever played with into one sentence, which is, Oh my God, just push. Like it is the single most like I want to say it's 70, 80% of all of my complaints is, it's right there! Just go and just go!

Starting point is 01:55:30 Just press W or on the, just go! Just stand on the point! I'm gonna guess that you're not hitting the chat at all at any point, but you're gonna mash that ping button. No. No, you're not going, get on the point, get on the point, get on the point. Everyone, and no, absolutely not.

Starting point is 01:55:48 Group up, group up, group up, group up, group up. Everyone can see, you just, listen. Invisible woman just threw down her alt on the point, and two of the other team are dead. Wait, you're gonna stand back behind the car? Mm, mm, mm, mm. No! stand back behind the car? Mm, mm, mm, mm. Ugh! I will, and I will say too,

Starting point is 01:56:11 learning the game also means learning when the push is, like where the limit is gonna be when you think the game is gonna go longer than it is because you misunderstand that you just have to reach the point that they failed at. You know, if you're doing an escort or so. That's fun. So the payload push, yeah. But that's a thing where like someone you die and then you watch the replay and then someone doesn't just jump on the overtime payload push because they think that there's still more time. But that's a misunderstood thing because it's not about getting it to the end. It's about just getting it past this point or stopping it.

Starting point is 01:56:52 That's a learning curve thing as well. Oh, you know what? I have my second big complaint, which is, hey man, we are all dead. Hey, you respond first. You respond 20 seconds before the rest of the team. How about you just wait a second before you just completely offer yourself onto the altar of a six man team? Hey Mantis, chill. Mantis, chill by the chill. Chill. Right? And or the Dr. Strange types in chat,

Starting point is 01:57:28 portal, I'm making a portal. And then Punisher's like, yeah, that's cool, bye. And you're like, dude, please, he's literally, we're just, yeah. Nah, it takes time. It takes time. But all this to say that if you can be a team hero, you're gonna make the general game experience better for everybody if you're stuck out there in fucking solo queue. So are you familiar with elo hell

Starting point is 01:58:06 Yeah, I think I get what that is just from us talking about that shit over the years and elo hell is like so for real In rivals right now you just ping pong the the rank decay they put in on on the zero season to the first season Oh Up and down up and down up and down, up and down. The strongest I've ever felt it was in Rising Thunders beta, where it was the most transparent that it would just grab somebody from the top of the skill chart leaderboards and then someone from beneath you, and just 50% one

Starting point is 01:58:42 to the other every time. So every second match you would dominate and every third match would be the real one, you know? I think there's a really interesting thing that when I mention Elo Hell, I see chat go 50-50 on whether or not Elo Hell is real as fuck or fake as shit and that it's total Johns. And I think the core difference here is, hey, are you solo queuing in your multiplayer game

Starting point is 01:59:10 or are you playing with like at least a couple of people with you? Because elo hell is for solo queue. If you're teaming up with people, you're getting other people with the same types of team ups. So that's going to be much more, that's, there's a wider range of randomness to the three person queue and then the two stack and then the solo, you know, versus like, yeah, but you can solo all the time for sure. So I was, I was, well, I was like, just after that first season came out, I was on the Marvel subreddit and I was like, I saw some threads posting about Elo hell and how bad it is and then then you go in and you're like this person got

Starting point is 01:59:45 SVP 15 games in a row on Losses, and it's like okay. Maybe this person is definitely trapped in you know hell Bananas oh no Oh no. Like that's fucking psychotic. Ouch. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. But yeah, no.

Starting point is 02:00:16 It is an interesting... But all in all, Smite with controller, you're not losing functionality. So I asked around. I went to the Smite2 with controller, you're not losing functionality. So I asked around, I went to the Smite2 subreddit and typed in controller, and what you get is a bunch of incredibly unhelpful answers

Starting point is 02:00:33 when you do that, because what you see is people going, well, everyone on Grand Master Rank plays with a mouse and keyboard. I'm like, I'm starting the game today. I'm, please, today. Please help. So instead what you do is you put that question out to the general populace and the answer is most people play Smite on console. So the discussion's kind of moot. And of note that I forgot about, I really forgot about this genuinely, but when I was

Starting point is 02:01:06 doing this sponsored stream, I'm like, Smite 2, why is it? Oh, right, Smite, because it's the smaller MOBA, is where you can go to get crossovers that you would not expect on games like Fortnite or League. That's where the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles showed up as characters and the the cast of avatar And if you wanted to play Iron Mouse in a video game, okay? Iron Mouse is a character in goddamn smite Any any

Starting point is 02:01:39 Ava Ray and Asuka Not no, that's just PUBG. Okay. I believe believe that is just PUBG. Oh, she's like the Stranger Things Oh my god, okay. Got it. It's free to play? Yes. Now it is. The sponsored segment was to coincide with them going into open beta And they're in a weird situation, because Smite 2 is like a direct,

Starting point is 02:02:08 like it's an Unreal Engine 5 game, and there's also a bunch of mechanical changes, but it's like a full port over, but Smite 1 has like 130 characters that are not all in Smite 2. That's a lie. So they have promised that they're gonna do this thing where they basically just do a character a week

Starting point is 02:02:25 For as long as they can oh my god to catch up Because that happened with that happened with Dota like when Dota 2 came to steam It was not the Dota 2 that you'd play it was not Dota in that it didn't have all the characters They did eventually catch up, but it took a while And I guess that also means there will be nothing resembling a new character for a very long time. I believe they've actually already put some new characters in there. To start with. They're not saying they're gonna port a new character every week, they say there will be a new character playable every week. Okay so it'll just alter it I guess.

Starting point is 02:03:03 Like Aladdin, who's on the front page right now is new. Okay, so it'll just alter it, I guess. Like Aladdin. No, who's on the front page right now is new. Okay. Cool. All right. Let's take a quick break. All right. Bear a bit. All right, let's take a quick word from our sponsors. I love our sponsors. This week the podcast is sponsored by ExpressVPN. Wow, what a great time for ExpressVPN, man. Yeah. So how did you choose which internet service provider to use? The sad thing is most of us have very little choice because ISBs operate like monopolies in the regions they serve.

Starting point is 02:03:44 And they use this monopoly power to take advantage of customers, data caps, bandwidth throttling, and the list goes on. Yeah, actually I'm thinking of the time where I used to use a different ISP back in the day where they were like, unlimited, whatever they advertised, and then what it read. Asterix! And it's like, it's unlimited, but when you go over the the amount we don't like you get dropped into the fucking hamster wheel server I know exactly what isp you're talking about because I also used to use them Yeah, and you just watch as overnight your internet drops off a cliff and becomes dial-up And you're like what the fuck is this and it's like oh you call them and they're like well You're still able to check your email, right? And you're like, how about you?

Starting point is 02:04:26 So yeah, it's functionally limited. We just pretend, we just lie and say that, nah, you're fine. Terrible, garbage. Anyways, so that sucks. And on top of that, they're, yeah, keeping logs of everything you're doing. They're keeping a full profile on you that they can sell to third parties. I don't like that.

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Starting point is 02:06:41 express VPN. Thanks ExpressVPN. I love you. This week, the podcast is sponsored by Factor. And that is your nutrition and the importance of eating well, not lost on any of us. But it's hard. It's really,'s hard. It's really really hard. Yeah, we can't just be like this dog over here that just steals the baby's food and doesn't care about his calories. Like, we're adults and we have to know what we're doing. Also, we're really really lazy. Why, hey listen.

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Starting point is 02:08:10 That's a devastating critical hit. Yeah. Like, have you ever have you ever lost dropped or had food stolen and you're like, I don't even care. That's never going to happen with factor. You'll be sad. Because you really wanted to eat it So there you go. Don't let don't don't if that hmm Okay, look sometimes you're gonna lose food to the dog all right. It'll happen Sometimes your wife's just gonna steal food right off your plate that too that too But hey You know if you have 40 options and eight dietary preferences on the

Starting point is 02:08:47 menu each week to choose from, maybe you can pick the thing that you really love that that they hate. You know, maybe maybe it's like hot sauce on the pizza slice, where where it's like, I love this, but nobody else wants it more for me. No stealing. That's that's the trade. The problem that you did with that is that like you actually got tons of people into like chicken and pineapple pizza, yeah, well Like that backfired on you really bad. I'm sorry for taste, you know, however Look if you're if you're trying to figure it out and yeah different options like calorie, protein plus or keto, which you know, you can do it the lazy way, but you want to, if you do it the lazy way, you're going to be like, yeah, I'm sort of doing keto. Don't do that. If

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Starting point is 02:11:13 they've always been pretty comfortable and good to go as a pair of reliable headphones back in the day for a while now. Always been a fan of that. In particular, however, you got the the new Stealth 700 headphones that are super comfortable. They have an insane 80-hour battery life and a quick charge function. Yeah. So you barely even have to think about the charging aspect of it. The cushions on the side as well for an over the ear headset are very, very soft and they have that good like, ooh, I can rest pillow like almost when they're on my head, which I like, personally. I'm a fan of that.

Starting point is 02:12:06 And yeah, in terms of just the features, the cross-play, of course, industry's first ever cross-play dual wireless transmitter system available in the Stealth 700 headphones means that you can connect seamlessly to multiple devices. And with just a click of a button, you can switch between the two nice and easy, no fuss, no muss. But even better than that and much to my surprise

Starting point is 02:12:32 was the dual aspect of the CrossPlay connection system so that you can connect to your phone and listen to music, take a call, listen to a podcast, whatever's going on on your phone, while still connected to your PC or to console or game device and hear the game at the same time. Wait, really? Oh, that's awesome. And both are balanced off each other

Starting point is 02:12:57 so you can literally hear both clearly and it automatically knows to do that. It was super- That's great. Super useful, yes. Why haven't headphones done that before? That's awesome. It's kind of, it's the best feature. And every time I'm talking about the Stealth 700s,

Starting point is 02:13:13 I'm gonna bring that up, because it was so good to be able to just, I listen to shit on my headphones all the time, and I have one ear off to kind of hear the TV sometimes. I've done this thing where I'm like, I got Discord coming on my phone speaker so that I can, but one ear on my headphone, so I can listen to Discord and.

Starting point is 02:13:32 Exactly, the one ear off days are over. It's super duper nuts and handy to just have the ability to connect it to both right off the bat and hear them both fed in crystal clear. So incredible feature. Immediately I was like, yeah, banger, say less. So yeah, check them out. You want to go get your Stealth 700s from Turtle Beach. Sorry, I just lost where I was getting to. The... Sorry, I just lost where I was getting to. Yeah, you can... So, there you go. Anyway, so New Year, you can spend that Christmas money you got on something you actually love. Head to turtlebeach.com and use code CASTLE for 10% off your entire order.

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Starting point is 02:15:01 order. That's 10% off your order at turtlebeach.com with the promo code castle. Thank you Turtle Beach. Thanks Turtle Beach. All right, into what's going on. Oh my God, the Switch 2. Yeah, okay.

Starting point is 02:15:21 There it is. I forgot that was the Switch. Yes. Cause it was like I forgot that was this. Yes. Because it was like, hey, dipshits, fuck off. Here it is. Shut up. The most yeah okay announcement in video game history.

Starting point is 02:15:35 A Nintendo console at that to no fanfare. Like Saitama MS paint. Okay, it feels here's the crazy part from What coming from a time or in my living memory? I recall the Nintendo console announcements being the biggest most important subject at that time Yes, this announcement feels like a new skew of an existing console It feels like no, you know what it fucking feels like? Mm-hmm. Like, it feels like, yeah, we know we're gonna make

Starting point is 02:16:09 fucking shitzillion dollars. We're not even changing the fucking name. Yeah, well, look, with, I don't, like, Switch 2, sure. You know, it's that Wii U thing of, like, the capital that we've built with Wii is exists in the Mind the the mind share space So we're gonna we're gonna just continue while while people continue to think about the word switch That being said it yeah the energy of this of course extra deflated because hey guess what what are the details?

Starting point is 02:16:39 It's 31% bigger. We already knew that it's got got Hall Effect joysticks, we already knew that. There's a USB-C and a headphone slot, yeah, yeah, we knew. 4K, 30 FPS, cool. It's the leakiest console thing that's ever been, ever. Saw the shape of it, saw the motherboard, saw every aspect of it. I think the only detail that the trailer revealed was the part where the Joy-C cons can now be used as a mouse

Starting point is 02:17:10 Yeah, and they're magnetically clipped. Yes, so that data that's not gonna wear down over time I saw a gentleman talking about that where Repair technicians get to find out about stress points on pieces of hardware Yeah, so much has us the stress point and the stress point is the locking mechanism for the Joy-Con causes kids to just Snap that shit off. You feel it. You feel it as you hold it like it's wiggling. Yes. I could do it. You could do it. So like a grown adult and maybe a teenager could do it. A simple fall from chest height to the ground could do it. So this is an improvement on that for sure so so now that we've had all this shit leak out I so in the lead-up to April

Starting point is 02:17:54 When it's gonna release in May or June Right end of May beginning of June I foresee in March We're gonna start to see what games are gonna be launched titles for this game not officially fuck No, but every single like we saw the motherboard for fuck's sake I think the mouse aspect is It allows more porting of steam games that wanted that would want to show up without a trouble right so You you you pitch this and now Darkest Dungeon comes over

Starting point is 02:18:26 without any of the HUD changes that they had to make. I mean, depending on how this works, the Joy-Con may become like the ultimate steam controller as a game pad that is also a mouse simultaneously. It is nice that the Steam Deck has the mouse pad thumb area while also having the D pad and your stick options so there's a plethora. Plus touch as well. But no, in this case it's just like hey, a lot of games that would be perfect for Switch, but just these are mouse games.

Starting point is 02:19:08 And using a mouse on the stick doesn't feel great, depending on the game a lot of the time. So it's a nice solution there. The fact that it's bigger as well feels directly influenced by the Steam Deck. It's like, yeah, no, people are down for a bigger console and are down to have room for both headphones and USB-C, not this one or the other shit. I think my own personal excitement is very low, but because to me, I look at this as the ability to play the dozen of Switch games that I bought, played for 10 minutes, and went, oh my fucking God, I'll wait, Jesus.

Starting point is 02:19:53 Well slow your roll there cowboy, because we need to confirm which Switch games are going to be playable. That's going to be all of them except for Labo and the weird gimmick bullshit. It says some. It says select, so we'll see. It might not be all. It might end up being one of those cases like, you know, PS Classics or the Xbox originals where it was like, the ones you want.

Starting point is 02:20:19 It's gonna be everything except for everything weird. But it's not the days of, hey, take that GBA game and stick it into your DS and it plays, you know? Actually, it is like that. The only difference is that stuff like WarioWare Twisted, which did technically work on the DS, will not work here because of the cardboard nonsense and the fucking box nonsense, like one, two, three, like, it is exactly that. Well, anything digital, that is three, like, it is exactly that. Well anything digital that is not, well it says some. So the- Yeah, no, there will be fringe cases that have peripheral requirements that don't work. But like it has a cartridge slot for Switch cartridges.

Starting point is 02:21:05 I'm hoping that we don't end up with... If it's just fringe things and stuff with specific bits, then sure. I'm hoping we don't end up with obvious things where they're just like, nah, we're just not porting this or we're going to resell it or it's going to be a weird eShop type situation. But you know what? I would like to play the Xenoblade games at a human appreciable frame rate. That'd be nice. It would be nice to not have sticks drift by just using them with any regular frequency. And I guess, you know, I don't know if the... do we know anything about the docking and whether or not that'll that'll have a dock But like will there will there be performance differences between docked and undocked or we don't know that but considering it's the exact same

Starting point is 02:21:57 Device is the last one but better. It's probably might say might You know what I would really like I would would like the console to have a 1080p resolution on handheld mode and then also have a 1080p resolution on the dock mode so that they don't perform differently. Like the resolution bump on docked mode that would make the dock mode perform way worse in some cases. Lock it.

Starting point is 02:22:22 That was the worst. Don't have it change at all if you don't want it to. Let it stick around, let it stay inconsistent for both. Yeah, that'd be cool. I would rather have an uglier game on my TV than one that run bad, that's what I say. Further, I would say I would like the ability to grab a USB-C to HDMI and just without a dock,

Starting point is 02:22:44 feed that into a TV. No, no, Nintendo says you buy a dock. Yeah, well, yeah. Nintendo say. You must, you must dock, yes. It would be nice. Nintendo says docking mandatory. It would be wonderful if you didn't have to,

Starting point is 02:22:57 but here we are. And of course the difference between having it charge and not charge, you know, would be a part of that, plus extra USB slots. Like, there's benefits you get from the dock, but I just, it would be nice because other devices can just go straight in and video out, you know? So and we'll see what they do with the, like, you know, is replacing a Joy-Con ever going to be a possibility?

Starting point is 02:23:23 Is that a, you Is that a thing or? No pro controller in that announcement thing. Nothing's shown. But they'll have one. Yeah, I mean, safe to say it'll look exactly like it has been for the last two gens. Bro, I gotta buy three Switch 2s. That's gonna be hard.

Starting point is 02:23:44 Me, wife, nephew. Oh. that's gonna be hard me wife nephew oh before including nephew's friend including yeah so when this drive he doesn't need one he's too young for video game mm-hmm so well you can just use mine to play Fortnite. So when this drops, you know, we'll see what what comes out for it. Seems like there's a decent possibility that maybe one silk song might show up on the switch to bro. Shut up. Oh Man, so did we even talk about that last? It didn't happen last week. It happened. Oh my god What is happening to my memory? I? mean I

Starting point is 02:24:36 So what I heard I heard shit was going on with silk song and I was like, okay was going down What's happening right and it's like theksong subreddit is in complete revolt. Yeah. That is correct. And basically, the first thing I see is, yeah, a thread that's like, Team Cherry, we demand an answer We demand a response and it's this insane like Pepe Sylvia trace Do you want the really short version? I think I have it but by all means summarize the really short version is that? One of the developers changed their Twitter profile and made a bunch of really

Starting point is 02:25:23 one of the developers changed their Twitter profile and made a bunch of really suspicious looking tweets right before the Switch 2 got announced. So it really, really looked like Silksong 2 was, sorry, Silksong, yeah, Silksong 2. No, but Silksong was gonna be announced to be a Switch game and then nothing happened and then people were like, can you just say what the fuck thing ever? Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Starting point is 02:25:44 It was, because also I am team cherry Apparently did something a RG ish in the past they have done a RG stuff in the past so when the dev changed his profile to a chocolate cake photo and Then kind of just made some cryptic tweets that were not real cryptic shit, right? They were not clear people were like, oh, we're playing an ARG again And so they started going along with it and going like that's a very specific chocolate cake that cake Real cryptic shit, right? That were not clear. People were like, oh, we're playing an ARG again. And so they started going along with it and going like, that's a very specific chocolate cake.

Starting point is 02:26:09 That cake dates back to this release when it came out and when it first was invented. And so people were tying the numbers in and go down this whole fucking thread. The numbers, mate. And then eventually it gets to a point where they're like, okay, this is fucking stupid. This is nothing.

Starting point is 02:26:26 What is happening? You can't play this game now that everyone's mad. They've been upset. It's not the time for an ARPG. It's gonna be ARG rather. So they eventually did get the community manager to go, hey, talking to the, yep, talking to the team now, we'll have something to say. And then the thing they had to say was, hey,

Starting point is 02:26:49 we confirm that the game is still being worked on. It's real, it's progressing and it will release. And it's like, I, I, I, I was curious. So I looked up like silk song articles right, right before the podcast and I found one from game rant talking about how silk song is a victim of Hollow Knight success. And it hasn't been in development that long. And I'm like, wait, what? And then I kept reading and it was like all this cope shit. and the article was like two and a half years fucking old and I'm like yeah no this is actually like what I'm gonna just go back to the same thing I say every time okay you go through these

Starting point is 02:27:35 things and people go totally crazy and people start making like demands and being like super villains about this shit and then they always say team cherry owes us. Yeah, people go completely insane and become unreasonable. And then someone goes, they don't owe you shit. And then I come in to be a buzzkill and go, actually they do, they do owe you shit. Because of the Kickstarter.

Starting point is 02:27:59 Because Silksong is the last backer reward because of the Kickstarter. for Hollow Knight. And like, we just go in this circle of like if if the Hornet campaign was not a backer reward, every single part of this discussion would be completely different. But people have already paid for that game and have been waiting for it since like what was the Hollow Knight Kickstarter? 2011?

Starting point is 02:28:27 And I remember in the peak of when Goodwill was at its maximum, it was also announced. Back when this was going to be the third piece of DLC, wasn't there, I believe in an answer that it would be like, was it going to be free? So what happened was that that it was gonna be the final piece of DLC. It was a stretch goal. Just wait, it's gonna be big. We know it's taking a long time,

Starting point is 02:28:52 but it's gonna be larger than the other DLCs. Then that was like radio silence for like a year. And then they re-announced Silksong as a completely new game, and people went, wait what? And they said, don't worry, if you backed it and were gonna get the Silksong as the said, don't worry, if you backed it and we're going to get the silk song as the DLC, then you people will get it for free because it's technically a backer reward.

Starting point is 02:29:11 That's what it was. If you were one of the backer reward stretch goal people, then you would have gotten it as part of your thing. Yes. So looking at that, that's one angle on it. My angle was just coming at a different perspective, which is like, I don't know what in God's green earth is happening behind the scenes, none of us can. And it could be the most insane fucking tornado fire into Team Cherry Studios, right? I think there are a long list of reasons that are totally reasonable.

Starting point is 02:29:37 And I think the most obvious one is that they switched from Unity to Godot when Unity went crazy. When that was happening, that was a really- And they have to rebuild the whole fucking game. That debacle sucked for a ton of indie. But you could just say that. You could just say it with your mouth. Ew.

Starting point is 02:29:52 But here's the bit, here's the bit, right? Let's say you don't. Let's say you just don't communicate and that's best for you for whatever reasons that we don't know. that's best for you for whatever reasons that we don't know. Maybe just don't do the avatar change cryptic tweet thing when people are already on edge. Like maybe the hint thing is not the best move

Starting point is 02:30:21 when people are like, just say what it is or nothing and they've been that way for a couple years now. It's the wrong time to start the dance. The time for dancing is probably over. Someone in the chat points out that that was a personal account of the developer, not an official account. And that's true. Similarly to how interviews with George R. R. Martin that are not about books or movies do include bits and pieces of his life in which he describes not writing his book.

Starting point is 02:30:51 That doesn't make, like, there's this weird thing that, like, this is kind of a macro topic in which people go, you know, they're very straightforward and they're logic-ing a bunch of situations and they're going, well, this, that, this, this, and that's how it should be. And how things should be are not how things are, right? You're like, well, you shouldn't be mad at all because Kickstarter's TOS doesn't state that they owe all backer rewards as is and things can change and so they don't actually owe you anything. And it's like, well, that is technically the letter of the law. Shut up. No one felt that way ever.

Starting point is 02:31:32 And that will not stop people's emotions. It's just before you click the send button on that post, you have to kind of have to know that there's a pot stirring that's occurring there. You have to know that this is going to be received and you can't, and like while you can't account for the way everyone will and let that govern everything, this is just the worst possible move when everyone is at their fucking limit with it, you know? So I don't know. It was a wild inability to read the room on that decision there.

Starting point is 02:32:06 Listen, you don't understand why you're even mad because as we've discovered, as we've discussed, it doesn't count if it's on the gaycation. Why are you getting upset? It doesn't count. It doesn't count on the gaycation. Wait, why are you mad? Why are you mad? This is so illogical. You know you have to submit to the Silksong development cycle, lest you be destroyed. I mean, I feel like if it were me, any post that was not just an attachment to Any post that was not just an attachment to silk song dot zip is just a no-go We're just like we're just not posting at all We're not there's nothing to be said here because the decision to not communicate is one thing but yeah

Starting point is 02:32:57 Anyways, alright, so the a lot of this is speculated that they're waiting for the switch to hey, I'm trapped in my chair Are you can't get my headphone cable out Are you okay? Should we send help oh My god, we're gonna have to take a break. I've actually sat on my cable and broken it pat has reached that color of red We'll be right back Okay, I'm sorry about that. Yeah, all right coming back Okay, I'm sorry about that. Yeah, all right coming back

Starting point is 02:33:33 God damn, I should get some fucking turtle beach headphones up in here wires. Don't get this cable nightmare wires Christ the danger of wires can never fun overstated. I'm sorry willy I missed some of that as I was fighting with my own ass and wheels. That's okay I was just remarking on the color of your face changing from the Caucasian pink to... To Caucasian plus. I saw a black guy on, I think it was on Twitter, just refer to a fuckin' picture of the Red Hulk and just go, I don't know, this just seems like a mad white person ah shit damn not wrong

Starting point is 02:34:13 yeah it's not wrong red bone Oh fuck yeah, well you know And he's got a gun Yeah, so people in the chat are saying hey remember no man's sky What a disaster that was and how then the people who made no no man sky just shut the fuck up and kept working until they fixed it? Yes. Head down, etc. And like, is it reasonable for us to sit here and go, hey, if you're making a highly anticipated thing that's a secret that people are excited for, that you should retreat to the woods and shut up until it's done?

Starting point is 02:35:04 No, that's not realistic. But also, mmm, maybe I do want that deep down. You don't have to do anything. You can also just cancel a game and walk away from it. But, yeah, people's expectations and stuff are going to be what they are as time goes on. expectations and stuff are gonna be what they are as time goes on as administrations change and as decades peel off over the course of many Hollow Knights the biggest metroidvania I've ever played and that took two and a half years to develop So therefore Silk song is six years in that means it must be at least

Starting point is 02:35:47 for, Silksong is six years in, that means it must be at least twice as big as Hollow Knight. What if, what if this is just reverse game development and like all the time that Hollow Knight should have taken is now being lagged on the back end? Monkey's paw. For the quality of the game that it is. I don't know if this is true, but I saw some people saying it on the Silksong subreddit. So take it with a big grain of salt. But I did see some folks say that the reason why the game, they suspect the reason why the game is taking so long is because the only reason Hollow Knight released when it did

Starting point is 02:36:21 was because the team ran out of Kickstarter money and had to put it out. I would need to see that sourced before fully. That's not impossible, but I would, that's an accusation that I would want to see sourced because that's fucking crazy. That's insane. That's insane Big salt. Oh my god, great huge grain of salt. Wow Yeah. Yeah. Well, I have a source senator. I may be reading it off a guy who made it the fuck up. It's possible Yeah, okay. Okay

Starting point is 02:37:01 But you know in in in writing editors exists to kick your ass and get the thing out the door, right? So anyways, so yeah, we'll see what happens when the Switch 2 launches. Maybe that'll be part of it. Maybe not. You know, I'm so torn because yeah, you know what? Launch title for the Switch 2 would actually be like very reasonable However, it is also the copist shit

Starting point is 02:37:33 Like ever like you might as well name change your name to fucking Lola and go down to the Copacabana With this fucking switch to launch party shit But I mean the entire non ARG into we demand a response, like explosion, is a bit of a like, it's that last bit of like energy that anyone would have left, you know? Well, that's not true. I mean, the Reddit is gonna be over there

Starting point is 02:37:59 and people are gonna be going nuts long after the game comes out, if ever. But I feel like it's, if you're kind of just like putting it out of your mind and then you heard about this thing and going down, it just re-exhausts you. You know, you're like, oh, God, I wasn't thinking about that. You know. Anyways, anyways, anyways. So.

Starting point is 02:38:28 I think what we need to do. So I want to say one last thing because I made the joke about how it has to be twice as big as Hollow Knight. And what I said was a feeling that people have, but it's so stupid that you didn't bother to respond because it's obviously incorrect. And I think about to something that somebody when I was talking about this on my show a couple of days ago, somebody in my chat said that time should not accumulate expectation. Which sounds really wise, but I totally disagree 100 percent.

Starting point is 02:39:04 I 100% disagree. Well, it should, whether it should or shouldn't, it doesn't because, I mean, sorry, it does. It does. Because we've seen this happen time and time again in the industry, and the things that are the most hated are the things that are announced way too ahead of their time.

Starting point is 02:39:23 Like it's just, there's nothing you can do about this, whether you claim it ought to not be that way, but like it's the way it is. And I know food analogies are the danger, right? But if you come home and your wife's like, honey, I spent all day slaving in the kitchen over this, and then hands you like some bullshit, you're gonna be like, oh, I was really excited.

Starting point is 02:39:48 Yeah, I think the- Time to start yelling. No, no, no, no. Well, look, I think the most reasonable, you know, like, type of approach you can take on it is just like, you should, the level of disappointment you just like you should the level of Disappointment you feel should not enter the realm of one finger all caps peppy Sylvia posting Yeah, right like don't let anything hit that level

Starting point is 02:40:21 For your own sake but people just in general feeling like goddamn it is extremely reasonable normal and given the. And I don't feel like it makes, it's not fair to tell anyone who's, especially if anyone is on the people that have paid and are up there in that group of people that are owed something, to tell them to expect otherwise or to feel differently about it. Can we?

Starting point is 02:40:40 And I'm saying this as the person who is mostly fine with delays every time I hear about them and is in no hurry to be like, oh, god damn it, oh no, the thing got delayed a little bit. I'm like, yeah, take your time, it's cool. There's no shortage of games. We're all good. I think what we need to do, and I'm going to start using this as the barometer.

Starting point is 02:41:02 And it felt unfair before, but I don't care anymore and I'm going to start talking about video game development according to the RGG system Which is how long was announced in 2019? How many yaks as ago that means since the announcement of silk song we have received Since the announcement of silk song we have received Yakuza like a dragon lost judgment like a dragon Eshin like a dragon Gaiden the man who raised his name like a dragon infinite wealth and Soon like a dragon pirate Yakuza in Hawaii and who knows how many more Was there an engine change in any of those? Yes!

Starting point is 02:41:46 Ah. There was! Okay. It really sucks that the decision to just stay mostly silent has now eclipsed the discussion about Hollow Knight entirely because anyone... Because yeah, well, all... You know what, but I don't know. We're also so close to this and we're, you know what I mean? We're in the middle of the pit of people that are like

Starting point is 02:42:13 really, really, really excited for Silksong. So I can't really, it's hard to say what it looks like outside of the bubble anymore. I don't really know. You know what, I'm gonna go, I'm gonna replay Hollow Knight on stream and be like, man, this game sucks and then I'm gonna beat it. I'm gonna be like, damn it, I'm even go don't really holla night on stream and be like man this game sucks, and then I'm gonna beat it I'm really damn it. I'm even more in a fucking funk now than ever cuz it actually rules it rules so hard I

Starting point is 02:42:35 Just oh hey you want you want some some some pull for my ass speculation They were working on silk song throw it on they were making it a certain way and then they did the gods and bugs DLC which they thought was awesome and everyone's like I don't want to do fucking boss fights against all this shit I want to explore levels and they were like oh shit oh no silk songs mostly boss fights oh crap and then oh they wanted the Metroid part. Oh, no Big if true no, that's crazy See actually what it is is because They've been writing for

Starting point is 02:43:16 Elden Ring night rain Team cherry has been Yeah, and they've completed the entire story of crazy, dude Hey, man, I gotta go. I gotta be right back. Sorry to take another break. Beer, mate. Speaking of games never coming out. Yeah, this could be a long section.

Starting point is 02:43:38 So the initial story. PlayStation has canceled two more live service games. Both subsidiaries from Bend and Bluepoint. Bloomberg has learned it. People have been wondering what Bluepoint has been working on for the last couple years. It's a live service God of War game. So, that initially was then followed up with... Let's see here if I can pull it all together.

Starting point is 02:44:11 Yeah, Radek on Twitter pointed out that PlayStation was planning to release at least 12 live service games. And when looking at the full list it's possibly even more than that only three have been released so far one was released and quickly shut down seven have been cancelled and another seven are being waited on so there is a full list here of yeah games that Sony have been live service games that Sony have been investing in and that are cancelled to be determined or just outright shut down, taken offline, etc.

Starting point is 02:44:55 It's a lot, man. Destruction All-Stars, Gran Turismo 7, Helldivers 2, all released. Concord, shut down, Fair games, Horizon multiplayer, Marathon, Horizon MMO all to be determined, then Media Molecule live service game. Bungie and Jason Blundell's LA studio game, all three unannounced. And then Last of Us Online, canceled. Twisted Metal, canceled. Spider-Man the Great Web, canceled. London Studio, live service game, canceled.

Starting point is 02:45:38 God of War, live service game. From Blue Point, canceled. Ben Studio, live service game, canceled. All right. So the Horizon MMO is also dead. Horizon MMO, sure. Throw that on the pile. So I'm going to hold up my hand as somebody who's played nearly every single one of the games that these are parts of the series.

Starting point is 02:45:57 God of War MMO Live Service thing, someone, whoever said that as an idea should have been thrown out a window that is like was always gonna be a disaster Horizon MMO similar like like for no one character for no one main character driven narrative series and then Nosgoth Yeah, so I talked about this on on the guy. I was skeetin' about it quite often and I feel like, and there's only so much you can put into a single skeet, but I feel like destiny has been the, like so remember when World of Warcraft, we talked about this, Street Fighter and Call of Duty and World of Warcraft we talked about this

Starting point is 02:46:45 Street Fighter and Call of Duty and World of Warcraft and everybody chases after the the big thing and makes their makes their You know their their game. Let's chase the trend. Let's just chase the bubble, right? One one leader one imitator one third weird one Yeah, and it's and it's been this thing forever, right? And so like, wow was the great fire that swept through the industry where everyone's like, you know what? Let's blow hundreds of millions of dollars and five years of dev time on an MMO that will immediately die.

Starting point is 02:47:22 Like instantly, just crash and burn. And I mentioned Copernicus earlier, but there was a ton of them. Like it was crazy how awful it was. And I feel like Destiny 2 has actually surpassed it in like this week alone because like you would see people talking about how their gas game should emulate Destiny and even the ones that didn't Sony literally said that they wanted their gas games to emulate Destiny because they bought Destiny and then said hey Destiny devs go to these other live service developers and you will be the people to tell them how to do live service and give them the lessons they need to do live service.

Starting point is 02:48:16 But destiny has always been like on the verge of falling to pieces. Like the reason why Activision allowed destiny to buy themselves out was because it wasn't making any fucking money. And so we're looking at like Concord alone. Concord alone. But then there's like nine other games that were all in like multiple years of dev. Like wait, what's Bluep Point doing? The answer is now nothing. Blue Point has now done nothing for multiple years.

Starting point is 02:48:50 So the trend chase feels like something that while it's always been part of the industry, every once in a while you'd ramp up and perhaps make a huge expense of whoopsies, learn a lesson from that and then heavily reconsider, right? Start going, go back to the drawing board on it and look at what other angles or what other releases are currently working, or at the very least are floating and are sustainable. Because of the way the industry has been shaking out, and I think because of that, that discussion from a couple months ago about like, once again, ripping people's attention away from the free to play and then the idea of like,

Starting point is 02:49:30 I video game, a triple A just cannot be profitable, a quadruple A just almost cannot be profitable unless the circumstances are perfect. It's become such a dire situation and the desperation of like Sony looking and going, no, we must chase this live service trend. We looking and going no we must chase this live service trend we must chase this we must take it over is like it feels as if you're you're originally playing a game of poker where like you

Starting point is 02:49:54 there the odds can go one way or the other and as time has as times have gotten worse and as it's become more clear that like if you're making a game that's just live service on its own and like, there's no, um, there's no baked in audience. There's no initial appeal for that. If you're just kind of throwing, uh, uh, a fucking gamble out there, it's basically going from playing poker to playing the lottery. And I don't know why a loss like Concord

Starting point is 02:50:22 wouldn't make you drastically reevaluate fucking everything? Well that's apparently what has happened. Like Concord is the thing of like, wait a second, we could actually spend two, three, four more years on all of these and for all of them to end up like Concord? We're talking billions in losses. So 17 games on this list is what we're looking at here and the realization that The the the Concord path was the tip of the iceberg

Starting point is 02:50:53 There was fuck there was an entire thought process that like no this is all this is gonna work out Yeah, God of War multiplayer rise multiple all those things like it's the the the The fact that the lessons are, I guess it takes a Concord level loss to have this massive correction occur and it takes years for these projects to all shape out and such, but I just didn't think that it was that bad. I didn't realize that they were this committed to it and made a decision to essentially spend

Starting point is 02:51:33 Everything right first that everything major first party related on on this gamble. Um, I think There's a there's a second part to this which is more of a design ethic and it's So the people making these decisions often don't understand games and that's fine everybody knows that you don't have to actually understand your product at all to manage it just look at what else is making money and right, but They don't even understand their product from an economic standpoint and like granted. I'm not an economist I'm just like a dipshit that talks about video games on Tuesdays and does streams but I do play a lot of video games and I have played a lot of games as a service games and that

Starting point is 02:52:11 includes MMOs and one of the things that anybody with a brain or touched an MMO at any point over the past like 10 years learned is that you know it's actually really hard to play more than one gas game. It's really difficult because games as a service are designed to monopolize your time. And the way that they're cosmetic or upgrade systems work for Cache Ola is because you are spending all of your time with that one game, which means in the Games as a Service audience, every new game as a service that you release is chasing after a smaller and smaller pie. And that can be fine depending on what you're putting out.

Starting point is 02:52:58 But why were they going to release 17 games that were all going to compete with each other. Are you saying that the people interested in playing a Horizon Live Service game might also be the same audience as the people that are gonna spend their time on a God of War Live Service game? Yes, actually, they are the exact same person. And that you're dividing that pie into nothing?

Starting point is 02:53:24 The same non-existent person, of course, that we're describing here. I like PlayStation games, says Person. So what does that mean? I like God of War and Horizon and Ghost of Tsushima and Bloodborne and Gran Turismo. Okay. How many of those can I play a week while hitting all my dailies? Because I mentioned five games. Can you blow out dailies and weeklies for a full gas game in one day? No, you can't. This is, I think looking at like this might be the craziest all in like push. It's the biggest I've ever seen in the history of video games. This is the craziest all in push to the table I've seen. Well, it's interesting because like...

Starting point is 02:54:12 Like this will... And you will see multiple live service games come and go popping up on a Steam platform, such as everyone independently is taking a stab at it and seeing if they can grab a little bit of market share for themselves and get something going or so. But for Sony first party specifically to be bankrolling, this level of incestuous market, it's insane, it's the most insane thing. These are all super expensive games. They already own Destiny and Warframe is already on the PlayStation.

Starting point is 02:54:49 So like right away, right away, you are competing against those two games that already exist and you own one of them. Right. It's it is so OK. Let's let's get back the just, just, after you, after you. No, I was just gonna say, the other reading, when you see what. And Helldivers, oh my God, I forgot. Helldivers, too, yeah.

Starting point is 02:55:11 When you see what looks like, this is such an insanely bafflingly dumb level of commitment that you're like, the only other take here is like, the situation is so much more dire than you think that this was the right call for them to make at the time or so they perceive. The best time to stop is now. Sorry, the best time to stop yesterday and the second best time to stop is now is clearly happening. I have a variation

Starting point is 02:55:45 of that that I love to say, and maybe it's lame that I think, but there's the phrase, make sure to quit while you're ahead. I have been saying for a while, you can also quit while you are behind. It's a variation of throwing good money after bad. And I just say just staple the square sales report story to this one. You know, just like let's let's go back in time, right? Let's look at Fatal Fury and Street Fighter, which we know about. Hey, you know, those fighting games are hot.

Starting point is 02:56:21 They're hot as fuck in the arcades. They're making a pretty. Can we make one of those? Yeah. Yeah. String You should bang that out. Strike up the profits. All right. Okay. Hey, you know what? Platformers. They're pretty big right now. 3D platformers. Can we make some of those? Yeah, okay. They're more expensive than fighting games, but yeah, we can make an Ape Escape. Sure can. Or we can make a Sly Cooper. All right. Military shooters. Okay. Okay, well now we're

Starting point is 02:56:45 talking about Call of Duty is pretty expensive, but we can do it. And like each of these trend chasers has gotten bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger and bigger. And chasing after wow was crazy money, right? That was your studio killed itself money, right? And I thought that was the top. I thought that chasing after MMOs was gonna be the top of money into the toilet on fire. But apparently, chasing after gas games

Starting point is 02:57:14 if you just chase after enough of them. And to be fair to that first point, what 14 did was unprecedented in the sense that- It's the only one to ever do it Yeah, they learned like they did 11 so they had enough of like an understanding of what they're going into with 14 saw how badly it was fucking up and then just Like well made a sequel, but it wasn't a sequel, you know It's complicated, but anyone else anywhere else would have shut that shit down

Starting point is 02:57:47 And you know, you know why 14 got to do it. It was the same reason why square was obsessed They're like well has the name Final Fantasy on it So it can't be an absolute piece of fucking dog shit because our investors are gonna pull out Their shares if Final Fantasy is absolute trash. A numbered Final Fantasy cannot be a failure. And so, hey, guess what? You know why they also got a fucking free pass? Because it's square and it said Final Fantasy on the fucking box.

Starting point is 02:58:16 Most devs don't get that kind of fucking benefit of the doubt. So, yeah. It is so bananas. The chase of the chase of live service where it's like all the all the ongoing costs of your MMO with even more dev time and even more resources. And you're competing with Fortnite. You're competing with all the miHoYo games you're competing with now rivals now now with net ease, you know Like there's there's a there's a part when Like you're developing your game and I have not developed a game so I cannot speak to this This is purely my own like emotional foresight or whatever the fuck you want to call it. Where it's like, okay, we're making a game that is highly similar to an existing

Starting point is 02:59:08 game. Is it better than that game? No. Does it have a unique hook that can hook people that that other game doesn't have? No. Well, shit. Right? Yeah. Like, fuck. Well, it's just, it's just overall, you know, the discussion here and over time for the last fucking five years has just been like, all or nothing now is the only way. That's it. All or nothing. Everything is all or nothing. Spend hard, go big, lose hard, go home. There's no semblance of- If you're not first, you're last. There's no semblance of smaller stable releases. Again, critical, darling, profitable, everything's like that. You just can't. It's a market that is just all it is it has to be dethrone the gods or burn everything or but you know it's

Starting point is 03:00:11 really fascinating that you mentioned dethrone the gods because there's two games that I think about when you say that the one is Monster Hunter Monster Hunter has been the king of its own genre and has been chased by like a fucking 20 imitators and they have all crashed against the rocks of the eternal shore as Monster Hunter goes on to make infinity fucking dollars, right? Bankroll and Capcom. And the other one that I think of is a game we're not super familiar with, which is Tarkov. So Tarkov invented the extraction genre and people and like Marathon and shit like that. Like there are games that were supposed to

Starting point is 03:00:50 chase Tarkov, but it has become clear that people don't like extraction games. They like Tarkov. That's the one they want to play. I see. I see. Okay. The trend is already over. I see I see okay the trend is already over It's like like not a game kit could a game couldn't even release to chase it Before it became clear that it's the one game As insane as it is to learn about this list as

Starting point is 03:01:29 You said like We're learning about it via the cancellations, and therefore, the best time was really yesterday, you know? It's like, we're not learning about it through five concords in a row, and then a confused Stage show going I don't get it why why not kids don't you love Kratos? We don't the past couple of years is like where all the Sony games well We are watching them get burned in a garbage can in front of us in this news section on the podcast Said 17 games ever on that list?

Starting point is 03:02:08 17. That is multiple years of first party output that are just not gonna happen now. Just not gonna happen. This would be a great time for Microsoft to swoop in with their own first paw, Jesus Christ. Well, so this is... I was thinking it, I was thinking it, but it's like...

Starting point is 03:02:30 Does the effect of this, like... Does it make Sony suddenly basically sound like how Microsoft did in this generation, even though... No, because Microsoft puts their games out on Sony consoles. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, there's there's I saw people talking about how Halo is the the Master Chief collection is fucking coming to PS5 and by this year and that's the end man if I see Master Chief fucking using X and square button prompts on a video game, that is the end of that shit. I guess we just don't know what the hardware coffers look like relative to the upper ceiling

Starting point is 03:03:16 of what they're willing to invest in studios for first party games here, for you know, Quadruple A in particular. So I don't know how bad how bad this damage is you know you don't really bad it's really bad but like is it a damage is in the billions but it's just like how close are we to that magic pixel when you look at this because this this sounds like death is what it sounds like. If you were taking that level and applying it to,

Starting point is 03:03:49 like there were less failures on the fucking big deal that just fell through. What was the goddamn company that was buying everything then the Saudi deal fell through oh? Ten cents no no no with I with um The fucking embrace her sweeter there were there were less corpses in the embracer deal than there are in this It's crazy You know like this shit this sounds lethal when I look at that amount of games on a fucking list of you know, but yeah, so I'm just like I don't

Starting point is 03:04:30 know man. We're in the negative health values. You know what the dumbest part is is like there's something that I we neither of us because we don't care about it but like we haven't brought it up once. It's like hey Sony do you think any of these games are gonna compete with Grand Theft Auto 5 online on your own console? No No, they're not Yeah, I Don't know

Starting point is 03:04:58 Embrace or burn this a hundred plus games. Okay, then then I'm then I'm going off of, I suppose, the... The vibes. The vibes of the standout titles. The biggest titles that were part of that, the stuff that hits the wall like Deus Ex and everything that Eidos released and everything that was... The idea behind this live service shit from Sony was like the combination of multiple different styles of development that all took the worst lesson. So like take like Bloom House, right?

Starting point is 03:05:33 They're like, well, we'll buy like 40 scripts for horror movies and we'll make them cheap because one of them will be paranormal activity. And Sony went, that's a great idea. You know what we should do? We should buy 17 games worth of dev time and then make them all the most expensive games you've ever made. And then one of them will maybe blow up and recoup its own losses. And that's it. And that's it. Right. So like 10 years ago when we were going, oh yeah, like this gash, it sucks and this is dumb and it's gonna take a lot of pain,

Starting point is 03:06:06 but hey, eventually a lesson will be learned, right? Well, no, because the success one, the one that breaks out and makes gangbusters money forever continues to exist. We got to see, we actually got to see what it would take to give up, and that is Suicide Squad and Concord. Oh Out the window never mind undo. Yeah. Yeah. Oh wow

Starting point is 03:06:33 There's a friends There's a there's a there's a piece of Dialogue from a movie. I really like called contact. It's based off Carl Sagan's book in which they they're building a big machine to Contact aliens and it gets blown up and The main character speaks with a rich benefactor and he says why buy one where you can buy two for twice the price And I think about that when I look

Starting point is 03:07:06 at this nonsense fucking story. Why have one live service game that could do well when we could have 20 live service games? Think about how much more money we would billions. Right, because... And you wasted... Think of the man years of lost dev time on these projects. So you got boy math and girl math and now you have CEO math Which is if we can make two fortnites, then we could have twice the fortnight money That's true, right? Listen, of course does does tomb raider need multiplayer? No, but if we put all this money into making tomb raider Multiplayer will make that money back five times

Starting point is 03:08:03 CorpMath, is back five times. Corp math. Is that true? No? Corpo math. It all adds up. The numbers can't fail. Look at them. Oh man.

Starting point is 03:08:16 Um, yeah, that's a lot of studios, man. That's a lot of big studios. I feel the same talking about this story as I did sitting in my fucking parent's basement looking at Kaz Hirai say the phrase 599 US dollars. Discipline. Like, it's the same exact emotion of, oh, oh no. We're committing to it. You will listen. You will learn.

Starting point is 03:08:48 Yeah. This is, this is the part where you go like, oh yeah, we're gonna be feeling this for, and it's like, there's no end point. Like you go like, oh yeah, the damage is, no, it's that you, untold, untold. Did you see? Concord on its own, we were freaking out at the amount of billions. Yeah, time 17.

Starting point is 03:09:17 Or 16. These aren't balatros, balatro games getting cancelled, you know. Did you see, did you see Shuhei Yoshida's interview about this shit? What'd he say? He said, yeah, I would've told them not to do that shit, that shit's stupid, but that's probably why they got rid of me. Ah! Got it.

Starting point is 03:09:38 Thanks, Shu. Cool, cool, cool, cool. For sure, for sure cool for sure for sure it's so big of him to be out and be like I would have seen that shit coming I Would have told him yeah sure man, whatever man Yeah again again. You want to fucking? You want like one could argue the cancellation is a response to seeing it coming perhaps too late You know

Starting point is 03:10:08 We're not looking at five Concord releases into unreleases Though hey, let's think about how awesome that would be yeah, I mean as far as podcast content. Oh, man fucking awesome, dude trust Oh man, it'd be fucking awesome dude. Trust! Trust! Cuz like bro, okay, you remember Concord came out and everybody was just like I gotta get fucking on that Concord cuz I only got like ten days where the footage I can get, right? If there was a fucking Horizon MMO that came out dude I would know like that shit for a month cuz you know it's never gonna last just just the influencer only server energy

Starting point is 03:10:49 Everyone online is filming a bit Everyone is making their video essay or streaming to see what the fuck is going on. No one is playing for real The Babylon's false it People are jumping off of cliffs and running in circles and just everyone's got TV in front of their name. It's.

Starting point is 03:11:17 Hey, let me ask you a question. You ever play you ever play a game, multiplayer game, and you see somebody with the TV in their name and you pull out your fucking phone, and you go watch them, and you beat their ass, and then you're like, all right, now let's get the live reaction. No, I can't say that I have. You can do that when you play Dead by Daylight.

Starting point is 03:11:38 It's real sick. Oh, man. That's sick as fuck. No, no, you don't stream snipe them. You stream eulogize them. It's great. It's great. I love it. Anyway, so there's other stuff as well.

Starting point is 03:11:57 It seems like an unannounced Warhammer game has also been canceled. Or was canceled at the end of last year. From who? Do you know? An unannounced Warhammer game has also been canceled, or was canceled at the end of last year. From who, do you know? Let's see. Thought Pennies was the name of the developer, and the description, and this, I mean, the description of the game is, a fantasy live-service

Starting point is 03:12:26 Co-op PvE action RPG with a cast of unique heroes and play styles Does that describe anything to you it describes fucking vermin tide that Like a game that already exists. Yeah. yeah co-op PvE with unique characters Live service fantasy uh-huh. Yes, absolutely it describes numerous games that already exist So hey, you know what's a really good example to chase that is like let's talk about Warhammer games Jk was it Jacob Geller? No is it race Vic? It's race Vic who has a video about how much he loves Mass Effect And he's jealous of Warhammer games

Starting point is 03:13:10 Games Workshop just gives out their fucking license to fucking anybody there are so many fucking Warhammer games There are so goddamn many so you say like hey the Warhammer game got cancelled. You know what fuck it There's gonna be ten out tomorrow Warhammer game got cancelled. You know what? Fuck it. There's gonna be 10 out tomorrow. They spread that shit everywhere. Man. You can't go 10 feet in a steam sail without tripping over multiple Warhammer games. So it doesn't actually mean anything. No, man. They're at oh my God. They'll let anybody use that shit and a bunch of them are terrible. A bunch of them are terrible. But if you want to play warhammer games, bro, you have a option you have many options But when they're good, but when they're good though. Yeah when they're good, they're good. Yeah, right

Starting point is 03:13:56 No RTS yet. So what is what is thought of war? Don't don't don't don't fall for that Don't fall for that. Don't, that, oh no. The dawn of war. All right, all right, all right, all right. That is the dawn of war three was so bad that it like killed Warhammer RTSs. Man. Okay, well look, as we've described,

Starting point is 03:14:24 that the putting out more live service games means more live service dollars and what better way to accompany that shot with a chaser over here. Love this one. Many in the video game industry are hoping for GTA 6 to price at, if not 80, then perhaps $100 because the bump could then correspond to an overall industry game cost bump. And if people are willing to spend that on GTA 6, then surely they will spend it on whatever piece of shit you're about to put out. Forever. Right? That's how that works? I think that's how that works. It's

Starting point is 03:15:12 how it works. I have a competing article for you that I was able to pull up and get ready while you were saying that shit. Hello, Larian. What do you have to say? From Wednesday, the 29th of May, 2024, quote, PS5 players are buying fewer new games, but spending more than ever overall. Why is that? Because game prices are too high. It has resulted in a net loss for PlayStation in terms of game sales, but microtransactions have made up the slack.

Starting point is 03:15:53 So if you increase the cost of every single game and fill them up as live service, you are going to create a situation with even less winners than you have now, but the winners will be bigger and the winners will be Grand Theft Auto. Because people are willing to, right? Yeah, for sure. The winner will be Grand Theft Auto. Yeah, totally. That's the only way that works. And you know, because Grand Theft Auto is,. And you know, because Grand Theft Auto is when they move the whole thing forward and every game costs more and the cost goes up and stuff, people are making more money than ever now, right?

Starting point is 03:16:33 Wages are doing great. And they have way more money to spend on games. So why not just scale that up to. Hmm. Mm hmm. Um, yeah, so Baldur's Gate three developer, Larian tweeted in response to this story. You're not supposed to say this out loud. A good company raises its salaries with an inline with inflation so that their staff don't die

Starting point is 03:17:06 or something. But games prices haven't risen with inflation. This isn't the reason the industry is in this shit for now, but it is an uncomfortable truth. On the other hand, the responsibility for a game developer is to make sure that the game they show lives up to that promise and that investment from the player. Yeah, like I don't buy that at all. When you say the game prices haven't risen with inflation, you only can make that claim if you're only talking about the game as it is the day it comes out without any of the

Starting point is 03:17:43 extra stuff that would have been packed in otherwise. But just the idea of putting it on like this thing that we kind of felt because do you remember for us, we were talking about how in Canada, it was Street Fighter IV that increased the Canadian game price up by $10 and then it never went back down, right? So here it's like, oh, GTA is what moves it forward and we can all follow suit. We have to sit back in the shadows and wait and see.

Starting point is 03:18:15 If the big cat makes its move, if everyone gets used to that and they're willing to do it on that, then we can come out with everything next week and crank that shit up. So the whole discussion is kind of a stupid moot point because every time they raise the prices sales go down because people know what games cost. Straight up. And it's like, well, I don't care about my competitor's sales. We're all fighting for the same dollars in the market. That's true but if

Starting point is 03:18:45 people Look at their PlayStation 6 and go well That's a thousand dollars and I can only get one game every year instead of three or whatever the fuck They're just not gonna buy it at all picture that they're gonna go start doing drugs. Pick picture the story picture the the story that we just covered before picture the Picture the story that we just covered before. Picture the Concord feeling, except you just spent 130 Canadian dollars on that release. As the quote, full price. Once spent in twice shy is real forever. If you're charging me a hundred and thirty fucking dollars

Starting point is 03:19:33 It tell me that jam project music is gonna be included as well as licensed Japanese OPs you sons of bitches Fuck off to be fair To be fair there is something that's happening which is games the games market, cost-wise, if you have a wide variety of tastes, the games market is actually democratized in price way more than a lot of other mediums. There are a lot of games that come out. A lot. You and I, and I'm sure a lot of the people listening to this in particular have massive backlogs of really good games that many of us picked up for dirt cheap, either at a used place

Starting point is 03:20:11 because they're a couple of years old or a steam sale or whatever the fuck. There is plenty of shit to play all the time and if Game if games get too hot for price then You can just wait now granted. I am the I am like a big proponent of the cult of the new I'm obsessed with the new certainly are assessed. Yes, and so are a lot of the people listening this by the the power users Yes um And I'm playing through ghosts of Tsushima, which I did not

Starting point is 03:20:45 finish on release. And I'm like, why the fuck didn't I just wait for this to fucking come out on PC? Like the DLCs included and it runs way better. And you know, they added all the legends shit and all that. And it's like, it's taking somebody like me, who is obsessed with brand new right now and go, I should wait on Sony games until they're done because they're cheaper and all that shit now granted this doesn't work for Nintendo games so smart move Nintendo never changing yeah I like when we have these moments of balls exposed, asshole out, just full on,

Starting point is 03:21:28 tell us exactly what your stupid fucking mentality is. Just tell us transparently, because that price field, that $10 moment, was something that I remember we talked about, James Small mentioned it, he's like, hey, did you notice? It's like, yeah, and we kind of mentioned it ourselves, we're like, hey, that's the moment,

Starting point is 03:21:43 they never fucking dropped it back. But now you get to have this where it's like, oh no openly you're saying you're just saying the quiet part out loud and The ramifications are felt like everybody gets to see how much of a fucking dumbass you are and It's it's less of a mystery what it all goes wrong Of course, and then yeah as this continues to happen you can just go spend I don't know 15 or 20 bucks on a smaller game that pops up on Steam somewhere and Satisfy that

Starting point is 03:22:14 Same potential our account that you'd otherwise would be looking at so here. Here's the really fun part, right? And well, well, no, sorry just the other bit too is that like I'm not you know obviously as someone who's not like in the GTA fucking space I might be wrong but is it GTA also one of those games where Rockstar made bank on the tail end with the GTA online shit they sold? Grand Theft Auto games Grand Theft Auto games make infinity dollars within 10 minutes of their release. Every time. But-

Starting point is 03:22:55 They then make double infinity dollars on the long tail. Yes, okay, so double infinity- that's what I'm saying. I'm saying there's double infinity dollars that they know is coming With the the online portion Clearly so it's not even about that initial. Yeah anyway alright Go yeah, so no the real fun part is that there's a lot of devs that are going to talk about this And yeah, let's say let's say GTA comes out, and it's ten bucks more than than other games We're gonna get to see a really fun

Starting point is 03:23:22 10 bucks more than other games. We're gonna get to see a really fun experiment where a bunch of publishers get to find out that their game is not fucking Grand Theft Auto 6. Right, right. Where they're gonna go, oh yeah, well we're producing, it's like shut up, dude, not you. No, Rockstar laid the charge. Well they did it, we can all do it now, guys.

Starting point is 03:23:43 No. It's safe. No, it's safe Nintendo can and Maybe God of War Can God but you can't Not you Just getting out of the trenches turning around I can do it too Yeah, yeah. Again, these moments of transparency, I appreciate. I do. Right on. Okay. Let's get it moving. Beyond that, I mean, not much else to it except, you know, rest in peace David Lynch.

Starting point is 03:24:27 Terrible. Passed away this week. A lifetime of smoking is apparently responsible for that. So there were three things that contributed to this. One of which is his lifetime obsession with smoking, which to his credit and detriment, he made look really cool. He makes it look really cool. Like that's the worst part.

Starting point is 03:24:54 Secondary animation, you know, the smoke trailing from your hand is great for art. The second of which is that because of his deteriorating health and the current endemicness of COVID because people can't take precautions meant that he was very unlikely to be able to leave his home safely. Last year, that's what they announced. The third of which is that the smoke from the LA fires didn't do him any favors either. It's like personal, societal, and then environmental. Yeah, so 78 is definitely on the young side for that. That fucking sucks.

Starting point is 03:25:41 And through this, people are going on and now discovering all the crazy shit he's worked on over the years that he never told anybody about like the comic books that he's written and And just like his name is attached to so many fucking random projects out there. I Did not know Until his death that he had made until his death that he had made Eraserhead and then his big break being Elephant Man, he got because Mel Brooks was like, yo, Eraserhead's awesome,

Starting point is 03:26:15 you should have this dude make Elephant Man. Incredible. And I think about Mel Brooks as the absolute last person in the world to go, yeah, Eraserhead, but fuck it, he's got good taste. Yeah, to say nothing of the fucking PlayStation 2 commercials with the duck. Like, you know, what creatively called him over to be like, yeah, sure, a video game console,

Starting point is 03:26:43 that's about right. That it quacked and it walked through a portal. Oh man. Anyways. All right, let's take some letters. Hey, if you want to send in a letter, send it to castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. Send it to castlesuperbeastmail.gmail.com. Hey, also also if you worked on one of many games that were live servicing got cancelled, write in to castle super beast mail at gmail.com and tell us how bad that sucks shit. Yeah, there you go. Put a little asterisk in your, we won't use your name. We promise. Put a couple asterisks in your, in your subject. I'll catch that shit. Also new darkest dungeon

Starting point is 03:27:24 to DLC. The abomination is coming out. Looks right as shit. We forgot to talk about Drake suing UMG for defamation. Yeah. Yeah. Was it hedgehogs that grind their shit into a paste it is it is it's pretty nuts that you can take something already pretty fucking gross and Just keep it going you know it really just Man's getting into a situation. I thought it was people are gonna

Starting point is 03:28:03 I thought it was as bad as it got. And, you know, here we are. People are gonna go into a courtroom and go, this is why I believe Drake was a creep, your honor. I mean, sticking to the guns, there's something to admire about just like the level of tone deafness still after all this time not catching up but anyway that's fine. Hey, let's take one over here from Chef. They're chewy and fuck face, Chef here.

Starting point is 03:28:39 Not a question but watching will you and Reggie navigate their way through cyberpunk and dealing with the corporal bullshit reminds me of the times corporations fucked over people IRL. There was one time where eBay had the head of security essentially harass and threaten an elderly couple who blogged about the company. It ranged from doxing the couple to sending them fetal pigs and then threatening their lives. Of course eBay let him take the fall for almost everything, but I thought it would be a good addition to the list of unhinged corporate reactions. That-

Starting point is 03:29:15 I didn't expect to hear the phrase fetal pigs today. Yeah, that absolutely sounds like an Arasaka or a cyberpunk corp mission. That's an NCPD log file you read about after you walk past a bunch of corpses under a bridge somewhere. Or send them to pigs. scandal was conducted in 2019 by eBay and its contractors and Scrolling scrolling the Steiners were harassed and threatened both online and physically in their home by deliveries of things such as a bloody pig mask

Starting point is 03:29:58 live cockroaches and spiders a funeral wreath large orders of pizza and spiders, a funeral wreath, large orders of pizza, and pornographic magazines with David Steiner's name on them were sent to a neighbor's house. What the fuck is happening? 2019? What? eBay? What is? What? I don't know. Stop talking shit about us. All right. Let's do some crazy shit. 2019?

Starting point is 03:30:29 Like, you mean that site that I occasionally forget exists and then it shows up in the shop results, you know, next to everything else? What the fuck? Hey, do you want to buy the thing you're looking for but damaged and it'll never get to you oh my god oh not really I actually don't really that doesn't seem like a good deal they flew from California to Boston employees went to vandal their personal vehicle break into their garage and place a GPS tracker on their car. This is insane

Starting point is 03:31:08 This is the most insane unhinged fucking thing I've ever Okay Yeah You saying I'm crazy. I'll show you who's crazy. That's that that energy coming through Don't talk shit about eBay I'm a I will I will I will fly to your house and murder you if you talk shit about my company What the fuck okay? Oh? Man, we're talking shit about eBay right now

Starting point is 03:31:46 Abram says hello Willie and. Abram says, hello, Willie and Pat. Abram here. Amen. So, since you brought up Bumani on the previous podcast and Pat was talking about misspellings, I wanted to send my favorite of all time. In 2002, Konami released Guitar Freaks, eighth mix and Drum Mania, seventh mix power-up version, which was the first release to support their EMU system for save scoring. On the login screen, the purpose of the game's release and something appears at the beginning of every game,

Starting point is 03:32:17 they misspelled their own company name as Konmai. This led to an inside joke in the bumani community the classic con my quality for example That's so good when the company did something disappointing or release something of poor quality Right. This is this is like revelay a tons or cap cat cat cook a palm That's dude like Seeing seeing that goddamn cap cab logo come up, like, filled me with, like, an emotion I can't describe. To make matters worse, Konami was so upset by this that they banned use of Konmai as

Starting point is 03:32:56 a player-inputted name in their games, like Beatmania and so on. Just fucking fix it! It's on the same level of slurs as the n-word So more than 20 years later, they still ban con my in all of their games Konami has been mad for 20 plus years Love it. I love it. Oh That's beautiful. That's glorious. Fantastic. Never change, man.

Starting point is 03:33:31 You know what? Commit to it. Fucking commit at this point. Like, people are making the new games using, and they're going down a localization Excel sheet of banned terms, and they don't even know why the terms are there anymore, but they just look as a con my Yeah, but they just they put them in right? It's the monkeys that don't know that approaching the ladder will get them beat up or why? Just wait what? the experiment about like you put you put the the ladder and then like the monkeys that Climb up if anything tries to go up to the top and reach for the grape they all get sprayed with the hose. And so eventually they start attacking any monkey that goes up to the ladder to climb

Starting point is 03:34:11 it and then eventually they- Why are we beating up monkeys that go towards the ladder? And then we remove the ladder and now we change the monkeys out and now we just beat up monkeys that go towards there we don't know why we do. It's that. Like I don't know what Konmai is but it says we have to bat it in our game because just 20 years ago I'm gonna start using Conmai as a slur because it seems bad if it's next to these other slurs good shit good shit I like that that's perfect all right take

Starting point is 03:34:41 it easy everybody have Have a good week, bud.

Castle Super Beast - CSB304: Corpomath

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