Castle Super Beast - CSB340: White Furi Is Coming

Episode Date: October 8, 2025

Download for Mobile | Podcast Preview | Full Timestamps Older Twitch VODs are now being uploaded to the new channel: https://www.youtube.com/@CastleSuperBeastArchive Parking Lot Furi: Why No White Stranger? Fk Bilewater, Fk Bilehaven, F**k Groal Every Stupid Change Xbox Just Announced 2XKO Sticker Shock (in Canadian Dollars) Gaslight Yourself Against Selfish @$$holes Watch live: twitch.tv/castlesuperbeast Go to http://shopify.com/superbeast to sign up for your $1-per-month trial period. - Level up your game and get 10% off @TurtleBeach with code CASTLE at http://turtlebeach.com/castle #turtlebeachpod - One thing to pack, five ways to power! Get 10% Off @Ridge with code SUPERBEAST at https://ridge.com/SUPERBEAST #Ridgepod Nakayama clarifying that the dev team is separate from esports division on social media Robin Williams’ Daughter Tells Fans to ‘Stop Sending Me AI Videos of Dad’: It’s ‘Gross’ and ‘Not What He’d Want’ Consumers must spend $800 billion on AI within a few years, to justify investment from 2023-24 THE FURI LIVE ACTION TV SHOW LOOKS LIKE DOGSHIT 2XKO Official Cinematic: Ties That Bind ft. Courtney LaPlante of Spiritbox Warwick 2XKO Gameplay Trailer 2XKO Season 0 Patch Notes: 1.0.1 One of Game Pass's hidden changes and arguably one of the most disgusting for the future of the hobby is that they are monetizing game quality and resolution. Good to know that Game Pass was generating billions in revenue AND profitable BEFORE increasing the price by 50% Microsoft is reportedly preparing to announce free Xbox Cloud Gaming with ads.There will be around two minutes of pre-roll ads before a game is available, and up to 5 hours of free game time a month Xbox Insider says future Xbox hardware is up in the air & may not happen despite their announcements Costco isn't going to be the only major retailer pulling Xbox., More massive layoffs coming - more price hikes coming, Full 3rd party software company is the future of Xbox

I'm going to be able to be. Oh, oh, hey. What's going on? Oh, so the camera trouble was fixed, was it? Yeah, I fixed the camera trouble right at the beginning there. Okay, okay, good. Good, good. It was getting a little goofy there.

Yeah, yeah, you were stuck in a freeze frame, and, you know, it was like that's. It was a weirdly, completely average freeze frame from a silent hill video the other night. Pretty, pretty unusual for the camera to get stuck that way. So, you know. It wasn't even from today. I don't know why I did that. Yeah. And for the problem to only be fixed as soon as we go live.

Yeah, as soon as we went live, it got fixed. It was weird. What's up? Not much. How's it going? It's all right. Okay. It's okay.

You see that fucking Fury live action trailer Bro, and you think I look like a fucking clown. Holy shit, dude! Never mind your shit, bro. Holy fucking shit, dude. Full-on Kingdom Hearts parking lot fucking shit. Parking lot, Fury. They tried to hide it, but I've seen it.

Oh, I'm so glad the copies got made. So, you are not the clown, sir. You are not the clown today. Apparently, Fury live action. It's not good. Oh, you're like, okay, but how bad can it really be, though? And then... Oh, it can be not good, man.

You know, yeah. So right off the bat, why no white stranger? Why? Who I know? I'm taking a screenshot of my fucking screen right now, okay? I'm sending you a screenshot of my screen because I didn't play Fury, right? No, they did I. As we are setting up for this conversation, I am literally Emmett searching Fury.

Yes. Because I'm like, wasn't that a black guy? It sure was. Because I do remember that Afro samurai artist, Takashi Ozaki. he made Afro Samurai and then he designed Fury's character to also be like an Afro Samurai character and I remember being like

yeah, right, that's the similarity so that was black guy with the white hair and stuff then to just see this like And he's got the Karen swoop he's got the swoop it's the Karen swoop

and it's also the like the villain like I don't even know what to call it but um when you have to when you have to make like a a like a neo aryan villain you got that kind of thing going on the swoop it's the blonde it's the blonde yeah you got that that is like the care and hairstyle like through and through yeah it's wild um okay and is putting on a red cape and getting in there with the sword and then you're like what's going on right what's happening

with with this and you're and you click play on the the backed up backed up because Like, this is the fact-it-down right away. This is the fastest the takedown has ever happened. I can't believe it, right? At the level of it's been, we clicked play, we saw the first 10 comments and went, no, no, no, no, never mind, never mind, never mind, though. It feels like the kind of thing where they sent it out and they stayed sitting at their chair in the, like, in the, in the studio, being like, might I need to pull this down. But the fact that you can't tell, the fact that they're like, but what if they like it, though?

They might, they might like it. like it. Well, hey, listen, dude, dude, listen, listen. We went out to that cabin my friend's dad owns, and we were able to shoot out there because it was free. I mean, the fact that you take, so again, knowing Fury from the outside, it's colorful, it's bright, it's neon, it's full of all kinds of techy cyber color, you know. It's full of all kinds of stylized, non-realistic environments. And then, you find this trailer is in one cabin's

backyard. They had your uncle's cabin and it's the most nature, realistic, nothing going on. You've got parking lot sword fighting and a couple of special effects and just yeah, I don't know,

I'd love to find the story of how we got here. I mean whoever got the license or the rights or whatever's going on there. Apparently, Uh, so Barty Shepard is, uh, the name of the director, writer, showrunner, and main character. Oh, it's a one-man show. I am Fury. I bought the rights. I wrote the script. I am the director. I wrote the story. I wrote the story. And the stranger is me.

you're playing with you yeah so if you're if you're like tarantino right and you're a writer director and you're playing a character in your own movie and you're obsessive about the dialogue and the directing and all that if your movie sucks shit and bombs guess what it's on you you were

like 50% of the movie's production right eat shit but if you get Pulp Fiction you're like oh my god Tarantino's the fucking greatest you're playing with fire when you when you do like

Every job you add increases your share of the credit for good or for ill. Right. But I would say that most creators with tact that want to shove themselves into the thing will find a way to do so. Like if you're giving Tarantino as an example, he's going to put himself in a supporting role and or role of someone that's going to get killed or background character, you know. So he gets to get a, he gets to get a foot in his mouth for that shot that they need, right? Um, or he's going to show up in the car and drop slurs just to get his lines across as a cameo in his own movie. No, no, the writer wrote it this way. Bro, you are the writer.

But when you do the Neil Breen effect, when you put yourself in the driver's seat and make it all about you, it's just the most transparent ego trip ever. It's so wild. It's like, what's it? I got to watch it again. I got to watch it again. It's so bad. it's that thing where I think didn't after

Alex Trebek passed on Jeopardy they were trying to find the new co-host or the new host rather and they tried a bunch of different people including like previous winners and stuff and then in the end the executive producer

went we couldn't find anybody so I guess I am the new host and you're like just that transparent huh we're not even pretending Like, if you can't resist the urge

To shove yourself in there And point all arrows at you You'll never get away with it So yes Barty Barty Shepard Oh, these are supposed to be different planets Bro

The production studio is apparently called Midnight Embers And according to their official channels They have made nothing um there's there's a grand total of zero things there listed on the pages always a good start um but uh this is an official project so yeah yeah i just i don't know i i mean fury you know like i i know that um i've i've been very vocal about my issues with afro samurai and uh you know there's always been a little bit of like with fury as well a little bit of like i really

wanted to love Afro Santero. Yeah. You wanted to love it. You think you wanted to love it. Yeah, I did. It looked really cool. And it just never lived up to that original pitch. That should be the shit that I'm basing my entire personality around.

And it just, it couldn't. It wasn't. It didn't. You know, and furthermore, Shinichi Watanabe already had Champlu scratching that itch very thoroughly. and I said it before and I'll say it again you know Afro samurai

should have remained a wallpaper an art book a concept that's maybe a bit strong it was really cool to see a character design with a big long fro and the headband and the sword as a piece of art

then the moment it started moving and doing things I just and you know Sam Jackson showed up and that was cool but then nothing interesting happened unfortunately that sucks because Sam Jackson's a great casting choice for anything like this, and it just wasn't good. Sam Jackson's great casting except for being a calm Jedi. Everything else, A-plus.

All right, well, look, y'all, it was kind of boring and just wasn't that great of an anime I found. It just wasn't, you know, I didn't find it that interesting, and that's that, that's that. But regardless, Fury is now all these years later getting brought up to the spot. And you have to kind of wonder if this was a, I bought it because I got the rights on a napkin at a dinner. So at some point for, you know. How much could the movie rights to indie game Fury possibly cost? About tree fitting? I don't know.

About tree fitting, yeah. Yeah, if I can do whatever, I don't know. All style, no substance is a great way to put it Afro Senpai. Yeah, that's, that's the exact issue with that. And if we get back into this argument, then we're getting back into the Asura's Wrath argument as well, right? It's the whole bit. But regardless, I just find it baffling in the sense that you could have made a really, like,

I was expecting when I saw Fury TV show, I was expecting a modestly low-budget CG show that would have all the colors and be faithful to the general art style and direction, but just have really bad animation and perhaps. bad voice acting. I also expected that. That is also what I expected. I did not expect to see a human.

Much less that dude. Yeah. It looks like discount like Malfoy. Sure. I would take Ed as well, you know, from Street Fighter. I would take just any of these villain type. what you're not what you are not is a black person with big crazy white uh uh you know nappy hair going on but that that that shit's that's cool and um i i guess the whole the internet

remembers thing is undefeated oh uh actually that's not true there is one instance of it being defeated um i have i have publicly put out the challenge to people um that like the first first show that i put up on machinima was called needs more salt and there are zero traces of that anywhere online it will never it will never be found it speaks to its enduring success it will never be found and I can say with all the hubris in the world that you can try all you want but it is not there no one saved it, it's gone forever

my really nervous line reading at my early scripts will never be exposed however that being said if you throw up a trailer for something I just found a 10 year old thread of people trying to find it and it being deleted yeah because 10 years ago I talked the same shit

about it yeah so anyways that's that's a that's a pretty phenomenal IP drop there good stuff good I was so excited for fury more fury no and then I was so excited for this now I am excited for this but like not for the reasons that you want me a content creator to be excited for this drop the whole thing yeah I mean the fact that there's no mega 64 logo in the corner you know, is already just like, like your brain is primed to see that pop up somewhere, or even just a fan film, you know, the idea of someone's like, no, I'm just a really big fan of Fury and then I did this.

But the moment you put official on it, why, why no white stranger, you know, why, why, why no ear like shit, dude. I don't want to meet somebody defined as being the white stranger. Fuck that. Oh, good, good, good times. I'm glad that I saw that right before, um, we clicked a button today. Anyways. Are you ready?

Somebody in the chat nailed the Dementor's like the white fury. Yeah, yeah. Mm, yeah. Ooh. Good. Mm. White Fury is coming. Oh, no.

Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, no. Oh, boy. Oh, did it get deleted immediately? Oh. Oh, shit. Yeah.

They deleted it. It's gone. But people saw it. And within, within like, a second, we're like, I got to save this shit, because it's just going to be gone. Yeah, yeah, yeah, okay. Should we? Should we, should we, should we unleash White Fury?

I don't know, guys. Maybe we shouldn't. Okay, hold on. Let's do it. We've unleashed it. Oh, no, oh, shit. Hold on. Wait, put it back.

Never mind. What are you supposed to fucking do? Like, remember how the mummy bombed because they put out that version that didn't have the sound effects of the trailer and the Tom Cruise was going, ah, eh, and it was like fucking weird. And everybody made fun of it. And then it bombed super hard. that was like a mistake there's like legitimately like the wrong cut

of the fucking trailer goes up right this was clearly the intentional cut of the trailer that went up and it seemed to be probably a fairly accurate representation of the movie what are your fucking options it's not a movie it's a TV show

and that's the problem that's worse Jesus yes it's multiple episodes and I said this about Madam Webb but like you're by the time you're seeing the trailer the show has been cut

the footage is filmed it exists It's been graded. An editor sat down, put it together, put things in place. This person in particular, Barty did what he did. And like, you know, he said, I want to get some cool parts. I want to get the coolest parts and put them in my trailer. There are so many examples and opportunities to abandon ship here.

And none of them were taken. The exit off road every step of the way between film to edit, to cut, to upload, to final processing. you know, all of that, and then you have the page right there and you just have to click publish and you have the post ready to go and you just have to click post and you're still looking at that button

and like, it's not dawning on you. You know, maybe, maybe we can still, maybe we can still pull out, you know? There's so, there's like, there are so many parts of this project at certain points that somebody should have said, I don't know about this. Yeah.

I don't know, man. I'm going to cast myself. I don't know, man. What's our point? budget. Is it $35? Yeah. I don't know, man. And you know, it's kind of also, like, it's probably, in the end, it's for the best that that we have one person putting themselves at the center of it, because, you know,

sometimes the thing will come out and be like a huge piece of shit or whatever. Like, okay, so Game of Thrones fucking flies off a cliff and has one of the worst disastrous shows endings ever, right? And we know that D&D are the names of the director. and the folks that are to be blamed for the way this went, but I'm sure, like, they're the folks that are to be blamed. Yes, but there's a thing here where I'm sure a lot of folks could, but personally, I couldn't tell you what they look like. I don't know.

I think I saw them in, like, the cast reading. I saw them once. They look like, they look like dudes. They look like totally. They have no defining features. But I can't remember. I think I saw them once in like a behind the scenes thing, but for the most part, whatever, right? But could you imagine...

They have like white guy serial killer look in that they don't look like a person. They just look like a guy that you would see and immediately forget exists. Oh, right.

But could you imagine if they shoved themselves into these episodes in the final season and then the next time they show up anywhere in a studio and they walk in and people go,

I know your fucking face, get out of here! This person responsible for the Fury trailer is also, you can see his face. You see the face and you go, you're the director,

you're the writer, And you're the Fury Man, and we'll never, we'll never think of anything but that now. Thank you for advertising that, you know? You can't sneak into any other room because it's you. Oh, I love it. It's great. It's wonderful. Hey, the costumes, though, you know, they, they, they was dressed up like the characters.

They, you know, did, they tried really hard on the costumes. they tried really hard and I think that you just give him a little clap like oh you do good job you know I like one of my toddler brushes his teeth

and he like he misses the back teeth and so I have to help him I'm like hey you did a good job buddy I saw a I saw a lady cosplayer from Devil May Cry like

like this just yesterday that was so insanely accurate that it looked like a render of the character from the game. Like, it's ridiculous how accurate it looked. And there's, there's like a weird thing that happens to me on TikTok where I'll see a cosplay that is like a one-to-one. It looks like CG.

There's a, there's a lady who does like a Monster Hunter once. She just did one of Gemma. And like, she looks like the render, but it's actually just good lighting and a picture perfect costume. And then TikTok starts feeding me thirst traps and like, I don't care about that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I want to see Devilman crying straightfire characters. Exactly, exactly, you know.

And I, but I see that, and I go, this is, this is somebody doing their own outfit with attention to detail, absolutely crushing it. And then you look at an official production and you're like, what the fuck are you even trying to do here? You know, um... You know what he should have done, right? Put on the, he should have done the costume, like, fully accurate. I like, cook. I like,

I like where this is going. Let's go. Today. Yes. Going through a bit of a transformation. Let's go, pet. Let's tell you,

it didn't take as long as you would think. It took about an hour with help. My darling wife page helped me. Thank you, Peach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't take that long. It took like an hour. Mm-hmm.

So if you were only to use like one paint. Yep. You could, you, that 40 minutes. Yep. I mean, listen Okay, you'd still need the red But like There are wigs that are available

That you can get that are white colored That would be very easy To just get into place, right? Not an issue whatsoever I see no reason Why that Fury Protagonist Didn't have to

I see no reason why he couldn't have been more accurate I don't I don't see a reason Why he couldn't be more accurate It would you know what It would have given the show a lot of notoriety. It would have saved it. Might have saved it. And then when it shit bombs,

because it would, there's like a whole group of people you can blame by default, and then just rake in like donation money. Oh! And just crypt it. Oh, okay, okay, okay, okay. Get the paycheck on the other side of that. Just do it on purpose.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm. Yeah. No, I mean, look, it was that, As far as I'm concerned, those costumes were only half complete. You know, they, uh, they could have gone, they, they could have gone to distance. They could have gone farther in a couple of places. They could have got a lot further. Why stop there?

Why stop there? You're, you're in control of every part of the project. There's no one who could stop you. Yeah, yeah, good stuff. Are we both now the devil on the shoulder? We can't, but that's not fair. You can't have two devils on your shoulder. Well, I mean, says you.

I'll say this. If you're a Fury fan out there, woof, tough times, I guess. I don't know. This is so far removed that I feel like there's no intersection at all. Like, didn't it get reported? Like, not long. yeah it got ported again right so there we go yeah so it got it got some treatment you know but if i don't know if you're someone that's just been waiting for uh something something related

to this brand to show up then tough times uh look at this here here look at fucking t-shirt dog like it like it doesn't need to be like this look at this lady cosplayer all right i will look at this yeah okay i'm gonna yep that's look at there you go all right That's what we... Yeah, that's literally... And she did up a whole room, too. It's psychotic. Yeah, that's immaculate.

That's picture perfect. It's psychotic. It's insane. Yeah. Shoutouts to Carrie Kaye for the most perfect lady DMC cosplay I've ever seen. And it's kind of like, yeah. So we got cosplayers hitting that level

and then cut back to official productions and see what kind of work they're putting in here, you know? Insanity. Yeah, this, this is, I just typed it in. I think, I think this is the lady, but this lady did Gemma from, from Monster Hunter and her, her TikTok posts were getting flagged as AI generated. Oh my God. Oh, my God.

Yeah. Yeah, it's that good. Because it, because she found a spot with like the perfect lighting also that looks exactly as it does in game. It's like some people are just too good. And that's, I mean, I know that like, whatever creative decisions may mean sometimes you don't want your lady to look like lady.

Sometimes you want her to look like Captain Commando, which is also, I mean, that's Captain Commando's cool, I guess. It's very valid. But it's not, yeah. It's just what's possible is crazy. Anyway, moving right along there. And kudos, kudos to the team. And all I see you went for the heart over the eye in diamond style.

Yeah, no, Paige, she was workshopping as she was going through. I was like, oh, you want to do both eyes blue or how it's, I don't know. She's like, oh, what if I did a heart? See, that's the thing is, so I'm getting those Hesoka vibes, you know? And I was thinking, I was thinking maybe a more so balitro would be your direction. What I've discovered in being a fully painted out as a clown with mutton chops on is that I bear a not insignificant similarity to Sid Haig in the face when I got clown. So if you don't know who Sid Haig is, Sid Haig is the guy who is in all those Rob Zombie movies. okay

who dressed up like a clown okay because my resting expression looks kind of pissy in like grumpy

when I got this shit on yeah I would also say that like clown plus clown plus facial hair is already going into the horror zone because of the chops so I should probably explain

why I'm in a clown outfit. I'm clowned up. This was a subscription goal during the last month's sub-a-thon, which people crushed and were very excited. So that means for today the seventh, the 14th,

the 21st, the 28th, and the 4th of November. We're going to be doing this. That's really committed. Yeah. Okay. I said I was going to do it.

you think that's committed get ready for next week um did you take the opportunity to um make a screenshot at every step of the process so that the meme no it was super fast okay because you know that the meme you can just make your own version of it and if as long as you have each step of layer well i think that my opinions go from normal to clown instantly. Like, I don't put the makeup on when my opinions are shit. I see. I see.

Right to the full enchilada. It just, it's like the, it's the clown makeup shotgun set to whore. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Page actually said something similar,

but I think that's because her brain is wrong. And she looked at me in clown shit and was like, yeah, all right. So you just, yeah, no, set the Simpsons clown horror shotgun.

And then you just, Kurt Cobain that shit over and then like you're, yeah, that's it. that's your opinion allegedly what's Courtney not love up to I bet she does a good clown makeup

I think I lost the threat on that we're gonna move on we're gonna move on that's okay what else is going on with you man um I have to drink with a buck and straw oh just in case

hold on a second oh did you You, oh, I know that. I know that. Wully, it's so great because, like, hey, mom's taking care of baby. And you hear, like, what? There was, probably fine. There's that.

There was a doorbell. There was a question of whether or not we could. It's fine. Yeah, it's probably fine. Ah, they're fine. Okay. I eagerly await the day that you see your little girl running and just face planting. Just like, oh.

And you go, nah, she's fine. I've seen, I know, I've been around that already. I've seen that from cousins and other kids. I know the deal, right? You saw me do it, actually. Yeah, yeah. My little guy just, bam. And I learned early that, like, you know, a lot of the time, it's how did you react?

Did you go, oh, my God, are you okay? And then the baby's like, eh, you know, versus you fall and going like, ah, whoa, that was crazy. And the only time I ever do it, like, different. is like if he's at the park and he like face plants super hard on like pavement yeah you go hey buddy you okay and usually i want to say nine times out of ten i hear yeah yeah i'm okay i also like yeah that's my man we've all seen rug rats we've seen Tommy just going like you know so yeah that's a thing

oh we got a good question from the audience hey what is my son my two year old like 28 month old son think of clown shit um i went hey buddy what's up and he looked at me expressionless and then went back to playing with his blocks amazing a single shit amazing give a fuck okay so we are far past the facial hair recognition shape change thing yeah okay yeah he might as well have rolled his eyes okay you're you're he looked in what you're in your state father I see. I saw a really incredible

comment scroll past a little bit ago go oh no Pat forgot to put on his makeup today which I think is fucking a plus. That's pretty good. I think that is an A plus joke. That's pretty good. What's going on?

All right. Let's start like this. Yeah, let's do it. Yo man, fuck Bilewater. Oh yeah. Fuck Bilehaven. Fuck the gauntlet And fuck Grohl the Great Have you ever

So how many attempts are we talking about On this run? We're talking about Silk Song by the way We're talking about the infamous Oil Water Gauntlet to get to a fairly different Oh oh it's too much It's too much and it's bullshit

And as soon as How many attempts On Grohl On the whole fucking Slamil Okay so on the whole thing I'm probably going to say

10 okay um and on on Grohl I'm going to say three because upon discovery of a very useful trick

fuck that was the right hang out in the water hang out in the water it's a really good fucking trick it's the whole zone teaches you to not do that and then you're like oh the boss can't do nothing

to me in here. Nothing. Fuck that trick. Fuck that that that fight entirely. I'm hanging out in the water and I'm going to take pot shots and then just run back in the water. We're not even engaging with this fight. You know? It's funny because

Grohl is so one of the things that happens in Silk Song and Grohl is a really good example is that everything in Silk Song is the opposite of the same thing in Holo Night. Unless it's exactly the same. So Grohl is the same

kind of looking guy as Soulmaster and Soulmaster also had a god awful runback in Hollow Night and was also like super tough it's just it's the it's the combination of course because now that I see like

oh we talked about the area before this before and the fake bench and now you're like no no no no here's an actual proper go fuck yourself ass that one's fucking for real man that's a for real ass go fuck yourself fake bench yeah um and

even after mitigating it with a real bench, it's still just a pain in the ass, right? Oh, it's a massive fucking pain. And the thing that I said this before about enemies in the game, but like, there's enemies that are not necessarily hard. They're just annoying

because you don't want to deal with them, but they're so evasive. The biawater shits are the worst because they actually come back to life forever. Okay, so there's that, right? And then there's the part where I've noticed that like bile water

I can take this fucking thing oh my god that wig is so itchy oh my god yo your head is so red oh it's so itchy dude oh my god

I'm trying to keep it on for as long as possible for the bit but I literally can't I'm gonna scream okay I think you have permission I think you're all right I'm gonna fucking scream Jesus Christ

um yeah I think that's why they get the If you get you can get like a little cap You know Underneath the wig to To make sure that your head doesn't directly Interface with the

The itchiness When you get like a weave cap You know what I'll just do this I have a backup plan Okay Oh there we go Okay That'll do it

Good good yep good shit Now we're clown trucking Well not no Well now you're just down with the clown, right? Now you're just full-on whoop-whoop, get the Fago. Now I'm ready to go to a dark carnival. Yeah, like this is just absolutely family. Yeah. So it trats, it completely transitioned into

full-on juggalo the moment you add the black hat to it. Oh, oh my God, the juggalo. your hatchet man tattoos out wow wow I'm gonna need to fix this but yeah how the fuck do magnets work

incredible I don't know all I know is scientists are lying and getting me pissed um so what was I going to say the the enemies are

doing something here that I feel like is a little different from others which is they're tracking is at the last possible second before the animation for the attack begins, right? Tracking on Soxong is really aggressive.

It's actually super aggressive. And there's three types of tracking. One, uh, sorry, there's three types of tracking. Horizontal, vertical, and downwards. Horizontal swipes and projectile swipes, enemies will actually like input read you on some occasions. Yeah. Pogoing, they absolutely input read your

position, not the Pogo, but your physical position. Once you get into the right angle for Pogo's on certain enemies, if they're not committed, they will actually move back. Yeah, yeah. But similarly to how everything in Holo Night is reversed from everything in Silk Song, the upslash does not have reactive tracking on it. Interesting. Shooting your slashes directly upwards, enemies pretend you're not even there. Interesting. So I've noticed it because the bar, the flying bar fly, when you pogo them they get the fuck out of the way in an input reading way I would also say that the

um right the area right underneath song clave has the um the floating orb throwers and those orbs track at a way where most games you you know the trajectory of a projectile coming at you so you go you anticipate it and then you jump to be somewhere and to then be out of the way by the time it reaches you know how to do that little you know um visual calculus And this game goes, no, no, I'm going to shoot that projectile up where you're going to be on that evasive jump.

Yeah, no, they aim in your trajectory. It's crazy. And I'm like, this is the only time I felt. It's actually super impressive. The guys in Bob. Only time I felt this in a game. Absolutely unbelievable predictive aim. It's crazy.

The darts are not going at my evasive jump over it or they're going at the peak of the jump. And it's like, you have to not use. your air dash because if you air dash and then jump you have no control over your existing trajectory and they will hit you exactly and it's so it's it's rough because I'm like the character's in the air

and it's all startup it's getting ready to throw it's getting ready to blow the projectile and it hasn't done it yet and you're like I'm going to assume you're locked into your position because the animation is still starting and I'm going to jump now so that I'm moving vertically and it's like no the as soon as it leaves their

position it's now on a to be to catch you at the top of your parabola you know um absolute nonsense by the way on that the the enemy variety and enemy uh i would say proficiency is like crazy in some song the game's really hard yeah there's i would genuinely put it up above like a dark souls game oh like i was talking to somebody who will remain nameless um who was talking to me and going oh my fucking they were quite a bit further than where you are and they're like oh my my god i think i might have to stop right i'm stuck at a boss and i said well don't worry you don't actually have to fight that boss and they're like okay i'm like you have to actually fight

a harder different boss instead yeah and they were like i can't yeah okay we're talking about it and i i'm of two minds when i talk about sulksong's difficulty level on the one hand i'm like yeah no this game is actually fucked up it's super hard like it's it's super fucking hard and like especially as a follow-up to hollow night which was like considerably easier for most of its content it's it's like nuts like I feel like some people are set up like they were tricked into getting excited for the the silk song but on the other hand um

when I beat silk song my balls were huge and then sometimes when people complain to me I'm by how about you go find your fucking balls down in your pants And I don't know which one of those I feel more strongly about Well, I will say this, right? When I look back on on characters, bosses like the entire setup to Grohl, it feels like upon accomplishing, it doesn't really feel like, oh, that was sick, I did it, yay.

It feels like, fuck this bullshit, I'm upset at the game, right? And then you get the contrast with a satisfying, in a moment. moment with like where you have a satisfying boss in a soul's game, I felt that immediately in this because the next thing I faced in, um, uh, uh, Silk Song was, um, the first sinner. Yeah. And I'm, I'm fucking kicks ass. Okay. So I'm not, I'm not done yet. Like I was trying to see if I'm like, can I beat this in, you know, before tomorrow? And I didn't, right? So I saw that thing, that thing. But it feels so good. And it feels the second best fight in the whole God damn game.

It's phenomenally fun. It's phenomenally sick. It requires so much of you. And it feels like fair in a way that is like if you be aggressive, you can keep up, but barely. And that is so rewarding. That's a really good rule for every boss you're going to fight ever again in this game. Man, you know, and I'm like the difference in how that feels compared to the slogs and the bullshit is tremendous, and I want more of that.

This is the game at its peak when you are dancing around the screen with a thing that is teleporting and landing hits, but barely, because most of the time, you're too slow to get that swing in there, and you're like, I'm not going to avoid that damage, I don't care, I need to heal by hitting you enough, so I'll take the hit and keep fucking chasing you. It's such a sick feeling for a boss flight. So you are partially correct. Much like Holo Night, this game has various different parts of the game that are the real game, right? That is definitely the most to your taste, which is a fucking fighting game.

Like, it really is actually just a fucking fighting game. Like, there's a bunch of boss fights in this game that are just one-on-one shit fests. I mean, you're Dragon Ball fighting all over the stream, you know? But you're doing it for real. Where it's like, no, let's literally have a Devilman Cry fight. Sure. and there's a couple others but Team Cherry says

you know what else is just as much a part of a game fighting a gauntlet of unique enemy compositions Yeah yeah yeah there's that Which it seems to be people's like primary complaint is that the gauntlet actually does them in way before the boss does There's one gauntlet in the game that I'm pretty sure you haven't done

Which is like Is it? Oh fuck Okay okay Is it the gauntlet is it the gauntlet above or

the gauntlet just above the where the clock clock dancers are so the upper left of those guys yep I did

I did that I did that it's fucked it's super it's so insane because that is supposed to be like a final

boss style enemy it just happens to be an enemy gauntlet instead of that was insane because it's a full gauntlet

And then it just decides to keep going. And then what normal... And then it just decides to keep going again! And what normal bosses do, or what normal gotlets do, is they'll give you a wave of easy enemies to heal off of. But here, they just decide, no, heal off of the regular ones. And they're all doing their evasive screen-folling bullshit tactics. And the only thing was I came into that and I went, I beat it and then I thought I beat it. And then it was like, no, we're not done.

And I was like, go fuck yourself, right? um and then i kind of wait i on my first run i got to the mini boss and then like when i beat that mini boss we're going to be golden it's like no that's the fucking exactly exactly right because the mini boss and it's funny when you see a big fat like club fuck because there's a couple of boss archetypes and there's and like one of these in silk song and in hollow night is the big fat club fuck that just goes burr blah jump bah and occasionally um you know um And you're kind of like, I know the deal with you, but you're just going to be annoying. You're going to take a while in your hair box.

Your hitbox is going to be massive. And your hit box and your hurt box are like enormous. And they cover like a huge amount of the screen. I really hope I don't have to fight two of you. But the clue for me was earlier in this zone, you showed me that I can acquire a cog work fly. And I went, that thing is fucking busted. Ah, yeah. I went, oh, okay.

I see what you're doing here. I think you wanted that in preparation for this. So I went back to go pick up a fucking brick, a craft metal that I didn't have. Then I got the cogwork fly. Then I ran back in there with some poison ass claw cogwork flies. And the situation changed. That is a build.

So you use that with architect. And you do cogfly plus tacks plus like the saw blade. And if you're willing to just blow all of your research. All of, yeah. You can just auto-delete. You can turn off entire encounters, and I saw that, and then I immediately stopped using it for the whole rest of the game, because there were fights that I wanted to fucking see, and that thing just fucks it.

So I don't have the sawblade, and I'm not going back to the architect, because I just like the Reaper move set too much. I've gotten too used to it, and I tried to do a couple of... I moved around the game platforming with the architect and was doing okay. But when it came to boss fights and precision, no, I want my sure you can. There is, um, I have a sneaking suspicion. You have six of the seven, right? I have, uh, I have Hunter, Reaper, Wanderer, Beast, and Architect.

Oh, okay. I have a sneaking suspicion that the last one will appeal to you. Okay. I mean, the gigadryl breaker is sick, but it's not worth the sacrifice of every other move that I really like, you know? I also think that the sixth one will greatly appeal to you.

The two that you don't have? Yeah. And sometimes I clutch out by popping a heel and then getting enough orbs from getting aggressive in that glowing buff to, like, keep me alive, you know? so not so like I'm okay with that and in fact what I would say is if I do a boss and I use my tools and don't get significant progress out of them in like two tries I stop wasting my chips you know because um I went in and I fought um for example a brood mother right where the screen

is just filled with fuck um and that's okay big flying bloated gross fuck is another boss type right And I'm going to say Brood Mother goes into that category Chef Lugia Right Where That boss broke on me like four times Whoa

The hatch has since fixed But they would like Shoot off the screen And just never come back Huh Weird, okay Yeah it was a weird It was a weird

And then it doesn't die Wrinkle on it By the way Wully I'm going to send you a map Picture with no other information whatsoever Just a picture of the in-game map Because you totally

missed the starting point for the sixth crest. Okay. Okay. Gotcha. Yeah, there was some shit. He has a picture. That's the wrong picture. Yep. I also realized

I missed a... There's extremely missable secret rooms including... Crazy secret. Crazy secret. So you see the photo I said that just has a little red circle? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That is the start of it

I see Okay It is way the fuck in there And it's in a place you don't want to be So the point where my brain Decided to give up on the like Oh you missed it too bad Was there was a secret room

Apparently inside one of the chapels That shuts that you can never go back in Once you exit I don't think that's true Apparently the church of the architect had a secret room in it and then you leave the room and then you leave and you can never go back in

there's the nothing will stop you from getting 100% ever hmm okay well um oh okay it's people are saying it's lore only it doesn't count for completion uh okay okay that still sucks

permanently permissible right so so all this I'm like yep okay mentally I'm just going to to let it go Um, but the, uh, what was I saying? Yeah, the, the attempt goes and you fight one of the big fucking fly, fly gross fucks, brood mother, fill in the screen with shit going, blah, or the, or the chef. And, um, in the case of the brood mother, it's kind of like, okay, avoid the swoops and avoid the butt slams and do the thing.

But then you fight the chef version and the butt slams are meant to trick you because it has like three startup animations, but two are. identical you know and then you're like oh what's the trick here what's the bit and the bits like you can run underneath it but every once in a while it does the same fake startup animation so fuck you you know and then you get infected and gross um and uh yeah with those ones i'm just like go cog flies fuck this bullshit oh yeah and they do but what ends up happening a lot of the time is like um if i don't see like a phase two begin or something that i'm like okay never mind go and clean, learn the movement, do the whole bit, right, and

pull them out. Then pull out. Then pull out the bullshit if you need to exactly, you know? Um, because yeah, there's a couple of those. Yeah, hmm, you're really going to like the other two crests. Because, but there's a couple of those definitely where I'm like, when you see face two going crazy, but you can, but again, but you can see it, right? There, it took, it took a while for, you know, I talked about it with, um, um, the grim troupe in the first game

and then the same thing for the the judge you know the last judge and um with this when fighting the um the fireworks dancer trobeio troveo yeah yeah that's a good example of like oh shit phase two is going crazy most like maybe the best NPC in the entire fucking game that dude so cool so cool all right um you're watching you're watching face two go crazy But you're like, this is all, this is all smoke. I can see it. I can move. I can get out of the way.

Yeah, there's a tell before every single hit. It's not that. That's it. And so it's not that bad. As long, you know, and that's training you for like the, yeah, seeing the trajectories of things and being out of the way before it starts, you know. I love those fights where you're just, your eyes are tracking something blipping around the screen and faking you out and reacting to, are you, you're positioning.

I just started to look for empty space. Instead of tracking any of his stuff, I'm like, what part of the screen doesn't have shit in it? I'm going to live in there. Yes, something that my brain, a feeling that I haven't felt since like Icaruga, you know, just like get to this part of the screen,

invert the colors, right? So that was great. I properly appreciate the feeling I'm getting off the first sitter. And another thing too is So I've gone through A massive highlight of that game And boys it's fucking hidden as shit

Yeah It's the fuck in there It's way in there And like the process of beginning That fight also properly feels like Is this the super boss Because there's all that buildup I know

But the fact that there's all that buildup And the fact that it spits you back out Right in front to be like hey we know Is like Hey I'll tell you who the fucking super boss of fucking soap song is it's the fucking final boss yeah okay okay because i'm like they're being really build-upy like you know nice about this and warning and i'm getting a big dramatic feeling about it but so far it feels extremely sick and fair you know um but i want to say when it comes to the silk

skills so now that i got i got you know you have your spear you got your thread storm i got cross stitch um and the sharp dart now and i i was a like, oh, sharp dart looks like it's going to get me out of the situation that I don't want to be in and do some damage. That sounds nice. But, you know, and then I did the parry for a while, and that felt really good, but then the damage isn't amazing. And I kind of was like, I don't think anything is going to beat Threadstorm for me. I just went back to it because I realized that, like, there are many times in a boss fight where it's a fuck this button, right? and I'm like,

I don't want to, I don't want to, so, you know, so Threadstorm does the second most damage of any single hit in the entire game.

Okay, if you, if you, if you mash it out and you combine all the hits into like one damage number, yeah, it's,

it's like super, super, super high. Um, the Perry is great because it's not as much damage as it. Oh, you can mash.

Yeah, you can mash it. Oh! Oh! Yeah. So the Perry isn't as good as Threadstorm. damage-wise, but the Perry's also free and is also defensive. Like, you can hit the Perry

is super fucking easy. Yeah, yeah, yeah. There is two more, and one of those has very high damage, and also will always hit what you're aiming at. Okay, okay. So that one

is, I was flip-flopping between the last silk skill and cross-stitch, like back and forth, back and forth, back and forth, but I feel like the kit needs something that deals with mobs right and a surrounded mob threadstorm is so good especially the only problem i had with threadstorm is that sometimes you do it and the fucking enemy just moves yeah yeah and you're like oh but threat blew it but like threadstorm was the game changer for

that super gauntlet when the um when the the the bot fly summoners come down and i'm just like shut up leave me alone. Threadstorm deletes all the bot flies and the dude you're fighting, right? Um, and Threadstorm was the difference between loss and victory against the Super Beastfly. Because, um, Super Beast, uh, Super Beast Fly or Beast Fly, uh, the moment I caught that a full Threadstorm kills off one of the ads. It became nothing. because chasing the ads down became the priority of that fight and they look small

but they take four hits or so which is just like one too many to be annoying you know and a Threadstorm deletes them and then that made it like a way more manageable so yeah I'll see how it goes

but for now I'm just like I'm relying on it for the leave me alone button also big I appreciate appreciate the, now I get the face you made, but like the fake out on Mount Fay was pretty solid. I'm like, I'm going to come back here what I get. My various suit. No. You're going to fucking do it now.

You're going to do it. You're going to do it. Yeah. You're not, you know, like, oh, there will, you will get, you will get one, but it's not going to be when you expect it, you know? So that was like, oh, I misunderstood what the challenge was here. And upon doing so, it's like, Like, okay, this is actually a, this is a proper platforming challenge for the game. So that is the hardest platforming challenge in the entire game. I loved it. There's one later that's pretty tough, but it's, it's nothing compared to, like, having the fucking being timed. Yeah. But it's crazy how much the harpoon saves you, you know?

Yeah, well, that's what that shit's supposed to teach you. That whole sequence is like, did you know, that we put the harpoon in this game, and it's fucking incredible. It's crazy. What's funny and stupid about platforming, though, unfortunately, is I had a build that involved the blade skirt and... Yeah, I know, you got to turn that off. I also did that.

I also have to go back and turn it off. It sucks, because your blade skirt is activating the bounce flies that you need. And, like, the ones that blow up full of, like, piss and shit in the bile water, like, you can still bounce off

of them while they're starting to explode. So if your timing is right, then you can, but it just makes it harder because sometimes you miss and take damage instead, you know, so you have to take off the blade skirt for that shit. Yeah. And it lets you do really cool combos, but not when platforming is necessary. But that's, yeah, that's pretty much, that's pretty much it, you know. That's where I'm at. Real, real cool. Like the, like the flow of this. And, you know, some of those bigger enemies that you're running into that. that like there's those clockwork nights that are just like, no, I'm just, I got a shield up and I'm going to be defensive and I'm going to block everything. I'm going to be really annoying. Find your way around it, you know.

Occasionally you have to take some of these little shit seriously. And I still, I don't. There is a disproportionately high amount of regular enemies in Holo, sorry, in Silk Song that you have to take seriously compared to almost any other video game. Yeah, no, there are times

where I'm on final pip and I'm like let me just go kill a couple of regular grunts and I see like the clock grunt that like slashes running forward and I'm like nah fuck that thing right that's not going to be easy life you know and a couple of them where I'm just like

nah uh fuck this I'm going back to the bench you know um good stuff good stuff on that I'll uh I'll check back in that game's great and I you know what I think I think that I think that his difficulty is, like, genuinely like, like, I think it's perfect for me.

Man, I think, I think the biggest, I think the single biggest difficulty thing they did to change that game, they already did, was they changed stage hazards from doing two pips of damage to one pip of damage. Okay, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's, that's big, that's big. There were a weirdly high amount of situations in the game where an enemy hits you for two hearts. or two masks into a stage hazard for two. Into a stage hazard and then getting out of the stage hazard gets you hit again and like that's six hearts. That's insane. Absolutely bad shit.

Yeah. Totally. I'm going to say that like no, the bile water stretch was like that was like that was obnoxious and like. I'm glad it only took me three tries. I'm really glad it only took me three tries. Um, I don't know if that water method was intended or not, but the fact that it's there is a, like, absolutely, nah, go fuck yourself, um, with this fight. So I only found out about it afterwards.

I just, I just did it the, the, the straightforward way. Okay. Because it feels like the kind of, because it feels like a fight where you'd want to almost like, maybe there's a room upstairs or you can drop something on him or, you know, like, they won't, like, maybe there's a way to delete this. bullshit because the fact that you want to hit this entire zone up and it's the most annoying zone and you you can barely traverse it um and then healing is a problem and the enemies are the worst ever yeah they wanted to want a deep nest and they totally did god man beyond obnoxious just too much um and and mandatory so anyway um how much of that game is mandatory honestly it's it's actually fairly complex as to what is and is not mandatory

well I did as much as I thought I could until I realized I'm like the only place left that was obvious that I didn't scrape out um was the cold area where I was like my brain was waiting for the game to give me a warm vest somewhere elsewhere it will yeah so but that was the that was when I that was the little the thing I did last because I was like wait you're really not going to give me a thing to deal with this threat, you know? So that's, upon investigation, it made more sense, yeah. Why would we give you something

to deal with the cold when you got your fucking balls in your pants? Like, that's what that game feels like when it talks to you. It's like a big fat Italian guy telling you, why did you find your fucking balls? I'm like, okay, Jesus, con, oh, fuck.

Also, stop yelling. A chakra? is insanely beast She's so cool She's so fucking Just like Yeah I'm already here

Don't worry about it You know I can do it And then when you meet her in Bawater She's like wow this place sucks I'm like What the fuck What the fuck Shacra

How? Actually how You know Yeah good stuff on that Okay So then Did a little Sponsored stream

for Ghost of Yote and I took a quick gander into that show and I was like wow that really is a motherfucking ghost of Sushima sequel holy fucking shit because like at a distance that looks like the same fucking thing

like that is like a sequel ass fucking sequel well don't call it that that's that's not supposed to be that that's not what it's so the follow up to that is that I then immediately saw a fucking news article that they were like, yeah, all the other Sony studios spent like $400 million. Yeah, we spent like the same as we did on Sushima. It cost

like 60. And I'm like, ah, they're fucking smart. Yeah. Because trees and grass look the fucking same. Um, uh, official, uh, officially, uh, ghost of Yote is the next chapter in the ghost of Shushima, um, world. however it is not a sequel nor not and it is not to be referred to as such uh however okay well you can say that i understand that and i respect it but me that is a sequel-ass motherfucker sequel that is that is a direct follow-up using the guts but then they're like what have we made this nicer this nicer this better doing this up and like i i'll be down for that when it comes out on pc in 18 months um so first off uh reggie came back over and it came in

and, you know, said hi to baby and was immediately rewarded with unearned smiles and joy. And it was like, yo, what the fuck, Reggie? You didn't earn those smiles. What do you do? Why are you getting, why are you getting all that glow? That's crazy. Unearned glow immediately, you know, right timing, right place, right vibes. That's it, man.

You know, and I was like, that's, you know how hard we got to work to get one of those little coos, one of those little giggles? That's labor. The ideal scenario is that everybody gets the coos and giggles and smiles. Like, I was at the grocery store this morning with my little dude and his stroller, and I had to get cat litter. And so I rolled up to the cat litter, and you know what happened? I'm, like, standing there with my hand on my chin, right? I'm trying to figure out what kind of cat litter I want to get for the cat. And he looks at it goes, hmm, and starts tapping his finger to his cheek, hmm, hmm, and then when a lady said, well, aren't you a cute little shopper?

He went, hi, and did a smile on a wave. There you go. Doing it out here, fucking killing it. That's what you need. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Good stuff, good stuff. Yeah, yeah. But right now, right now it feels like joy is.

um the joy economy is scarce um stonks are extremely rare they're high and hey you know what you know what i after having a tiny little baby i discovered that being a tiny little baby must actually suck shit it's actually terrible yeah autonomy no food appears to be random you've never side is terrible you've never done this before you can't you you you don't even know that you limbs and you learn how to poop your own butt your neck can't do anything it's a everything is loud everything is bright everything um you know sucks also beforehand you could just get food instantly into your stomach and be fine and now you have to like wait for it now you're you're crushed by the existential weight of consciousness i don't think that's happening yet

and then now also you feel cold what is this cold that happens no Existing is suffering. And you can't even put words to the concepts that you're feeling. You just know that it's unpleasant and it's happening. 100%. It's hard being a baby. So when you get a smile, it means that much more. The smile economy is precious.

And when a thief, when a swindler of joy walks in and he gets some utterance smiles, I'm like, how dare you? Those are mine. That's my. My joy. Anyway, no, he got the, he got, he got, he got, uh, good vibes right off the bat. Um, and, um, and yeah, well, I mean, shit. I, uh, I, uh, I also assume that, uh, you know, the, the, the thought process, uh, was, was pretty on point in terms of like getting this YouTube streaming shit going.

because I tried that out and as I discussed last week it seemed like it was going okay until I discovered a problem which was we streamed the first 20 minutes just fine and then starting out the pre-scheduled YouTube stream the second time it didn't work

and then I saw you ran into some similar troubles on your end so I want to talk about this so I've actually been like poking at this for months oh yeah okay so when you said hey, I'm going to YouTube stream. That's why I was like, oh, yeah? Hi, yeah. Okay.

Because I was like, because I said that and then I'm like next day, next day, Pat is streaming live on YouTube? I'm like, oh, oh, is he then? Oh, is that what's going on, is it? No, no, no. Okay, part of the story is going to sound really, really familiar, right? Okay, part of the story is going to sound really familiar. Yeah. So a couple of months ago, Paige was like, you should fucking stream on YouTube. You're fucking dumb. You don't stream on YouTube.

And I'm like, Jesus. I don't know how she's like figured out you're smart I'm like thank you so I'm like okay I'll take a look at doing it because she's right I should be I should be multi-streaming right so I've been poking away at it but I was like kind of anxious

because it's like a lot of fucking technical bullshit it gets a lot more complicated I go to the YouTube studio live thing I'm like I don't know what the fuck is going on on this fucking thing and like I remember like earlier this year where I couldn't fix my fucking

YouTube channel's account and you had to send me like this fucking detailed guy to how to fix it, which I really appreciate, by the way. That was incredibly helpful. No problem. So I'm like, I don't know what I'm fucking doing. So I'm poking at it. I'm looking at things, but I'm not like putting like a major serious effort, right?

It's just like, boop, boop, boop, right? And then you're like, hell, yeah, I'm going to fucking stream on YouTube. I'm like, well, fuck, okay. Wait, shit. Okay. Willie knows what he's doing. I'll try it. And if it fucks up, I'll just ask you next week.

Okay. How to fucking fix it. But then the interim thing happened, which means that if you are getting into the technicalities of YouTube streaming, that means Dad Asana also now all of a sudden knows everything about YouTube streaming. And the interim part of that was like, Dad Asana, do you know anything? And like, here comes screenshot after screenshot after explanation. Gotcha. Gotcha. Gotcha. Yeah. I'm like, okay. Yeah. I mean, look, that was not requested. That just automatically has. happened and that's cool that's appreciated you know um but yeah what what really shows off the difference between our two personalities dramatically is will he's like i'm gonna start a youtube stream on my sponsored show and i went wow i bet he really knows that it's going to work

he must have tested the shit out of this to make sure that it goes like it goes super solid on the youtube thing and like and then it fucking died i'm like oh man okay so not. So in my opposite version of that, I'm going to break the subreddit robot by fucking turning it on and off again 15 fucking times and leading to a situation

where people are like, what the fuck is he doing? Twitch just keeps telling me he's streaming over and over and over and over. Yeah. But now I know it works. Now I know it works for sure. So I broke it the night before at 4 a.m. you know, at one point, but then I figured out the public

issue and then kind of went to fix that part so the rest of my tasks were private however everything was of course working and but what i discovered of course of course it wasn't until it doesn't until it would didn't right and it turns out the one scenario that it doesn't that it's not working under which um was exactly what what happened last time is when you start a stream on youtube and then stop one and then start again fairly quickly, it doesn't know what to do. Yeah. I did notice that. Right. And so that's where the YouTube stream was going to nothing and nobody was able. I also discovered that it really like the thing that I'm using, it really doesn't like trying to hook into upcoming streams. Yeah. Oh,

that's a problem. He doesn't want to do it. Yeah. But like the upcoming streams part, it seems like it's better if you didn't just stream something else, right? Yeah. So my solution to that, was just to fucking not do that right right start the fucking show once a day okay so i'm i'm i'm looking for the i'm i'm looking for the the ability to hook it in but um i also wanted the ability to play my music and remove it from yeah that's a case use that i don't have to deal with because i don't do that exactly so that was the problem because there's a there's easier solutions that create other issues where you know everything's going to get flagged on youtube aggressively so i found the solution to that too, but

in the end, it's just this whole new batch of problems that you have less control over, and you start to realize, oh, Twitch is actually better at a couple of things here. Twitch is better at this, this, this, and that. Yeah. And YouTube is better at this, this, this, and that. Yeah. One of the weird ones was

I set my fucking bit rate to like infinity, like, my bit rate was because I have better internet now and I have the ability to up, you know, a much better, I have a much better upstream. And I set my... It's at, man. With the bit rate.

I said it to 20,000. Yeah. And for some reason, people were still seeing Sushima in 720. You know what that is? No. Because you didn't join the Twitch broadcaster beta and get your account flagged. What? Oh, my God.

Hold on. Let me send you. That's crazy. Because I'm like, people are going, yo, your Sushima stream is in 720. And I'm like, my bit rate is in. So here's what's happening with that. Your bit rate is not actually broadcasting at that because that's way, way, way above the Twitch bit rate, right? So when I joined the Twitch Enhanced Broadcaster beta and ran tons of OBS beta shit for like a year, right? My account got flag for, you know, whatever. So in stream under OBS settings, if you have your Twitch account logged in, it will have multi, under multitrack. video will say enhance broadcasting

it optimizes your settings. You turn that on and it just it fucking deletes all of your bit rate settings. Okay. And just starts using the bitrate settings that it actually uses at the maximum. So Page's account because she didn't join, it maxes out

at 10K, which is higher than the 6K most people have... Most people have... Yes, yes, yes. And here's the trick. In order to get the 20K bit rate, You might actually be in. I think they might have democratized it.

In order to get the 20K bit rate, you have to put your export at 1440P. If you're doing 1080P, it will give you 10K bit rate. If you're doing 1440P and you're part of the enhanced shit and it allows the turning on of the enhanced shit, it will give you 20 so that you can actually hit the 1440P. And as I've been using 1440P for like four months now. Yeah. That's all you need. Everything looks immaculate.

Everything looks local. it looks super fucking good because the enhanced stuff all the other steps you were talking about I had those going but yeah it's that

yeah that would explain it and it'll work right there you go and turn on the enhanced and then ignore the other settings they don't even matter anymore right

here's the here's the kicker though on YouTube if you want to stream at 1440P you got to broadcast that shit with like five second delay and I'm like yeah okay I would rather have the video look ten times better

than have the YouTube chat be a couple seconds closer to time you know and then there's that whole other thing with like hey Twitch is like you can't make your YouTube stream look better than ours and you know that's why you're just

doing out to both simultaneously yeah and Twitch is also like don't you dare fucking put up a combined chat on your fucking yeah yeah all these things are like we have a combined chat feature and Twitch is like I will literally fucking murder you yeah

Nope, nope, so, um, in any case, in any case. And then you go into the YouTube membership's part of your earn tab and you're like, I don't know how the fuck this thing works. This is complicated. Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. A whole other, a whole other thing going on there. So, uh, yeah, more to discover. But anyways, um, got that, got that set up.

And then fortunately, it didn't map you genuinely for like giving me the confidence to give that a shot for real because I knew that if I horribly botched it, I would have somebody reliable to actually ask what the fuck I was doing. Well, you got it going, you know. Even though that didn't end up happening, like, you were getting your foot in the door? I'm like, okay, I know somebody who has a brain that has their foot in the door. You got it going. And if somebody I know I can rely on, if I'm like, dude, I don't know how to make it work.

Thank you. But in the end, it didn't matter that it didn't work for me because the only thing officially that I needed was the Twitch stream. The YouTube was a bonus and then later on and edited things going to go up. So that was fine with the sponsored part of it. game itself I kind of was like okay it's been a while I'm down for some more Tsushima

but you know the idea of the feeling in those games the feeling of Sushima was certainly one where you could hit a point towards the end of the open world where it can overstates welcome and you'd be like time for me to just beeline this story right absolutely you know

and here I feel like they spend very little time getting you into the meat and potatoes. It's crazy how fast you get up and running with everything. Um, in fact... Because in, in Sushima, it was like two, two and a half hours. Like, you were like four missions in before you got stealth kill. Um, so what was the recent, um, uh, team ninja samurai game with the, with the, with the, with the flying? Um, fuck, I forgot what it was called. But that was like an open World Samurai game, but it was just like with the Neo flavor instead. Rise of the Ronan.

Rise of the Ronan. Okay. It was wrong. Thank you. So Rise of the Ronan is a pretty close example because when you start that out, I got to the end of the session before the game felt like it was beginning to open up because it gave me the gliding. Yeah, it gave me the glider and it gave me like a couple other objective places to go on the map. And it took like, yeah, three to four. hours to get to that point. It was a really, it was ramping itself up. But immediately after the tutorial in, in Yote, you kind of get your story set up and then it's like, okay, cool, now just go. And you have a lot that you can do and you have a lot of freedom in your abilities. And it's pretty open right off the bat. So I thought that was pretty cool because it's almost treating it

like a sequel where you're like, yeah, we know that you're picking this up, you know, perhaps after the other one, so don't worry too much about it. Maybe you actually know what the fuck you're doing, person who put a hundred, I mean, let me even look, hold on, let me even click the thing. Ghost? Yeah. Maybe you know what the fuck you're doing, guy who spent 53.1 hours

in the last game? Sure. Hard sell on the concept because, yep, you get your classic tragic backstory and a bunch of fucking assholes that you write down all your kill bill list. and I don't know if you saw

the end of the intro but I didn't see anything I saw you like running around the open world I'm on that looks like a ghost so light spoilers for the intro of Yote you mark down the names of every one of the people that wronged you

right and the people you need to take your revenge against and you had like again like a kill bill list it's like a like a strip on a band and the intro is you taking out the first one of the fucking you know

of the group the the Yote 6 as they're called and upon taking out the first one you pick your sword up bloody from their corpse and you wipe their blood over the name you've written

on the fucking classy that's classy style oh it's the sickest shit you do the blood why off on their name and then put it away you know what I'm like ah you got me you got me in one concept it's the hardest shit it's the hardest shit right off the bat beautiful um and then um yeah it's doing stuff that uh I think like you're started to see it you you mentioned like

ratchet and clank with it's about time jumping back and forth between sequences there's a little bit of that or like your time jumping while standing in the same place between a couple places to look at your memories. That's pretty cool. And, you know, beyond that, so far, so good. Nothing really to say except I unlocked dual katanas and you used them for specific enemies. So you're not going to be picking your weapons according to what you think is stylish, but you'll be switching them up according to the thing you're fighting because everything has a counter. So style switching is...

Can I fight things that don't match the weapon? Because I actually really fucking hated the styles in the first. game where I'm like, why even have this whole fucking thing if I have to switch to match every single enemy? You can, but you dominate them when you rock paper scissors it. Okay, then I'm just gonna pick the weapons I want and just fucking deal with it. Yes, because I like dual wielding, and I think dual wielding is super cool and as a- I want to fucking rock the Odachi the whole fucking time. As a Musashi fan, I think it's rad as shit, right? Um, that, and this is also the right era because we're talking about the Battle of Sekigahara.

So I'm like, yeah, dual wielding should be available to me in all circumstances. Same thing for, I got to go get a Qasari Gamma, which we can apparently get, which that fucking lights my eyes up, because that's a weapon we do not see enough of. Shoutouts to Neo for being one of the only games that even bothered, you know? But dual wielding is meant to beat spear users. It's not meant for single katana users. so you can use it to fight the wrong thing but it's going to be harder because they're able to defend more

and you have to wail on them and because this game's like poise system is like sometimes enemies are like they're not really taking damage they're kind of just blocking everything according to what you're using at them it doesn't feel as satisfying however you can overwhelm with one weapon

totally I just noticed that when you switch to the dual wielding for the spear you absolutely overwhelm and destroy spear users and then similarly going back to single sword fighters with your dual wield they're like no they're not you're not getting any damage in on them so you're making it harder you know um i prefer one style switching is is open-ended ultimately but i have to see how bad it gets when you start fighting other enemies because for regular grunts that's one thing but for brutes for example when you're mismatched with the weapon or mismatched fighting against the really heavy enemy. It just takes

long and it's annoying. And there's archers that are, they're not do-showing, but they're do-showing, because it's not the Mongolians anymore. But, you know, you're like, the Japanese. You're fighting the Japanese. Yeah, you're just, you're fighting assholes roaming the countryside. Is that what's happening? She's

not Ainu. Okay. But she's hanging out with the Ainu. And the Ainu are really cool. Because like, because like Yote, in its historical thing, is like, you're way up north. And it's like, wow. Japan fucking sucks.

They're rolling in. Oh, it's like the total opposite of Goats of Tsushima. There's some northern assholes doing some shit, and there's some lords that are trying to get power, and you're trying to get your revenge, and the Ainu are chilling. And you go sit and chill with them, and like, I like that there's a lot of them

as a part of this in the setting, because, yeah, I knew are kind of like, I feel underrepresented as a group in a lot of stuff, and it's always... There's not a whole lot of them left, so that would be the reason. And it's always cool to see this like completely parallel different culture from Japan that doesn't look or have the same color, clothing, textures, shapes, sizes, or sounds, you know, but it's still Japanese and it was there like ancient times, like first, you know? I remember like one of the first times I even encountered or saw any of that in media was Samurai Champleu appropriately enough.

was you go there was an i new character in that that it shows up towards the end you know um so that shit's cool um and in uh speaking of champlu you go hit those options and yeah this time around it's so much better so kurosawa mode i could actually see myself playing what the fucking phenomenal so for one the right much better use of gray and much better use of blacks and whites. The contrast is fixed. It's not just desaturating the default color of the game. It's the right. It's actually using, and maybe, maybe it is, but the assets were more distinctly balanced against each other. But for a game where colors in each, each boss gets introduced in a different color

zone, because you know how beautiful the environments are and that's a big part of it, you want to feel like you're not missing out, you know? and yeah they have a much better better balance with the black and white this time around also the thing is there's counters that are a glow of the enemy is going to glow a certain color and then that's going to be a certain type of dodge

certain type of counter or parry and now they all that's the thing is like it's still too early but I think they visibly look different because I think one glow has like one glow has like a little X on it the other glow is more smoky so you have to recognize the texture

of the glow type of thing but more to the point the sound changes and all the audio gets put through a grainy ass 1950s filter the music sounds way more old-timey and a lot of the pauses and audio shots

like when they talk in a way that's more stilted it makes it feel like an old movie a lot I don't know if it was just luck or not but like the moment I turned it on I went and did a side mission, which involved Atsu, the main character, walking into a bar with a bunch of tough assholes getting drunk, being shitty to her.

And the whole walking into the bar and everyone's looking at you at the door and you're taking your big heavy footsteps and then you look around the room and everyone's like, ooh, who's she? That all felt perfectly like an old movie. And the sounds and noises playing were all like right on point. And it feels like the game has been balanced around you using Kurosawa mode for the whole thing if you want to. Phenominally better, you know. Second, Takashi Mika mode. Didn't notice a much difference with it, but the main thing it does is it puts more blood out. It makes it goryer and kind of has the camera more zoomed in for action segments.

So it's a little more like in your face with the over the top. Gibbs and squibs and so on. I, yeah, didn't notice it as much. More blood and mud is what they say. I'd have to play more to see. But that's what it says. And then there's Watanabe mode for Shinichi Watanabe, which is straight up samurai shampoo vibes.

So as you're riding around the countryside, you got a little lo-fi hip-hop track. And as soon as you get into fights with different samurai or whoever, whatever's going on, the whole thing is blessed with this Nujibes-like soundtrack that changes the mood entirely, but it's beautiful. And for a game that's so visually gorgeous, where everywhere you turn the camera,

you're looking at a wallpaper, having a vibe that adds this kind of like hip-hop track to the back of it is exactly what I want. You can also combine, so you can combine Kurosawa mode with Watnabe mode and get the, like, Nujibest-like tracks over the black and white and that was incredible too so really cool um yeah just off of the first session so far i'm saying like great job with that um and right and like some of the early

abilities i'm seeing here too where um last time around i was making a big deal because you get to hang out with that fox you chase them around and get to the the little fox points you know and stuff um this time around there's a wolf and that wolf and that wolf is the main character and the wolf is like ready the wolf is not just a series of side quests but like there is like wolf points and um wolf like like do you mean like upgrades or do you mean like location okay so you pause the the game and then you pull up a uh a character list because there's a bunch of allies you have and you're called the wolf pack and the main character is standing there and in front of her is the wolf and um

Um, you can have abilities where, for example, every, there's a chance when you get downed that a wolf will come and pick you back up. Are you fucking serious? There's a chance that when the wolf picks you back up, it stays in the fight and fights with you. We got, we got, we got, we got second chance wolfing out here. Second chance wolfing is a feature. And the wolf is your co-op partner to stay in. in the fight. It's super badass. It's great.

You know, it's the fantastic Mr. Fox Wolf, where every once in a while in the distance, the wolf just holds up a fist and goes back into the woods, you know? And you're like, I don't know when I'll see you again, but you do your own adventure, Wolf. You have your own game.

That's great. I love that. Yeah, yeah. So that vibe is immaculate to as well. So great, great stuff right off the bat. on on on on on on on shishima definitely if you've uh played if you played sushiima enjoyed it and it's been enough time that you're you're ready to to jump back in this is this is this feels great so far so i played sushima on its pc release which means it is actually too recent

for me so i'll play yote on its pc release where it will be just right also do you know what ghost of yote feels like a game it feels like a game that is wildly incompatible with a moving child. A stationary child, yes. But a child that can move,

no. Tricky. Tricky. I mean, I would say anything fairly large and open world, you know, unless you're willing to get bite-sized experiences that are less satisfying than you'd enjoy. Like, I have been playing

just a crazy amount of 2XK and Hades too, not just because they're new. Yeah. Not just because I love them, but because when everybody in my house is asleep and I have 90 minutes, I can, I can fucking get some games in. Yep. Um, there was a point where in the middle of a 2XCO match, I had to, uh, attend to getting a pacifier back in and make sure a baby was chill and just had to kind of stand still there.

And bro, I, I have, you're about to encounter the most incredible type of ranking in fighting games? you were going to get like man i'm playing matches i'm dominating and you know why you're dominating because i had to get up and just walk away from my fucking well i have to say that the person i was fighting in that match when they saw me standing still and it was the middle of the set they waited they went what's going on punch punch okay and then i got the baby settled and i put them in the bouncer and then i picked the controller back up and they were like and then I moved a little bit and they're like oh okay cool let's go and I was like yeah that happened a lot when I was you cool when I was like climbing to master with bison

but like when I was in diamond four with M bison in street fighter six dude I was like definitely master rank yeah but I would just have to fucking get up and walk away from my matches all the time and just fucking lose so my lose rate was like 50 50 but when I got to sat and complete a match oh dude it was like 90 10 it was crazy love I love that there's still people that are like the otter's still out there you know absolutely the only problem sometimes you come back and you're you fucking dead and you watch the replay and like wow they just

went in they just saw you weren't moving they're like yeah now the only thing is because yeah because again the points right the only thing is that sometimes when you're in the same room you can be like hey sorry you know dad break or whatever baby baby was fussing or

that you know you can get the message across but if you're not in the same lobby then those ghosts are gone forever and you just you know no one will know but i will know and i'll appreciate it so that that's cool um but anyway um that was yote that was uh silksong we'll get yeah little we'll get into 2xKO proper because there's a bunch of stuff going on with that there's a bunch i did a lot of work this morning in getting a conversation ready for 2xKO okay um so we'll we'll jump into that right after this but i will say um yeah i think

think what we're going to do is we're going to start back up slowly next week i was i man i i remember when i asked you like two weeks ago when you were going to come back and you were like i don't know and i was like i want i want to know like i actually want to know just like everybody else like i'm so curious i don't coming back with well so the thing is the thing is that the answer is i legit was not sure because it's depending on how we're doing over here and you know some days are than others, but like... You're doing great, is what you're doing. But what I mean to say is, thank you.

What I mean is so, like, I don't want to leave Punch Mom, you know, feeling particularly, like, overwhelmed if I can still jump in there with support for this, this crucial period of time. So I'm going to be starting back up slowly, and I'll be coming back up next Monday. We're just going to do a chill stream. So what is that? That's the 13. yeah it's 13 yeah we're just going to be back next monday we're just going to do a chill stream

we're just going to chill chat so i more than anybody you probably know know exactly how you feel on that topic you have been blessed with a series of circumstances that most people are not where you can go oh shit and get up and just run away if you're absolutely actually required that is most people don't work at home and so can't hear their wife go go oh fuck need a hand and just go yeah right you are blessed in that respect yes and depending on whether it's a yellow or red level of of emergency poop then if it's a yellow i can run off and like reggie can still if it's red i'm going to hit that be right back button you know if it's um If it's filling up and just for some reason, there is more poop than there is baby.

Also, the other thing is like, you know, you guys obviously split your baby, like your baby focused hours. Yes. And it's like, well, while you're streaming, those don't count. So just grab them as soon as you get off for four hours. You know, like, just you figure out how to even it out. So my brain is kind of mush when I'm done streaming, but like. Same here. But luckily, babies.

don't give a shit as long as you don't drop them fortunately yeah hey dude so so I had a conversation with someone recently who is a parent

and they were I was talking to another another parent and there was a moment I don't know if you've had any of these but it was it was it was it was when basically we're talking about when to meet up and stuff

and it was like okay, um, yeah, we can meet up at this point and, you know, this is going to go according to, like, um, you know, how we, basically I described them like, okay, so when I get off the night shift, you know, and, um, punch mom tags in, then we'll be able to make it over to, at this time, you know, and then the person was like, upon meeting up later, it was like, so what do you mean by shifts exactly? I was like, you know, when, like, like, mom goes to sleep and then I'm on watch and you're up. Yeah. And I feed and I do that so that there can be an extended sleep and we can all stay sane, you know? And they're like, well, okay, like, and then kind of turned to like mom was like, I was around for like stuff, right? When, you know, we were needed and then mom was kind of like, eh. Oh no, you've caused a fight

You caused a fight! And it was like what you mean You mean like you completely are like You're just the only one watching And I was like yes Because that's Okay hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on hold on Let's be fair let's all be fair

Let's all prep let's all prep for this okay Most people don't work at home Most people don't have this shit dirt bag A hundred percent Cushy social media jobs A hundred percent go work in a fucking factory a million percent

10 hours and if you come back and you've been fucking you've been fucking you come back from the coal mines and you're just you're done

you're cooked I know everybody's family situation but you actually do know this person's family situation yes and are they working

in the coal mines it was not the coal mines but it you know but all this to say that it was like oh no

I did not mean to cause an issue here but just the simple concept of like here let me take over for a while was like not a thing I have not encountered that I have not personally encountered that though I know page for a fact has encountered some variation of that and I know that she's encountered um like people talking about like I don't know what to do about birth control and they're like she's like what do you mean it's like oh, well, we already have the three kids and I want to go on birth control, but my husband

hates it. And it's like, oh, that's a different, awkward conversation, isn't it? Yeah. Yeah. Hey, there's science. There's options. There's a lot of things you can do these days. Do you want to know what one of the best shitty feelings you I don't know, you might have had it already.

I've definitely had it a couple of times. Show me where you're going to, where are you going to find smug where there should be no smug. It's like an evil joy in your heart because you've caused a problem, but you didn't do anything. You're strollering, right? Maybe grocery store, grocery store is a big one.

You're strollering, and you have just the cutest little baby in the whole world. And a couple in their early 20s walks by, and the lady looks and goes, oh, my God, what a cute baby. And the boyfriend's like, whatever. And you look at her reaction. I have just caused a fucking there is a fucking fight that is going to happen

in like one hour I'm like oh man yeah now here's the thing is what I oh man that shit's wild and that is unfortunate

I just ruin that fucking dude's day just that afternoon is probably toast however I have seen I have seen people and friends go from that energy in their relationship to the sudden and complete 180

where dudes like actually I change my mind let's go I want it now right away and they kind of hit a mental time limit or they do the math where they weren't doing the math before and yeah there was my mind yeah and and just changed my mind

I went from one day to the next and I saw a cute kid in the in the grocery store and I went oh what a cute kid exactly there you go there you go right so case and point here's another one that we both know

right just overnight right that was a thought so it's kind of like you know you see that energy change and you're like oh well okay, that fight is potentially a day-ruiner

but also there's a chance that you know, fast forward who knows whatever a period of time and someone might just be like, yeah, you know what? Actually, never mind, you know? And then I'd say too as well that the there's always that big old study that we

talked about where it's just like what is your what happens to your average happiness, you know? And I think I've quoted it a couple. I think brought it up a couple times on the show but like it's the one where um on average your immediate happiness shoots into the dirt the moment you have a kid because of the amount of stress and bullshit you have to go and deal up deal with and it's pretty it's tough it drops your happiness drops off monumentally and then each kid it's on a discount the second kid

is like much less than the first in terms of happiness lost and then each one after that is like negligible negligible however then it immediately grows as you get older and all of that turns into immense happiness I am so much of a happier person than I was three years ago as so this not even close it's not even close so the study is more about the long term for like you know later in your life so to speak but that's there's a there's a there's a mountain that grows there versus the maintaining your your your happiness without that drop off point and then as you get older, you start to regret it more, right? That's basically what the study showed, which I was like, huh, interesting, okay.

So, yeah, you eventually got to find your middle point on that intersection where it would drop off and where it would start to increase and go like right around here. And I'm going to also calculate how old I want to be so that I'm not playing tag with a toddler and I'm, my back is getting blown the fuck out and I can barely walk. There's a lot of foresight considering that, like, most people are just like, I want a nut. That's how most kids have. Sure. And then, and at, I want a nut and then, oh, give me a Pokemon, you know?

But, but yeah, it is a kind of insane thing to just, like, walk by and see other couple dynamics, like, get lit up with, you know, like, fucking. blue, yellow, purple. Oh, absolutely. It's fascinating. You know, just by your sheer existence. Anyways, so, yeah, tune in over on Woolly versus next Monday, where we'll be starting back up and then the regular schedule is not returning just yet, but one day at a time. I'll let you guys know how it goes week by week. And, yeah, the goal is to be multi-streaming there too.

So that'll be Woolley versus on Twitch and on YouTube. And we'll get Reggie back up in there and see if he can steal some more smiles. I bet he can. Hey man, can we take a quick break? All right. BRB. All right. You ever hear just like a shotgun, diaper filling poop that jump scares you?

no had one of those yesterday as far as i'm concerned my baby doesn't even go to the bathroom oh oh wow okay well uh we got loud rips going on perfect angel and it just poofs away into dust that's crazy we've got like fireworks happening localized in in diapers down here and uh literally had a jump scare of just a bong like it was like oh my god um And, uh, I will say that like, you know, as I've, as I've described the ability to faultless defense and, and, you know, use a diaper as a shield a couple times, uh, my heart has never raced more than, uh, during, during bath time, I heard a little fart. And I was like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. No, no, no. No, no. Please, please, please, please. Now. No. No. No. No. dude what's the worst that can happen you're already in the bathtub right you're already there just just it it can get so much worse it can get so much worse you know so much worse you know so thankfully false alarm but boy anyways um yes so speaking of

second chance wolf combos that's right how about that so I apparently Brazil riot so apparently the idea that it's all

on purpose the way they leak things is kind of kneecapped by the fact that apparently riot Brazil just leaks like literally everything they ever do so yeah it turns out okay so there's two things right one the official to

X-K-O reveal marketing strategy appears to be yeah we don't give a shit just leak that shit and put put shit out there and whoever sees it is going to go wait what and you're going to be yeah and that's it which is texted you about this and it was like well because people like us are following that shit but most people aren't but I think people just see the official story later but let it let it let it simmer amongst those who are keeping up with it moment to moment and I think that's great I think it's been really funny actually works yeah and i think they did a create some ground swell rick leaked out right warwick the bear wolf leaked out and and and it would leaked out super hard and super fast

like it was like definitive there's videos of the motherfucker like wow i'm looking at him i mean someone had a screenshot of his foot just yeah went out there the videos came out like six hours later it was yeah right away and then of course of course there was like prior to that we talked about the the data mining you know where they pulled the voice lines out. But then there's just the, so that's the super unofficial, you know,

we pulled the information from the game files. But then there's just the official riot Brazil who's just going, I guess, who, where, where,

we're putting out shit that no one's supposed to see and we don't give a fuck. And apparently this has been the case for all League of Legends based. For absolutely everything they do. Yeah. So I felt really bad for them.

Loose Canon. Loose Canon studio. And then I think, felt really, really fucking bad for them yesterday when Warwick is the fucking massive stinger of their very expensive CG animated intro. And then I stopped feeling bad for them because they did manage to keep the important thing. The biggest detail. By the way, he's out tomorrow.

He's out tomorrow. Secret shadow dropped character on launch. And I went, oh, this actually worked out well for everybody. Everybody got what they wanted. So the leak confirmed his existence beforehand, and everyone was like, oh, my God, we know who the next character is. Exactly. So we know who the beginning of the next five is going to be. And then they're like, yep, yep. And then you get the big intro, which dropped, which is pretty cool and proper expensive, which as to be expected, because look at their music videos. I was like, this better be cool. And yeah, it was dope. And then. And then. There's a lot going on in that trailer. It's really funny. But, but, but yes, the big thing with this is, Timo will be dropping as will Warwick. So the, the, be two new characters right off the bat. So we're going straight. And also, that's three weirdos

in a row. Three freak picks in a row. And we're straight to 11 on launch with that. So good job on that. Plus a big detailed post. Congrats. We hit the freak ratio, which I think we said was between 25 and 30 percent of your roster has to be freaks. Hey, there we go. That's 27 percent of the roster is freaks now. And then on, and then the other bit is by giving you access to, you do the tutorials, you get one champ token, and then you do some of the missions and you get a second one. So by giving you... Here comes Timo Warwick. So by giving you two champ tokens that are easily accessible, you can make a team of

anyone you want right away. So there's, there's, as a duo's game, you're not being restricted from any particular pair, which is a really smart thing mathematically, right? So one, that big expensive trailer. So we're just shipping Ari and Echo now? Like, their homies are more... A different game shipped Ari and, you? Yasuo.

Oh, interesting. Okay. And then I saw a comment where someone was just like, lore accurate, Yasuo jumps in, tries 2V-1ing, fails, and then warwick gangs and loses the round for his team. Absolutely. That is a peak league interaction. So what's the start? Okay. Yasuo has been crazy fed.

And he's a hypercarry. And so he is, he is effortlessly 2V-1ing a fucking fight. Is Warwick a jungler? No, Warwick is a jungler, yes. Yeah, okay. And so right when it turns, Warwick tries to fucking gank from the lane. And then they both just fuck it. They both just fuck it.

Completely. Because the two other people actually work together as a team. Yeah, yeah. also I find it like it's cool because you have like you know they're not willing to just do I can see that they're not willing to just do an intro cinematic with cool music and showing off the characters they're going like hey fighting game fighting game yeah they want to have a little bit of a story going on right they want to have an emotional thread yeah so here it's they have like the definitive moment of both of those characters backstories presented yes and echoes trauma and Ari's trauma and they're both they're leaning on each other and they both find the common grass and they're and they're able to make a friendship or more and come together as a team. Yeah, and that's really cool because you're like, oh, that's great.

They're the official poster canon team for this game. All right. And now Yasuo, who I was not under the impression was this big asshole, is just coming for them and swinging and being not only lore accurate to League of Legends

with the 2V1 aspect, as you described, but also because he's such a shit being the top tier character in the game, I'm like, fucking get his ass. Fuck Yasuo. Did you see the fucking... He got touched. I said, first of all, I think Yasuo 2V-1ing the opposing team as he is like the most broken character in the game.

He's a fucked up. It's fucked up that they put that in the cinematic. He's a villain. He's absolutely the villain from his balance. But also, then the day that that video game came out, sorry, that that game that video came out, he was hit with. multiple pages of nerfs. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

He is like, this is, they took a bat to that dude. Yeah, so Echo is also incredibly strong and incredibly powerful and sitting on top of this list, but the power gap distance between the two

is very notable because Echo is annoying and is a lot better than the rest of the cast, but Yasuo had no weaknesses. He had no... Yasuo had no weakness. He was a full,

completed, kit-ed-out character that could do everything. But so back to this cinematic, though. And then at the end, you get blitz and Allowie jumping out. Hey, we're weirdos. Yeah, yeah. Here they come. Very cool, very nice cinematic, nice

music. When I see the ties that bind, which is the name of the song, the first thing I think of the Street Fighter 4's shitty anime, right? Because that's what it was called. So, you know, a little flashback there, but I, I'm looking at this, like, the expensive, you know, music video for the game, and I'm immediately like, oh, there's no shot they're going to

miss out on the cash that would come from putting all of KDA into this game and having the costumes available. And then we'll have more to talk about that exact thing in just a second, because I did some math. there's no way they're not going to sell Akali and then everybody else and then put the costumes out immediately. I don't know if Evelyn will get in, but Akali is kind of like a sure thing. So what's the popularity like between Akali, Ari, and then the other two? Okay. Akali is also more fun to play.

Are the other two like more obtuse or are they? Super, super, super old. And so is Evelyn, but I don't see a lot of love for Evelyn. Okay. Because, yeah, that's free money. You sell those outfits and you put the pack with them in the stage and some music or whatever the case is and just go, right? That video has a lot of, like, deep cuts. It has one super deep cut in particular.

There's a voice line between Warwick, sorry, Warwick and Echo, in which he says, rewind too far and you'll end up in my teeth. um so in the fight echo rewinds to his earlier position and then warwick instantly fucking grabs him and like he should not have rewound out of being fallen over because it fucked on him uh that shot with the trauma past moment and then the fallen girl and then all the different reaching attempts yeah that's from his uh his league uh bio that shot of how many times i tried to save her and it didn't work was super good. He does get her in his bio, but it takes 18 attempts. I was, I, I, I, I, I, I, so I don't know much beyond just the arcane bits, but like,

that was probably the coolest part of that. I thought it was, I love, I love seeing that shit. Some of those attempts are trash, too. He's like way off. Um, it's such a, it's so unfair because the titles they get, like, you get Vye, who's the Piltover enforcer. And Echo is the child that broke time. Yeah, that's pretty good.

You're like, that's not the same, man. Come on. Some of those titles are way cooler than others. Yeah, Vi should be called the fucking Narc. But that different character would also have that title. That title works for someone else too. That title would be Caitlin's title. She's the biggest fucking Narc around.

Hey, I'm satisfied because not only is Vi here, but then they showed off among all the cosmetics, because you best believe they watch. that money. They also showed off lesbian breakup. Yeah, yeah, the fucking Pit Fighter outfit, baby.

Drag that mascara. Like, the leaky goth breakup vye. And I'm like, that's the vi I want. It was half an episode in Arcane and I'm like, oh, look at this costume

they're selling. It was such an obvious costume. Into the Arcane costumes and the monetization of this game because the arcane costumes that they are sending in that selling in that bundle

are so much fucking better than the default costumes, it's crazy. They are like... The quality. They are like they should have been the defaults. I don't give a shit. Echo's mask and the pipe and all that and the cold

oh my fucking God, dude. I didn't, so that's the thing is I knew Echo as the arcane version first for before all the other stuff. So I thought that was just a look and I this would be I think it would be a huge mistake if they put the non-league versions of these characters out there as primary same thing for Warwick making the wolf instead of like the big dude or whatever whatever the fuck that was but um no but yeah making those costumes look really really good is very very smart because the only way to make money

with the game like this is to entice people with the cosmetics um yeah you know and to throw some some currency and tokens and so on in there. Also, I, so I like that, like, the drip feed of, like, here's Timo, here's his stage. Here's a couple of arcane costumes. And then here's Warwick's foot. Is now, like, here's, like, another four sets of outfits. Here's, like, Crime City. Here's another background you didn't see.

Here's the Warwick stage. There is now, like, an entire humongous pipeline of, like, stage. outfits and cosmetics that we've been previewed for um that are like a co effects uh taunts i want to say like an entire season or four worth of stuff has been previewed um and absolutely and they have they fixed the problem that we have with three fighter six is like man i would actually love to buy more costumes and they have figured out a way to fix that and that is charging three times as much for those costumes making the costumes a part of a big pack that's expensive yeah no i so when i so i had to do this this morning obviously i had to do this clown shit so my time was highly limited right so when

two x ko came out it immediately broke like that just fucking crashed its shit off and then i'm like well fuck and then i when i was able to log in all i did i didn't play even a single fucking round i went to the store and i went to the battle pass i took screenshots of everything okay And then I ran the numbers on literally their entire monetization platform so I could compare it here. Okay. And how much of a fucking rip off the game is or not. Okay. Because the sticker shock on that arcane costume pack being $140 fucking dollars plus tax Canadian.

Oh yeah, you didn't know. You didn't know. Ah! Dude! That shit costs $165. oh wow okay 140 times 114 is equal to it cost 160 dollars i thought okay you did you what did you think um and then uh what did you think what did you think it was going to be no i i i yeah i mean i was again, I thought you were talking about

like, you know, $20 for the skins and or so, but like there's plenty here to talk about because I saw that there was the like conversion of, um, because there's you know, points that you earn, there's the whatever fight money. Um,

and then there's like a three week period before you spend real bucks. Let's just, let's just start this from the top. Okay. There are three currencies going on in the two XCO, video game. There is real money dollars, which no one needs any

explanation. There are credits. Credits are the free-to-play currency that you would earn from, I think you get 10 to match, you get 250 for a daily challenge, and you get 750 for a weekly challenge of which there are three. If you were to do all of your

dailies and all of your weeklies, every single week, you would earn approximately 7,500 credits, A character costs 10,000 credits. So in a week and a half of free-to-play playing, you would earn enough to get a character. However, you cannot buy a new character with free-to-play currency

for the first three weeks of their life. Right. You cannot do it. They are sectioned off for paying customers only, which are for real money dollars, which includes buying the most expensive version of the Battle Pass. Or a token. Or a token.

Or something called K.O. points, which is their fake money currency, and K.O. points are in U.S. I mean, I have that all written down here. In U.S. currency, a K.O. point is approximately $5 for 500 K.O. points. Okay. Yeah. So I... It would be $100 for $11,500. Right. So, and then totally. Character tokens are also parts of certain battles, certain battle passes or certain bundles, exactly. So there's other ways to get those two. Yeah. So, costumes cost 2,000 points, which means costumes cost 20 USD. Right, okay.

Colors cost approximately 5 USD. Stages cost approximately 5 USD. characters cost approximately $10,000, but are obviously the thing that you should spend your free-to-play shit on the most if you're not buying things because they're fucking characters. So this... Hold on. I got more. I got through the whole fucking thing. The Battle Pass has three versions. The Battle Pass, sorry, four versions. It has free, which includes basically nothing, but it does give you a Timo skin. It has a one that's $10,

one that's $20, and one that's $35. These include... the normal battle pass your battle pass plus 10 levels and the fanciest $35 battle pass includes a skin unique to itself which is the Warwick skin from Arcane okay so it's expensive yeah yeah it's really expensive this is this is your bundles include chaos points and character unlock tokens to muddy the value, but then I mathed it out. So the $140 starter Ultra Fuck Pack or whatever comes with three costumes. It comes with eight character unlocked tokens and 5,000 fucking credits.

Okay, so that is basically a premium edition. That is future of the game. Okay, so you're buying the costumes there, and you're getting eight future characters. So I ran up the value of the character unlocks, and I ran up the value of the KO points, and it makes the bundle, it makes, the way that the math on it works is that the,

if you buy the fancy $140 bundle, the costumes add up to negative $40. Okay. So buying the character passes, cash, and buying the KO points cash, would come up to

180 Canadian. But if you buy the Super Star bundle, it's 140, and they throw in the three costumes with it. Right, right. And eight characters and eight tokens is, I mean, more than... It's a year and a half. That's a year and a half, exactly.

Yeah. Yeah. So, yeah, you're basically, so what it is is that bundle is actually the season pass plus the exclusive stuff. Yeah. And that's separate from the battle past stuff. So they created a situation here where if you're going to be spending, if you're going to be buying every character the day they come out because you don't want to

wait the three weeks. And if you like those costumes and you're going to be spending KO points on cosmetics that you want right now, that is actually, I'm going to use air quotes, the best value. For somebody who is buying in onto XCO, that thing

is the best value. For a normal person, that's why the battle passes are a enormous step down in cost for people who'd like to spend $20, like $30 every couple of months

they offer a bunch of costumes like the I didn't do the value on it but like you get four costumes in the battle pass for 10 bucks which puts those on 250 compared to fucking 20 so the battle pass is actually 10

to 15 times more valuable than any given costume in terms of the game's own in economy also the costumes for Arcane you cannot get anywhere else other than the most expensive bundle. And it is time limited. It will leave in January. 2026, I thought. I saw December 31st, 2026. Yeah. Yeah. So, it's next year. It's a full year. It's a year. It's

there for a year. Yeah. So sounds like the, yeah, so the monetization plan is ultimately what, are you somebody that wants to pick and choose an occasional purchase of, of, you know, buying whatever, you know, small amount is? Or do you want to hit one of the battle past kind of gatch a time? lines not gotcha um what's the word i'm looking for well anyway but like do you want to be the medium exactly like every one couple of months spend dolphining in dolphin plus or free or minnow you know uh or you can be the i don't care just give me it all and then give me all the future as well type of thing um now that's it sounds like if you are playing regularly and i guess like just interested in your character and you know some of the colors and or exclusive bits

you can keep up with that for the most part oh i actually ran the math on that also so for experience and for for um for the free tokens so you get if you do all your weeklies and all your dailies you get 7500 of the free to play currency which is enough that if you just start saving up on the second week of a season when the character comes out you will spend one day playing and immediately unlock them okay that is of course if you're the type of person who can, in your heart, wait 21 days from the release of a new character to play them online. Yeah. So there's, there's, I guess, again, this, this monetization plaid is one that asks you to look in the mirror and decide what type of person you are, right?

Do you just care about, if you, do you only care about the character you care about, and that's it? Do you want to focus in on that and the specifics you want for them? or are you somebody who likes the overall collection, you know? I was seeing how, when I was playing rivals, for example, I kind of was going like, oh, well, I don't use Venom, but I want that Marvel skin because that Marvel versus Capcom skin is cool, right? I see myself being, in this case, this is the one where I'm like, oh, well, first of all, this is a fucking game that I really enjoy.

So I'm going to definitely highly lock in on the characters I care about the most. and anything extra for like a character I don't really play unless it's really really really pulling at me I can probably avoid it and not give too much of a fuck so out of this entire thing if I can actually make my personal objective or subjective judgment whatever by far

the biggest rip in this store is individual costumes they're like 20 to 25 fucking doll for one costume for one character. It's fucking nuts. Buying it piecemeal. That's like two of the battle passes. Right.

You have to fucking be like, I need Crime City Terrius now in order to fucking fall for that. Did you see what the top-up like amounts were? Yeah, I have a picture of them. Hold on. When I say I went in to do this,

I fucking meant it. The top-up amounts are This is C-A-D, okay? So I know most of our listening audiences from the States. Our USDA. You're going to have to adjust these down 40%. This is a C-A-D. It's 500 for 7 bucks.

It's 1,000 for 14 bucks. It's 2,200 for 28 bucks. It's 4,500 for 56 bucks. It's $6,800 for $84, and it's $11,500 for $140. Okay. So it's... $7 is the lowest. Seven Canadian is the lowest, which is probably five U.S.

It's a hundred KO points is a buck 40. Yep. That's how it works. Yeah. And then as you scale up higher and higher and higher, it says bonus. Okay. Okay. Oh, someone in the chat says that the rotating shop is currently different for different people.

Hmm. That's nefarious. Hmm. Interesting. Okay. That's, I wonder what is what would happen before? is people would like go to the subreddit and people will oh my god the alien skin is back out come now right what determines that you have to check it has to be you

valerance and league both do that oh that's fascinating so what is it is it is it just user random like not random is it just what determines is it area is it like don't know probably your user ID user ID huh um yeah so so how do with the free to play fighting game, how does the heart feel about cosmetics, right? What is the, what is the, what is the, cosmetics are trash, like straight up. I mean, beach Darius is not doing anything for anybody as far as I can tell. I don't, I don't know. It, uh, me, you know, same thing for that, that weird vi that I saw that was like, meh, but then I saw like the other vies looked sick. And I think every allowee costume I saw looked really sick. Tech allowee looked really cool.

cool. Some characters just kind of can't have a bad costume because their base design's too sick. I'm hoping that Tekalawi has like metal tentacles, mechaticles. Oh, that's great. That's great. Yeah, they're cybernetic tentacles. That's very cool. Okay. So yeah. Also, I checked in an earlier trailer that different costumes will alter the effects and visuals of some supers. Okay. Yeah. Well, already the um the the the free final color that you unlock which is the green and and black ones make your effects also a green or different color yeah there's vise like punches change from the the regular you know blue or so into like a special color um so yeah this is just like we didn't have a true look at what the free freemium kind of fighting game would look like i i would

say, you know, you got these multiverse kind of previews, multi-verses previews, or we talked about, like, you know, fucking tech and revolution or whatever, but in this case, you're getting the pricing. I would also say you're getting the pricing after years of development, you know, where this is showing up late. You know, I wouldn't even say that. This is actually fairly similar to League and Valerance pricing stuff. Is it?

Yeah. Okay. I also ran some more math because I'm, let's compare it to Street Fighter 6, which is the easiest possible comparison point, because people are looking at that. that bundle and going what the fuck okay 100 usd for the arcane starter bundle is the equivalent of buying two years of street fighter six character passes because you get you get uh eight characters eight tokens for it right so it's like buying year three and year four that's uh 30 bucks twice in usd for street fighter so you're up to 60 and getting enough currency for two and a half costumes

in street fighter six that'd be about 20 dollars and getting three costumes for three for free which is about $20. So that particular bundle with the things you get in it evens out to the equivalent in Street Fighter 6, but only once. And then you get to go,

but I got Arcane. I just tried to fucking call a game car Arcane. I got 2XCO for free, but I had to pay 60 for a street fighter up front, which is basically how I think they arrived at those prices. I think that bundle was designed to hit that exact math of it's the same as,

Street Fighter, but the game was free. So the wild part, so not the wild part, the part about this that I guess is ultimately, you know, what we're looking at is this is a standardized model that is in other riot games and other genres for a while. Which has proved successful.

But it is it is not like other fighting games, right? And so the reason for that is because other fighting games aren't completely free. So we're looking at really adopting non-fighting game models of monetizing completely in this particular case

and seeing if it's going to work, you know? So it's, how much does your heart yearn for the cosmetic? How much does you do, you know? The problem with this is that Riot did, in fact, go for a way cheaper, way less mentally manipulative pricing model on one of their games. And that was Legend of Rune Terra, their card game. Oh, true.

That ran it straight into the fucking ground. Everything was free and everything was like giving you too much. Everything of value was free and could easily be acquired. And then the skins were, they were like pricter than you'd think. But they were nice. But no one bought them because who gives a shit? I just want the cards. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

They were too generous. So it's this one thing where it's like, hey, you know what? Let's let's be good. Oh, we're broke. Okay, so let's not be good anymore. And I fucking... Okay. There's another part of this that, well, this is...

I think this is more me, so I'm, you know, prepare for incoming woolyisms. I've described in the past how when I see a new game of some kind and the camera is zoomed out third person with a tiny little character. and little colored bullets are coming out of them there's a level of fuck that I just don't give immediately like you see the little purple lines next to my head go right and it's just because no matter what the genre is

no matter how fun the game is I wish I could see shit up close and really appreciate the art right I just you know and so and this is in the best of cases I fucking love me some Hades what a great game but in a lot of cases when I look at a League of Legends I'm like

it's so tiny it's so far away I know it's the game but it's based on whatever so when a cosmetic in a game like that comes out I can easily see myself giving way less of a shit because it's a tiny little guy versus a cosmetic in rivals or Overwatch or whatever where it's up in your

fucking face you're staring at it more so it's third person you're looking at your cool costume the whole time I think if every skin in the world was the same value that fighting games would have the most valuable skins objectively because in a first person shooter you don't actually see your character and in a mobo you barely see your character right third person action or third person game like rivals you can see it the whole time um and in a game like a fighting game there's nothing to do but look at that skin so i really do like care about that aspect of it and yes i know it's a me

issue and i'm okay with that i like the cool art i like the cool designs i don't care as much when i can't appreciate that. Now, if the genre is one that's like still super addicted to me regardless, then that's going to be a part of it. But it's also, you know, there's an element too where I'm like, um, when card games have cool effects on the cards and stuff, that's dope. But I'm

also somebody who doesn't have like a strong memory, memory for playing magic and other stuff with other people, other people might. Therefore, the actual interface of playing with cards is not a special to me versus seeing two characters doing shit on screen. So the value of seeing those skins and what they're worth in a game

where they're much smaller makes me give way less of a fuck and I would even say there's a smaller version of that we're in multiverses the characters are much smaller because it's a smash-like game and you don't you still can't

appreciate it as much as you could in a larger fighting game context or a third-person action game you know so weirdly I feel like the genre changes the value for these types of things

a skin in a in a Call a Duty game or so where I'm never going to see it, except on a replay, feels really, really low desirability to me. So, I mean, at the end of the end of the day, after running all my maths, I'm like the to anyone who actually wants to play and enjoy this game, play it free to play entirely. And then if you feel like grabbing one of the battle passes, maybe grab one of those because everything else is complete insanity. Yeah, well, so the way I always feel when it comes to anything I'm playing that's free and, you know, where the grip of FOMO has not been pulled and I'm not feeling like an addictive call. Although in this case, I was definitely like, ah, man, I could go for some matches online right now, right, when it was in the downtime. But regardless, anytime that's been the case, I think my thing is like, if I'm enjoying the game and I'm really and I'm liking it, I have no problem giving it money because I would have been willing to spend all. the full purchase if this were available to me.

There's a lot of cases where I am, if a game is like, here you can buy a retail version of this, but it's essentially like a retail bundle of things for what is ultimately a freemium game. I'm, I'm happy to support that if I want more of it, if I want it to continue existing. So, you know, there's a part of me that's always like,

yeah, it depends on what I'm, what my willingness is over whatever period of time is, you know, that I'm playing it. And if time passes and I'm like not playing it as much or whatever the cases, and I'm like, yeah, I don't really feel like investing as much anymore. But I do also feel myself able to mostly resist the call of the cosmetics. You know? I mean, we'll see. Because to their credit, if they're going to charge $20 for these cosmetics, they better look really good. And some of them look really, really good. That Timo, the gorilla Timo, the one where he's a little soldier, that one looks fantastic. It's great.

Cool. I don't have, outside of Timo being a troll character, I don't feel like I need to, I don't care that much about collecting Timo skins or whatever. Probably not going to play him that much, not a big, you know, I don't have any desire in me there. When I see, there's an, oh, yeah, hey, look, there's a sentinel color for Blitzcrank. I'm like, I want to fucking buy that color for Blitzcrank. That's really cool, even if I don't play Blitzcrank, you know? That's not going to cost too much or take too much time, but there it is. So it's just got. Somebody in the chat said that, by the way, it's weird there's no $60 version that equates to like a regular game that you can buy of the starter bundles. There totally is. There's a $60 bundle that gives you eight character unlocks.

Oh, the retail quote-unquote version. It's the version that protect, but it doesn't get you those hot ass arcane skin. Okay. Well, that I think is a good idea. I generally am like, yeah, when you're, if a game is

but it gives you what is the equivalent of purchasing it if you wanted to. But it doesn't give you the owl echo and in fact actually shows a picture of regular jinks and echo on the picture. And the picture is slightly smaller than the really expensive one. So in doing all this math, is you doing the math also you calculating your heart? No, I actually just want to know. okay okay so this being the first fucking free to play

fighting game the thing that we've been talking about forever and ever and ever and as the sequel to riots game that didn't use fucked up monetization the one that I cared about Legend of Lutera

I was so I'm more interested in how the economics of this game works than I am playing it and I really like playing it this is fascinating to me I think it's gonna work I think it's going to work I think it's going to work

100% going to work I think I think that sticker shock wears off and then you just go I think people who want to play fucking gold Warwick have already bought that fucking skin if you're telling me I don't give a fuck I'm just going to play Warwick all day

if you're telling me it already worked in league and it already worked in Valerant and it didn't work in Roontera then I think it's going to work here the other thing I will say and this is to their credit I ran the math on it and if you do

if you play the game regularly right you can get um about 30,000 of the free credits a month right and a character costs 10 but you capped at 12

yeah you're capped at 12 so they want you to spend it right they want you to spend it on colors and stages and shit like that which can't all be purchased with free to play currency so if you are a person who's like I would like to play this game and never spend a dime on it that is absolutely completely viable

but you got to play but you have to play and when that care and when when fucking Pike or fucking Nautilus or Tom Kench or fucking Talin or whoever the fuck you're simping for

super hard forever comes out or barred or you know and you go oh fuck I don't want to wait fucking three weeks yeah yeah yeah yeah you just got to be strong

you gotta be strong and so and this I saw this as well with like punishing Grey Raven and so on games where it's like all these types of games where you're effectively like

you can get the thing but you got to fucking play and you got to play you got to jump in there and stay on and so on like Dante was free and punishing Grey Raven if you got to a certain level

of the of the monthly event and the mission that they have make it actually really easy for anybody that plays somewhat regularly fighting games to get a free character every single. Pretty, I was not expecting to see that many missions. There's like

22 per character or so. By the way, I said there's 30K free credits a month. A character only comes out every 10 weeks. So by the time the free character rolls around. You're over limit. You'll actually have about 75,000 credits. So you actually had time to

spend it on a dozen costumes. sorry, but a dozen colors in all the stages by the time the free character comes out. The reason the cap exists, by the way, is because league players got so much of the free currency that everybody who played league during the first couple of years will never have to buy a character ever again,

as long as they fucking live. I remember, yeah. And Valerent went too hard the other way, and then they changed it to this with the slightly, with the remainder. Yeah, they've had years of data to put this all together and see what'll work best on the plan.

So, this is, kind of, it's fucked in the sense that it's like, I know, I know these moments, because I remember the moment when we talked about the Mona Lisa photo of like the difference between Brood War as an expansion pack and DLC that was made as part of the base game being sold to you. And over time, the slow cooking of the frog pot turned up and we just got used to it. And now you're like, please, okay, we know this is what's normal and we've all gotten used to it. Please don't be abusive about it. And if you're telling me here now that you're like, um, the version of events where things are too nice on people leads to a dead game and the version where it's ridiculous up top leads to a living game but you have to choose within yourself to not give in to that but it'll ensure its survival then it's like we're on the cusp of other free-to-play fighting games that want to kick in to this type of model that are IPs that are less popular than League of Legends will need to be even more egregious and abusive and pricey on this

shit and the data is apparently that this is the way it works if you want your gate to survive get away with that fucking $100 USD thing is because Arcane Arcane is attached to it and Arcane is with people that yeah non-league fans this might as well be the fucking arcane fighting game too exactly it's nuts and i'm i'm somebody who knows arcane more than league so i'm like yeah i see it the person who's like a fan of that netflix show that's like oh yeah this thing cool you know so it's it's this really complicated thing it's a really excellent it's a really excellent um view of exactly all the bet costs and benefits and pluses and minuses of a free to play game in general um they have made it absolutely

reasonable to play this game forever and never spend a dime. Like genuinely, I've done the math, I've looked at the missions, I've played the beta for weeks, about how the missions work. If all you want to do is get every new character and always be able to play, wait a little bit, save up the currency, it's super easy, blah, blah, blah.

However, as you do that, the game will be actively manipulated, you every time you log on by showing you everybody else with their cool-ass fancy costumes and hit effects and special KOs and taunts and shit like that. And then they will have the

then they'll have the little piece of little baby crack which is the free battle pass which is going to give you a skin every three months. And then they're going to be like, well it's only $10 for like the real battle pass would give you four skins and like all these I don't know. I don't know. Put your credit card information into the game.

Yep. I don't know where the limits are between giving a fuck and with cosmetics versus just playing base game and sticking with it and enjoying that, right? I don't, it's, because it's personal, it changes for everybody. I know that you can make it, you can make it especially exploitive in, in certain ways. One of the ones that comes to mind, which always I find, like, is bullshit no matter what, is if you cannot buy a specific thing that you are looking at. at the only way you mean like the arcane warwick skin which is exclusive to the thirty five

dollar battle pass no what i mean is a loot box what i mean is a loot oh yeah no there's no i mean i mean a thing where i mean a thing where you have to roll multiple times to gamble to get the the thing you're interested in yeah no i find prefer crazy high prices than the than the fucking dice roll so that's what that's what i'm saying right is when that was a part of the Overwatch thing and a bunch of these other games and so on, that was way more upsetting and abusive to me because it's like you're, you're, you're not just tapping on FOMO, you're also tapping on gambling addiction with people and going to getting into this whole realm of like, go fuck yourself.

You can't specifically, you can't even be the person who says, I intend to just spend on one thing and I'm otherwise going to stick with just playing the game for free. I find that to be bullshit. So when I'm looking at this and you're going like, okay, you can. you can target the specific thing or whatever the fuck it's like is it copium where you're like yeah I guess it could be worse in this way but then also I don't know how bad it gets in the in the league sense I don't know how often rotations come out where you're like this exclusive skin for this league character is also going away in like four weeks so fuck you get in there

do it now otherwise never I also don't know as as skins get added to the game that rotation, which is personal to you, is going to get, if you miss it, it might be, might be months. So is, is there that thing where it's vaulted forever and like, yeah, like, it's going to take you three years to get a chance in it again or whatever, right? So the easy solution is to put a really, really, really hard line in the sand and don't buy costumes, only buy the battle pass or, you know, like, don't buy costumes. Costumes are the rip on this. where they're going to make most of their money

by far. Yeah, I think, I think you got to, you got to, you got to do right by you on it ultimately, you know, if this is the way it goes and this is the way that the, the, the genre plus free to play works here, and it's been doing this for a while,

and it's just, it's a, it's an evil that is, um, profitable enough to keep things going. Um, it feels bad for that to just become the regular, but I also know that I How much do I like this fighting game

And how much do I want to how much what I pay for it And how much to support it? This is one of my favorites This is big I'm happy to pay For a deluxe edition of this game And enjoy it because it's one of my You personally, Wully

This discussion is actually worth more Than you would ever be able to pay them Because we're providing them free advertising Well there's that element it. Which means that it should be noted, by the way, that while I think the team behind Project L slash 2XCO is a nice group of guys and they seem really cool. I found out yesterday that ComboFiend designed Warwick. Ah, cool. Okay. Which means he must have a lot of cool functions. That Riot is insanely evil and super horrible. But as we said, I think last week or the week before,

I can't get into the I can't buy products from Nestle discussion every time we talk about a game at some point I have to pull back to a degree it's infinite it's infinite it is crazy and we're going to talk

about there's a this exact discussion in the difference between the dev team and the people in charge of pricing and marketing there's a it's the street fighter six comparisons you've been making are pretty apps it's such a good comparison isn't it There's a lot.

There's a lot to be said there, you know? Yeah. But I will say that I think in terms of putting out the content, showing you what the quote-unquote, what the cosmetic roadmap looks like, and also going, surprise, the next character is here for free. Or rather, the next character's out right now is a really good move in terms of getting the roster back up,

which was the biggest part of the discussion. You know what? Okay. And they'll be a 12th in January. And being really cavalier about leaks and just being like, yeah, who gives the shit? This is what we're working on. And putting out in the shit post of a Timo trailer. Is, yeah, cool.

Good stuff. I like that. I think that's a good way to win back, you know, players and people with that and to get things up faster to the state that they want to be at with this game. I were never, ever going to see the data. but damn it would be really interesting to see the metrics on on the money you know um i mean you might see the data well i i like you you might actually see the data i strong pretend that you didn't i bet you the fucking devs don't get to see that shit like i know they have to see the data because they need to know what characters to make more skins for

oh you don't think that's a person in a boardroom pointing at an eye pad going, this is what you're doing this month? No, it's not. Lee has shown that certain characters get wildly preferential treatment, and it's because people buy them, just like Chun Lee. But I also, I, but there are many, there are many studios and deals where basically the actual, the back end numbers are kept secret from the people making the thing.

That, you know, and leveraging power is always in the hand of the publisher holding the numbers, you know. I think the cannons are looking at a spreadsheet on one monitor and a network activity graph on the other monitor, and they know right now whether or not the game is cooked or successful. Okay. I think that conversation is happening right now. This special premium skin gives you access to rollback three. your character when using this skin can connect to special servers that are even better hey did you know that if you spend two hundred and fifty dollars on this bundle and use this costume it'll commonly match you up with people a full rank below yours

uh fuck yep yep there we go um So all that's interesting And in the downtime as well There was some offline tournaments Because the client was still playable offline While they were updating So some people were doing some locals And all the characters are playable in training mode

If even if you don't have them So you know We got to see the logistics of what does this look like When four people are sitting at a station You know everybody's shaking everybody's hands Or cross or this or that or whatever And yeah It seems like it works

The, you know, the profiles that you have on your start.gg account are not going to be necessarily linked in a team. You'll just have to forego those stats. But, you know, for the most part, four chairs around the setup means you can roll through that bracket and do your thing. I'm curious, I don't know if you can switch off, though, from one to another and be like, okay, next I'm going solo, juggernaut, get out of here. know, as the, um, from match to match or whatever the case is, you know, I got to go to the bathroom, you start, do the play the first round and juggernaut solo. I'll be back in a bit. Wow. We'll see. Um, okay. And was there anything else on your side? Yeah, Silent Hill F, I'm going through New Game Plus. Um, it is absolutely stellar. The New Game Plus editions are

like subtle but important and diving deeper and deeper into that game's like combat loop is actually really fascinating because the post game charms you get are super fucking busted like ridiculously action game busted and the post get the new game plus quest lines that are added in new game plus are excellent and fascinating and really interesting and the ending changes so The game starts to change at about the 70, 80% mark. So would you call this, is this zero escape?

Is this a, like, mandatory new game plus? I don't know. Yeah, it's definitely mandatory. And you could just, like, I haven't gotten there yet, but you could probably just watch the endings and be like, oh, yeah? No, there's way more that changes on route to route. Okay.

It's like, it starts to subtly change in the beginning, and then it starts to change more and more and more as you get further in. Also, I said this like last week and I think that we before, it's not even Silent Hills has nothing to do with Silent Hill.

I have now found three definitive, important links to Silent Hill one in this game that make it very clear that this definitely fits into the core canon

of Silent Hill. Hmm. Okay. In a way that is, I'm going to guess, not upsetting or bullshit. No, it's very, very obvious. And it's like, oh, yeah. Oh, that's a good noise. Dahlia Gillespie does not fly over to meet you in Japan. Darya Gillespie. Okay. Jailbency. Oh, you know, like, I, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a million times more subtle than that. It's not that bad. It's okay.

But if you know, you see it and you're like, I know what that is. Yes. But yeah, that's what's up. Over at twitch.tv slash pat stares at and YouTube.com, Pat Stairs at. I'm going to be streaming Absalom on Thursday. That's sponsored stream as well as. I'll be taking a look at Timo and Warwick. that day.

Uh, and then Friday, I'm busy getting my hair dyed. And, uh, then Saturday and Sunday, I'll be back with Silent Hill F and, uh, Lisa. Okay. How you like it Lisa so far? Uh, it's miserable. Yeah. Really funny. I think it's, I think it's too funny.

I think it's way funnier than it is emotionally arresting. Are you, are you having those parts where you're like, I can't tell. of this is a punchline or just sad? No, I think there's stuff that's really sad or very moving and that it hits. I think the game is overwhelmingly hilarious.

Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. I think the art style goes a lot, goes a long way with it, too. Yeah. And the kind of like, there's an energy to

when things are goofy and earthbound where it's also goofy because you're watching a little sprite with a really weird shape convey this whatever emotion you know and like yeah Lisa does the same thing I'd say

um okay cool hopefully there's not too much news this week because I do have a hard I was just looking so that is because I gotta wash this shit off my face and get things done and that's a whole process okay

um I'm doing the math on that. Okay, so we got about that. Yeah. Cool. What is going on? Sponsors-wise?

Give us a second. We've got a couple sponsors this week. Shoutouts. Do they want clown sponsor? Not much choice. I mean, if we get a fucking note for a make good because we did not endorse a clown. fucking funny. That'd be really funny. Listen, it doesn't matter if you've got clown makeup or not.

The real clown are the people out there that are, wait, hold on a minute. Guys, sorry. Okay. Are you all right, buddy? Yeah, just there was a mistake in which. Oh, yeah? And you caught it like right in time. seconds before because hey putting competing things within the same thing you don't do that you're not supposed to do that guys no they hate that it's your your job is to make sure that that doesn't be the thing on the same thing because that's really silly okay all right um um This week, the podcast is sponsored by Shopify.

Bro, I love Shopify, chiching. That's the sound of a sale. Now, listen, listen, listen. If you're out there, you're trying to get your business, you want to sell something online, you want to figure out, how do I, how do I even, how do I begin? You probably feel a little bit like a clown. You might have, look, you might have your mom and pop shop, and they're like, we want to get, you know, mom and pops grape jam Emporium popping off online with the kids on the TikTok.

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with a battery that lasts 80 hours, rich sound, mics that are clear, lots of good uninterrupted gaming. But in particular, the fact that you can connect to multiple devices and have crossplay so that you're getting both wireless devices transmitted and you can hear both at the same time. so you can switch between, say, your PC and your phone with the click of a button, but you can also hear both at the same time so you can play your game and continue to take a call

or listen to a podcast. It's incredible. It's such a good feature. And I love that because, you know, my ability to listen and multitask is precious to me. Found time. Discover time is what we're fitting into. People who are listening to podcasts are also finding ways to, do other things at the same time.

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promo code Castle. After you purchased, I'll ask where you heard about them. So please support the show. Tell them that we sent you. Get your ultimate gaming immersive experience with Turtle Beach today. Uh, yeah, my preferred headset when I'm over gaming on the couch and when we were let's playing. Shoutouts. Thank you, Turtle Beach. Thanks, Turtleby. And this week, the podcast is sponsored by the Ridge Wallet. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

It's super clean. Sick. I got my Kinsugi driver's kit, so that's the wallet and the portable key holder as well. And the cool Kinsugi design is the one where. It's all one color, like all white or all black, but you've got the little gold to show that, like, hey, I may have been damaged, but I'm going to highlight my flaws when I attach it back together because those flaws are make me what I am. All that in your wallet. So, yeah, Ridge wallet. Yum.

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Yeah, check out your Ridge Power Bank and you get your Ridge wallet today. Thank you, Rich. Thanks, Rich. A quick note to myself and yes. Okay, so last week we talked about the really goofy, stupid decision that Capcom made to charge for Capcom Cup to make it a pay-per-view event and we more or less discovered that their reasoning was because e-sports in Japan is making tons of money. They're doing gangbusters.

They don't really care how people feel. They are just satisfied to deal with the Japanese clientele that are willing to pay because Street Fighter League proved that they're down for that. And never mind, fuck you, rest of the world. Everybody hated that. Everybody came out and explained why that sucks because, one, it's a pay-per-view event. Two, you could have celebrated, I said you could have celebrated this by going into the battle, hub of the game by having a big in-game event where people could go watch the thing.

You could have sold colors like you did with Street Fighter 5 and cosmetics to support the Capcom Cup costs as well over the years. There's been lots of ways. You've done a lot of shit. Lots of ways to do this. And then furthermore, I want to say other people pointed out some really great observations about this, which I didn't even think of at the time, which a huge one being that how do you get to Capcom Cup?

you have to win qualifying events what are these qualifying events these are community run events across the world that different local communities host run and put on and these online World Warrior qualifying events are all being done

for free by local communities I was able to put in the groundwork for free so that you could charge people for the results of my labor and the winners then go on to these larger qualifiers and they all run through. So the whole system of getting the people that are the competitors that are in the Capcom Cup is relying on the community and relying on the grassroots foundation of people just donating their time because they want a T.O because they like the games and think

it's cool and they like the community and want the FGCs to grow. So people that are volunteering their time and effort are now basically offering up and providing the means by which Capcom Cup can happen and then nah fuck you we're going to charge and just make bank on that thanks for your free work everybody good job bye um that's the extra part of it that's like oh yeah you're double fucking the community because this is not even like you're showing up to fund or share any of that with the community organizers tournament organizers or any of that part in part the whole thing is just an insanely greedy step.

So, as this has been a humongous, stupid thing that everyone has been upset about, Nakayama, over on the dev team, one of the two that are directing Street Fighter 6, started tweeting. And he put out a tweet of some concept art for Street Fighter 6 that never got used. and it was the whole gang assembled and he was kind of just musing into the air you know it's almost like he just walked up and said hey

you know just randomly talking about nothing look at this cool piece of Street Fighter Six art I really I really hope I really like this art I'd love to see it turned into some merch you know to see it turned into merch it would have to be decided by the e-sports division

which is a completely separate unit from the development team Look at this cool piece of art Isn't it kind of crazy? Yeah, the e-sports division and the dev team are not at all the same team. So if you guys want to see that

turned into merch too, hey, e-sports caps on. Hey, please let them know, you know? These are different divisions. And so people were like, okay. And I believe Diaphone is the one

who bit and excuse me, it was Brian F, excuse me, not Diaphone. Brian F was basically like, I see what you're doing here and you are fishing, so let me ask you some questions that you can publicly answer. And so Brian F was like, doesn't it seem strange that the e-sports division and the dev team are so disconnected? Perhaps monetization strategies could have resulted in collaboration rather than just charging such a high price for streaming Capcom Cup, to which Takayama went. it sounds strange, but it's true. Revenue targets and assigned tasks differ fundamentally by department.

Even the development team was surprised by this announcement. At least Matsumoto and I were shocked at the venue. That said, this matter occurred within the same company, so we're currently discussing it. Apologies for any concerns this may have caused. If I get scolded at work, I will delete the above comment. And the conversation just kind of went on,

but essentially he explained, that like, yeah, I'm just making observations out here into the air. And if anyone's asking me about them, I will reflect on the fact that I was shocked at this news about the e-sports team handling the side of the street fighter six. And we are talking internally about it. And in the past, yeah, there were some pretty cool initiatives like the buying cosmetics and stages that support Capcom Cup. that was the dev team initiative on Street Fighter 5.

That's crazy. Because everybody loved that shit. Yeah. Like the game they made. You know? So he basically spells out that this is another case of you've got the people making the game and then the people responsible for monetizing. And they had no idea and were just as blindsided watching this ignorant fucking move play out.

And the greed that they don't get a say in is part of why we're seeing this happen, you know? I'm imagining, hopefully, that if we're seeing that, like, it's not just a users versus Street Fighter 6 case, but this is also internal developers also upset at this. There's a bigger chance that there's pushback here that they might have to respond to or do something about. but it's I appreciate that Yanakayama is effectively going I can only say so much but yeah I agree this is some dog shit please ask me about it's fucking crazy that we're like doing a podcast where we have to talk about riot putting out $20 skins but then we still segue into like man Capcom's fucking it up with street fighter like guys you could

could you have just waited like fucking three weeks to do this so you didn't have such like a dire comparison point? No, because the Eatsports division is not paying attention, nor does it give a fuck about what anyone that's playing the game or part of the community is saying or doing. They're not paying any attention at all.

They're just looking at the numbers rolling in on Street Fighter 6 Japan videos and live streams with V-tubers and deciding their policy based on that. Completely oblivious and give no shits. And again, e-sports in Japan has been

fucked from day one, you know, as, as Momochie just was warning everybody about, it's just been this corrupt, evil, shitty thing, you know, with the J-Su and all that. So I'm, I'm not surprised. You remember when I said that I don't think anybody in e-sports has ever figured out how to make a single dollar? Somebody quoted me on fucking blue sky with that. And I'm like, I wonder who. And they had like a sad face. Like, oh, oh, you're a guy in e-sports. yeah I was like ah you seem cool yeah you know you have to wonder if it's like hey welcome to Capcom Japan here's the monster hunter offices and you see like someone with the little

the little the little cat ears and the meuscular chef and they're like yeah and here's the street fighter guys and they're doing their own little dev bracket internally with each other and then here is the e-sports team and it's just a thick purple miasma coming out of a cave you know and That guy's still alive? Like nobody, no one, don't go down that hallway. No one talks about going down there. You know, that's the fucking e-sports crew.

Yeah. And to show up now multiple years in to this game also and be like, thanks for all your hard work, we're going to take it from here is fucking just the absolute audacity. know. So yeah, full blame, of course, to everybody that is on that side of the team and the higher-ups above them that are allowing them to make this decision for the product. Batchit. What's your quote here? It feels to me, after watching e-sports exist for 30 years, that no one can, no one in the corporate side of e-sports has literally known how to make even a single dollar.

I was like, oh man It's true Every time they make a dollar They fuck up their product Every time Like every time they crash it It's fucking crazy Well you know

I'll tell you who I have confidence in You know who Oh yeah Yeah I bet this is a real statement Oh yeah I think Microsoft has what it takes Yeah To what

To make some profit Yeah, what do they got, profit while? Big profit coming. Yeah, well, yeah, is it? Yeah. You know? Have you seen Game Pass? Wait, that was this week?

Bro, I thought that was last week. I mean, there's a lot going on. And it seems to all kind of cycle around the same event, the same story. That same story we talked about were all all. the employees are going, yo, this AI shit at Microsoft is kind of fucked. And they're forcing everyone to be followed by a little droid that's there to try and steal their soul. Yeah, so it seems like it's just, it's extending out in every direction. So, um, a bunch of game pass related shit rolled out, um, and was announced. Um, in particular, um, what did we discover?

We see an announcement here about, oh, I should start by saying this. The existing Game Pass, prior to this 50% increase in costs and price and all these other plans that rolled out here, was considered profitable, by the way. Took in $5 billion in revenue last fiscal year. So, according to TGS 2025, Game Pass, as it was, was making money. all right just keep the they have to hit they have to hit

the targets for a hundred million users so just and and upcoming costs of all kinds of other new new initiatives that we're running

right so things were fine but hey here comes AI and everything else so uh one

some of the changes in addition to the 50% increase is um Some details on tiers and streaming. So different Xbox GamePast tiers, including

essential, premium, and ultimate are being rolled out, which include access to Xbox cloud gaming. And if you look at the little breakdown of what the pricing or what the features of each tier are, if you get the essential tier,

you're allowed to play your games and stream them in up to 1080p. Bro. I'm paying $30 a month for Game Pass so I can play every game that comes out this

year, but I don't have an Xbox to play it on. If you get the premium... Who is that fucking for? If you get the premium, you can also stream up to 1080p, but you can stream your own game.

And... You have my own game, dude? And if you get Ultimate, then you can get up to 1440p. the highest quality with reduced artifacts, shortest wait times, support for select games,

and day one releases and more. So, you know, getting priority on the servers, getting priority on the load time and so on and such as you cloud game. This is all going to be up to the type of game pass tier that you're purchasing. Imagine you're making games.

Imagine you're going through trying to get your shit looking crispy at every resolution possible and then um a big chunk of one console's market is like actually we're selling the resolutions back to people at different streaming rates so uh fuck off with that this is definitely worth $400 a year definitely um here comes the bro this is the fucking video game equivalent of Netflix telling you to make shows that people can follow without looking at the screen. Without looking at the screen. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Um, hey, well, there's always the ad free, the ad version that you can also get, the, the free Xbox cloud gaming, um, in which you get two

minutes of pre-roll ads before the game is available and up to five hours of game time a month. Five a month. Yep. So, you know, um, get, get that speed running tech out. Who the fuck streaming who the fuck is well no you pre-watch streaming a game for five hours a month you pre-watch all your long plays you get the rundown in your head you make your notes and then as soon as you

start you speed run that shit and then you get it all done in five hours clean hopefully you hit credits at 459 who is playing video games on a console no wait who is playing video games

streamed from a console for five hours a month instead of just playing Uma Musame Yeah Who Who the fuck is that even for? To say nothing

of whatever resolutions you're limited are capped to By the way So Five hours a month More than enough Stream gaming for you

Young man This is so weird This is like Like a fucking Complete loss Of understanding Of how like A normal person works

Which is appropriate For Microsoft off. Now, I know you're thinking, well, that's confusing. That's silly. I'm just going to head on down to Costco and buy my Xbox. And I don't have to worry about this. I talked about this week's ago.

They don't sell that shit anymore. No. And according to someone that works there, there's rumors going on about Xbox insider saying that future hardware, Costco is not the only retailer pulling Xbox. There will be more. future Xbox hardware is up in the air and might not happen despite announcements more massive layoffs incoming

more price hikes coming full third-party software company is the potential future of Xbox So the plan is that you're going to have to stream Xbox games Because you're not going to be able to find one to buy Because retailers hate them So everything's an Xbox Except the actual Xbox console

I find it the fact that so game stops Twitter is now dunking on all these Xbox announcements just as with a with a series of like well that's dumb just come by it here and um it's insane that they're they're right you know um yeah no just uh again you think you're you'd be the one with the clown makeup, but, but it turns out that, uh, a perfectly profitable thing, that was, that was, it was working, but, bro, what is the plan, dog? What is the fucking plan? The plan is we've got some upcoming expenses and we don't know how to deal with them. So everybody panic and change everything about the thing that was already working.

Service to a console. Places aren't even willing to fucking sell. Xbox division Sony's gonna get so shitty It's it sucks It sucks dude It sucks You need someone Even the appearance

Of controlled opposition Is necessary to keep these companies in line To not just become the most annoying shitty garbage fucking hardware manufacturers You need competition They fuck it up so hard And they dry it up

And now Sony gets to just take it and waltz and do anything they want. It sucks, dude. And this is meanwhile, outside of the Xbox division is just, yeah, the march of the fucking AI just at large

as they invest in this heavily to try and recoup costs or thinking that this bubble is not going to burst. Fucking headline, what was it? Just going, like, zooming out from Microsoft in this context. where uh wall street journal um consultants at bayne and co AI infrastructure spending will require two trillion in annual AI revenue by 2030 by comparison that is more than the combined

2024 revenue of apple amazon alphabet microsoft meta and invidia and more than five times the size of the entire global subscription software market morgan stanley estimates that last year there was around 45 billion of revenue for AI products. The sector makes money from a combination of subscription fees for chatbots and so on. However, the tech sector is going to have to cover a gap

somehow is a trillion dollar question. Consumers must spend 800 billion on AI within a few years to justify investment from the last few. Well, wait, listen, I need $500 billion. in order to finish the puts everybody out of work machine

so that they can all spend more money than exists in the world in a single year on it. Well, like, how is the, how am I supposed to make a trillion dollars on the puts everybody out of work machine without you giving me $500 billion right now? Well, because if I'm not mistaken, the estimates are that by 2030, is the timing when everybody's going to be out of work and it'll be quote unquote a painful few years before you can just wait for life to get better as AI does everything for you and

that's an inevitability that no one can avoid and we're heading for it so just hang out can't be avoided so just hang on till 2030 um yeah this this so i i was doing some some some economics looking into and apparently like like a very like a very like a above 80% of like the US GDP right now is like tech spending for companies on this shit. Oh my God, man. Like just like, it's just infinite investment in a thing that doesn't make any money. And so when China comes out and goes, here's this one that does it cheaper and the level of pants shitting can be heard. Or nothing. Or just nothing. Or just nothing.

Yeah. It's, I, did you see? Did you see Who the fuck was it? It was like Invidia is investing in Open AI So that Open AI

Has the money to give To Invidia To get their orders So that they don't fucking implode Like that's a check scam That's a check scan That's a check scan Okay guys

ATM trick ATM trick ATM trick I'm telling you You write a number down And you deposit it And then you get the money in your account

right away. It's crazy. It's called passing the float. It's where they're using the money in between the deposit process to give themselves their own orders. Can we just go back to complaining about rollback every week? I would love to fucking do that, but 2XCO is here

and it costs too much money. Because now the fact that the mind-numbing conversation that everyone has to listen to is the weekly AI fucking shitster is deeply upsetting and unlike rollback which eventually does reach some sort of conclusion, this feels like it's just forever. And I think, and whereas, you know, the person who hears the word

rollback and goes, oh God, they're doing it again and rips the headphones off, like, fair enough, this doesn't concern or you don't give a fuck about it and you can just comfortably be like, yeah, who knows? This thing is unavoidable because there's also a level of frustration I have with it where you're like there's a bunch of folks that are like I don't get it what's the problem this is fine this there's no issue here

right I'm not going to engage with the conversation about when you talk to somebody about a concern about a large about any issue that's larger than your front yard and they're fucking don't care who gives a shit so it's actually going to affect you like really fast bro so not even that but like just the misplaced

vibes. So, for example, one of the prescient stories I feel relevant to some of this is Zelda Williams, Robin Williams' daughter, basically telling people, can you please stop sending me AI videos of my dad? That's so disgusting.

It's not what he'd want, and it's pretty fucking gross. That should be criminal, genuinely. Yeah. And she kind of is, and she, there's a long thing where she's more or less explaining, please stop. I don't want to see this. this is not what I want or what he'd want and she's like I know that people are like there's people that are trying to troll and like be shitty and stuff and she's like I'm used to that right that's that's almost like it's own thing where it's like oh you're you're trying to be a piece of shit and

that's whatever you can you can just block the person and move on or it was so but she's basically going no it's people who are actually fans of him that think they're doing something that I would like that are the worst here because they are they're doing this like out of a place where they think it's good. So she's saying, please, if you've got any decency, stop doing this, stop sending it to him to meet to everyone, full stop, it's dumb, it's a waste of time and energy, it's not what he'd want, it's gross, you're not making art, you're making disgusting, overprocessed hot dogs out of the lives of human beings, out of the history of art and music and shoving them

down someone else's throat, hoping that they'll give you a little like and a thumbs up, you know? It's like, yeah, like there's a bunch of people that are going, don't you think this is so cool, look look it's the memory of your dad look don't you think it's cool oh isn't this great like that's the part that's worse because they're not even just trolls and being in pieces of shit they think it's a good genuine thing you know fucking depressing man that's the part of it that I'm like yeah that sucks because yeah Zelda Williams is all right you don't know how to get across to you know again person scrolling, seeing the Facebook-generated movie

poster going, wow, expendables 8, that's crazy. It is crazy. Look at this video. Like, wow, look at Robin. I should send this to his daughter. She would love this. She would be so touched by it.

That fucking insane dystopian step that we're already fully in, you know? All right. Let's take some letters. Hey, if you want to send him a letter, send it to Castle Superbeastmail at gmail.com that's Castle Superbeastmail at gmail.com

Jigsaw says Hello there's a bomb under your chair To disarm it you must defeat my challenge All right Name a single character from Concord It's only been a year after all Fucking bye I love you wife and son

I'm, I am, I am, I am, I am, I am so dead. I'm just gonna throw the dog as far as I can. Hopefully he escapes the blast. I am, I am FaceTiming my wife and child right now, and I am kissing them goodbye. It's over. I'm gonna miss somebody, but I'm dead now. I'm dead. I'm sorry.

Sorry. You know, um, it blame, talk, like, blame toxic. fucking trash robot named like fuck ass death hold on uh junk bot

I'm gonna go junk bot fuck it death due to toxic positivity write that on my tombstone oh I'm dead oh hold on let me see I can't even do I can't even find John Concord

John cord was John Cord one of the characters Okay the junk bots name was was one-off oh oh there's a fucking character named Baz dude yeah shitty goggle did I have a chance doctor lady I didn't have a shit I didn't have a shit not even not even close not even close no never I never would have got I'm dead I'm so dead thank you thank you jigsaw sorry fucking rip me uh okay okay so

So, let's see. Ambrose from Albuquerque says, hey, like a dragon, mini game completionists. I'm a competitive, Ritchie Majong player from Albuquerque, New Mexico, where there's effectively no community around the game. Been trying to increase local interest to have players I can have matches or tournaments with, but the game is daunting in person to most. Best way to play Mahjong now is a gooner girl gotcha game that I've been getting friends to play so that they'll learn and they'll be willing to play in person. Is it wrong to put players into a Gooner gambling app in order to get people to play Mahjong with me? Well, considering Mahjong is also gambling, I don't know. Maybe.

Like, just because you're not playing it as gambling doesn't change the fact that Mahjong is gambling. So you are looking past their addictions to get to their means, a means to the ends, and the ends is a noble goal, which is playing with your friends and creating a community. And I understand and respect that. I think that you can perhaps give a warning that the Gooner Gambling app is simply a stepping stone to your ultimate question.

Yeah, I think as long as you can explain that the Gooner, a gambling game, is a stepping stone to your ultimate final goal, and they're aware of that, then they can go in knowing what they're in for, and if they fall to it, then it's their fault. Is it this, this, this, this question is like, it's like, it's missing its own question. because like it like this this dude's not gambling mahjong but mahjong is gambling it's as much gambling as poker is gambling you can play poker for funzies but it's gambling right so like like there's like the actual question is like is it wrong to like like tickle my friend's balls while they practice gambling like like is it wrong to send my friends to practice gambling and get their dicks hard or should I just I mean

It's such a strange situation Um Yeah I mean look You probably skip a couple steps in this process I'm just saying I want to play mahjong You can skip a couple steps Guys I want to

Hang out and have a fun Time with my friends And when you come over Just part of you To you're going to need to take the spoon and, you know, heat this up and grab this belt and just, you're going to just need to sample a little bit. I thought you were going to say something different. I thought you were going to go on like a totally different tangent. No, no, no, no. You're going to need

to sample a little bit of the heroin to see, you know, to just to just get in there a little bit. And then you're not going to be, you're not going to be addicted. You'll be fine. I thought you were going to say like, bro, if you want to get in here and play Mahjong, you got to turn the knob with your knob. It's a no flaccid mahjong zone. Look, just... Just to call Ritchie by hitting the table from underneath. Oh, there we go.

Okay. Good, good. The four wins. And so, yeah, that's... It's fine. Just one hit, one hit of the meth pipe, you know? And, and then we... You know, they got super fent now?

Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Invisible doses that are like... That's fucking crazy. Pin of a needle are lethal. Man, dudes just can't get high enough. I can't believe it. I...

It's... Listen, it's the vacation, isn't it? It really is. You just need to give yourself over to it. I respect the fact that Ambrose from Albuquerque just wants to get together with some friends and participate in some good old-fashioned communal mahjong. You know? No problem there.

If they get addicted, it's their fault. If they start gooning too hard, it's their fault. They should be able to see the truth that is pure Mahjong camaraderie on the other side of this journey. Isn't Mahjong like super vicious? Oh, yeah, it's brutal. It is selling the skin off your back and your family on the table, brutal. All right. And let's take one over here.

from California. Hey, Lord Fathers and Castle Super Dads. As someone whose job was retail and I now work in a warehouse, I've grown accustomed to people ignoring signage and doing whatever they want. Rather, they get angry when people blatantly ignore signs because it inconveniences them, and I've devised a new strategy. I assume

everyone is illiterate until proven otherwise. Now instead of getting mad... Dude, he's right. He's super right. Now instead of getting mad, I just feel bad for them. After all, they can't read. uh it's it's it's crazy how many people will not internalize signage if it disagrees with what they want to do it's absolutely nuts if a sign is shown to people and it's something they don't want to do or tells them to not do something they want to do their brain will delete it like like

they never saw it so i used to live near uh a street where there were like the cones up and the detour signs to not turn, to not go down this street connecting to another major street. But the inconvenience

and the fact that your ways map told you to go this way made a lot of people just go right? And you can, and I would walk by an intersection and see that exact moment of processing where sometimes, for example, the passenger seat person would get out and stand there and kind of look

and they're watching as the blocked street has a promenade of people on foot walking by where it's like the reason why this is blocked is because pedestrians are crossing, right? They're not, and they're staying in the street and they're kind of doing the math over like, could I just, can I just, can I just barrel through the pedestrians and it'll be okay? I'm thinking about it. and honestly about 50% of them do yeah and like there was a there's a thing where I would sometimes be like I'd see it and I and like I'm sometimes too far away up the street to see the pot to see the the the turn happen and I've caught people getting out and moving the signs out of the way to make room to go through into the pedestrian thing and if I'm there I'd be like hey it's it's fucking closed because there's people walking what are you doing and more often than not

is that oh I it said because the GPS I didn't I didn't I you know I'll get one I'll do one you won better I'll give you the single most

useful sign that is the most commonly ignored sign in all of human society on foot and that is the wet floor sign the amount of people that I saw see me

mopping a floor see them look down at the sign and just go fuck it I'm a walk through and then fall

and then get mad to which I just point with my hand going I'm holding a mop I'm standing next to a bucket there's a oh I understand the risks

but it won't happen it won't happen to me I got better balance than that that's that's you know and no no I see them see the sign and then I see them see the sign again after they fell like the sign tripped them like the scenario like yeah fested post trip I the thing like it's it's there's always because I I always feel there's always the slip and fall version of that too where you're kind of like

oh dollar signs in their eyes right but with the fucking with the street traffic moving the pile on out of the way to get into the place where people are walking and roll people over thing. You can see the math where they're like, I understand, but the inconvenience is just not worth it. And also, I'm used to going through life not actually giving a fuck about other people. Like, that's what you're really seeing is the person who goes, yeah, but it's not me. So it's not a problem. Like, it's a very simple science for other people. That's it, right? Like, Like, I'd say in your case, you're looking at somebody who's risking themselves, being really dumb making that decision. And here, you're looking at someone risking other people being like, but it's not me, so who cares?

Well, you remember, you remember when I lived in my apartment, uh, and next to that overpass? And there was the Tim Hortons on the corner. So those lights, people in that neighborhood were just like, yeah. I don't care for these lights. Optional. Yeah. These lights. And there were cops that would hang out at that Tim Hortons.

Like all the fucking time. And they would get their fucking quota. Like, no problem. They didn't have to bullshit speeding tickets or nothing. Because every single night, someone would blow through that fucking light note, like full red. No, I can't turn right on a red light, but tabach neck I can go right. True. Yeah.

Amazing. Amazing when those calculations. happen you know you just um and i well anyway the amount to i will say that like from just you know getting the getting the from doing the the driving stuff i've been doing and trying to get that going and looking at the level of insane selfishness kicking in with some people's driving decisions and aggression where you're just like like what was your thought process here and many a time the thought that there is the well the thought pro it's didn't have one

slash other people will just have to move for me and other people's driving skills will have to be so that

they'll have to avoid me because I'm just going to play chicken and not care and I'm going to rely on society to accommodate

me being an asshole because that's how I've been rolling so far so I've been in my aunt my mother's

sister my aunt's car one time in my life and my mom was in the car with me and it was me, my aunt, my mom and we were in Toronto and my aunt was in

downtown Toronto and one of those big gigantic intersections X that big mall and she was at the furthest right most lane of a, I think it was like four lane road like it was four four

and she went oh fuck I missed the turn and during the green just pulled a full U-turn all the way to the end of the other furthest most lane as we're going

what are you doing she's like oh they'll stop they'll stop yeah and people had to slam on their brakes

to not kill us and she's like see they stopped and my mom was like we're going to go have your dad pick us up we're not going to leave with your hand

fucking Christ the decision making prowess oh my god I've been in a car with a driver who missed an exit and I went

oh shit we missed the exit back up back back up not even the person just had excuse me a really really low

the person not good under pressure panic and went oh oh god and turned midway into

through the median and basically right down between the exit and the road into a snowbank right through a sign and I'm just sitting there like okay

we're alive you should be driving we're no damage everything's okay after missing an exit you should not drive we're all safe I will never ever point out to you when you've missed a turn ever again I will simply wait for us to miss it

and then say, by the way, our turn was back there. So next time around, let's make the next exit. And that was it. Because, yep, I saw you under pressure and our lives were in danger because you couldn't handle it. And that fucking sucks. Okay. Update. Update your profile.

Mm-hmm. All righty. Have a good week, everybody. Take care. Thank you.