Castle Super Beast - CSB341: 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

Oh, 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, I'm glad. It was getting a little, 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...

Yeah, otherwise. It wasn't even from today. 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? Uh, it's all right. Okay. It's okay. Um, dogs. The dogs pretty stinky. You see, you see that fucking Fury live action trailer? Bro, and you think I look like a fucking clown. Holy shit, dude. 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. Oh, you're like, okay, but how bad can it really be, though? And then... Oh, it can be not good, man.

You know, um, yeah. So right off the bat, uh, why no white stranger? Why? I, I, I, okay, so, like, Willie, I'm taking, I want, 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're not to die. As we are setting up for this conversation, I'm literally imit-searching.

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 character. Swoop. He's got the It's the

Karen swoop And it's also the Like the Like the villain Like I don't even know What to call it But

When you have to make Like a Like a neo-Arian villain You got that kind of Thing going on The swoop It's the blonde

Yeah You got that thing That is like the Karen hairstyle Like through and through Yeah It's wild Okay, Ed 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 this? And you click play on the backed up, backed up Because like, this is the fact The takedown 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 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 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. 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. 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, so Barty Shepard is 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 and the stranger is me so you're playing with you yeah so 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 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. 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? 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, seat and make it all about you. It's just the most transparent ego trip ever. It's so wild. It's like, was it? I gotta watch it again. I gotta 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, Ah, 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, uh, Barty, uh, Barty Shepherd. These are supposed to be different planets. The production studio is apparently called Midnight Embers, and

according to their official channels, they have made nothing. There's a grand total of zero things there, listed on the pages. Always a good start. But this is an official project. Yeah.

Yeah, I just, I don't know I mean Fury you know Like I know that I've been very vocal about my issues with Afro Samurai And You know there's always been a little bit of like With Fury as well a little bit of a lot

I really wanted to love Afro Santero Yeah I 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 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 head. band 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 spotlight. 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 Fitty. I don't know. About Tree Fitty, yeah. Yeah, fucking do whatever. I don't know. All style, no substance is a great way to put it Afro Sempai. Yeah, that's...

I would agree with that. 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 are not is a black person with big, crazy, white, you know, nappy hair going on. That shit's cool. And I guess the whole of the internet remembers thing.

is undefeated. Oh, dude. Actually, that's not true. There is one instance of it being defeated. I have publicly put out the challenge to people

that, like, the first, first show that I put up on Machinima was called Needsmore Salt, and there are zero traces of that anywhere online. 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 a pretty phenomenal IP drop there. Good stuff. Good. I was so excited for 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-S64 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, uh, why, why no white stranger, you know, why, why, why no white stranger? You know, why, why, why, why it just hits the 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 we clicked the button today. Anyways. Are you ready? Somebody in the chat nailed the Dementor's like the white Fury. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Ooh. Good. Hmm. White Fury is coming Oh no Oh no! 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 like a second we're like, I got to save this shit because it's just going to be gone. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Should we? Should we? Should we? Should we unleashed? 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 is going, ah, eh, and it was like fucking weird. Everybody made fun of it. And then it bombed super hard.

That was like a mistake. There was, 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.

Oh, that's worse. Yes, it's multiple episodes. And I said this about Madam Webb, but 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, you have the post ready to go. 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 mean, I don't know about this. Yeah. I don't, man. I'm going to cast myself. I don't, I don't know, man.

What's our 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 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 directors 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. Yeah.

I think I 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 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. I love it. It's great. It's wonderful. Hey, the costumes, though, you know, they, he 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 I, you should give them a little clap. Like, oh, you, good job. You know, I like one of my toddler who 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 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 looks.

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 gamma and like it 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. I want to see devil make quiet street fire characters. Exactly. Exactly. You know. And I, but I see that. And I go, 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? You know what he should have done, right? Put on up. He should have done the costume, like, fully accurate. I like, cook. I like, I like where this is going. Let's go.

Today, going through a bit of a transformation. Let's go, Pat. 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, help me. Thank you, Peach. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Didn't take that long.

It took like an hour. So, if you were only to use, like, one paint, yep. You could, you, that's 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 see a reason why he could be more accurate. You know what? It would have given the show a lot of notoriety.

It would have saved it. Like a lot of notoriety. Might 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 off 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 could have gone to distance. gone farther in a couple of places. They could have got a lot farther. Why stop there? Why stop there? 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, you says you. I'll say this. If you're a Fury fan out there, Um, woof, tough times, I guess. I don't know. Didn't it got... This is so far removed that I feel like there's no intersection at all. Like, it 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. Excuse me a fucking t-shirt, dog. Like, it doesn't need to be like this. Look at this lady cosplayer.

All right, I will. Okay. Look at this. Yeah, okay. I'm gonna, yep. That's, look at, there you go. All right. That's what we-

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 is, I just typed it in.

I think this is the lady. But this lady did Gemma from Monster Hunter and her TikTok posts were getting flagged as AI generated. Oh my God. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. It's that good. 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.

You want to do both the eyes blue or how? 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 was in all those Rob Zombie movies Okay Who dressed up like a clown Okay Because my resting Expression Looks kind of

Pissy and Like grumpy Um 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 cloned 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 7th, the 14th, the 21st, the 28th, and the 4th of November, we're going to be doing this. That's really committed.

Yep. Okay. I said I was going to do it. Yep. You think that's committed. Get ready for next week. Did you take the opportunity to 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 as long as you have each step of layer. Willie, 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.

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 your, yeah, yep, that's it instantly. 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 going to move on. We're going to move on. That's okay. And what else is going on with you, man? Um. I have to drink with a book. girl. Oh, you do. Hold on a second. Oh, did you? Oh, I know that. I know that.

Willie, it's so great because like, hey, mom's taking care of baby. And you hear like, well, there was, probably fine. There's that. There was a doorbell. There's a question of whether or about we could. It's fine. Um, fine. Ah, they're fine. Okay. Um, I, I, I eagerly await the day that you see your little girl running and just face planting just like, ooh! And you, 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 in and going like,

ah, whoa, that was crazy. And then he was like, the only time I ever do it like different is like, he's at the park and he like face plants super hard on like pavement. Yeah. You know,

hey buddy, you okay? And usually, I want to say nine times out of ten, I hear, yeah. Mm. Yeah,

I'm okay. I'll also like, yeah, that's my man. We've all seen Rugrats. We've seen Tommy just going like, he, ha,

you know, So yeah, that's a thing. 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? 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. Didn't 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 natural state. Yeah. Father, I see. I saw a really incredible comment scroll past a little bit ago. 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 bile water.

Oh, yeah. Fuck Bilehaven. Fuck the gauntlet. And fuck Grohl the Great. Have you ever? So how many, how many times are we talking about on this run?

We're talking about Silk Song, by the way. We're talking about the infamous Wildwater 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... How many attempts? On Grohl? On the whole fucking Slamiel. Okay, so on the whole thing,

I'm probably going to say 10. Okay. And on Grohl, I'm going to say three because upon discovery of a very useful trick, fuck that. Was the trick?

Hang out in the water. Hang out in the water. It's a really, good fucking trick. It's great. It, 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 Hollow 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 we talked about

the area before this before and the fake bench and now you're like no no no here's an actual proper go fuck yourself That one's fucking for real, man

That's a for real ass, go fuck yourself fake bench, yeah 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 Bywater chits are the worst Because they actually come back to life forever. Okay, so there's that, right? And then there's the part where, um, I've noticed that like bile water. I 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 going to scream.

Okay. I think you have permission. I think you're all right. I'm going to fucking. scream. Jesus Christ. 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 make sure that your, your head doesn't directly interface with the, the itchiness.

When you get like a weave cap, you know what, we'll just do this. I have a backup plan. Okay. Oh, there we go. Okay. That'll do it. Good, yep, good shit.

Now we're, now we're clown trucking. Well, now, 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 our carnival. Yeah, like, this is just absolutely family. Yeah. So, it trends, it completely transitioned into full-on juggalo the moment you add the black hat to it.

Backwards. Oh. Oh my god the juggalo Get 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 gonna say

The The enemies are doing something here that I feel like is a little different from others, which is their tracking is at the last possible second before the animation for the attack begins, right? Tracking on Sulk Song is really aggressive. It's actually super aggressive. And there's two, there's three types of tracking. One, uh, sorry, there's three types of tracking, horizontal, vertical and downwards. Um, 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, 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 barfers, the flying barflies, when you pogo them, they get the fuck out of the way in an input reading way. I would also say that the area right underneath Songlave has the floating orb throwers, and those orbs track in a way where most games, you know the trajectory of a projectile coming at you, So 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, 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. The guys involved. 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 where at the peak of the jump and I'm like 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 it's rough because I'm like the characters in the air and it's all startup It's getting ready to throw it's got 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, as soon as it leaves their position, it's now to catch you at the top of your parabola, you know? Absolute nonsense, by the way on that. The enemy variety and enemy, I would say proficiency is like crazy in some songs. The game's really hard. Yeah. I would genuinely put it up above like a dark. Dark Souls game.

I was talking to somebody who will remain nameless 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 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 or different boss instead. Yeah. And they were like, I can't. Yeah. Okay. We were talking about it. and 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. 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 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, 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 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 with like you where you have a satisfying boss in a soul's game. I felt that immediately in this

because the next thing I faced in a Silk Song was the first sinner. Yeah. And I'm... Nothing fucking kicks ass. Okay, so 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 stopped. That thing. But it feels so good. And it feels. Like the second best fight in the whole goddamn game. That thing is excellent.

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 fight. 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, it's 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 shitfests. I mean, you're Dragon Ball fighting all over the stream. Oh, absolutely, right. You know? But you're doing it for real. Where it's like, no, let's literally have a Devil and 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, 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 mo fucked okay okay is it the gauntlet um is it the gauntlet above or uh the gauntlet just above the um the the the where the the clock 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. So that is supposed to be like a final boss style enemy. It just happens to be an enemy gontlet 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 gontlets 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

fooling bullshit tactics. And the only thing was I came into that and I went I beat it and then I didn't or I thought I beat it and then it was like, no, we're not done. And I was like, go fuck yourself, right? And then I kind of Wait. 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! Bha! Jump! Bha! And occasionally Bha-b-b-b-b-b-d-b-d-b-d-b-d-d-b-d-d-a-d-d-d-you know. 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 cogwork fly and I went that thing is fucking busted ah yeah I went

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 sawblade And if you're willing to just blow

All of your resources 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 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 a... I have a sneaking suspicion. You have six of the seven, right? I have 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 I went in and I fought, for example, brood mother, right, where the screen is just filled with fuck. 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? 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. Okay. Because you totally missed the starting point for the sixth crest. Okay. Okay.

Gotcha. Yeah, there was some shit. Here is 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. Okay. That is the start of it. I see. Okay. I missed that. 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. Ah, that still sucks. Permanently missable, right? So, so all this, I'm like, yep, okay. Mentally, I'm just going 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, fly, gross fucks, brood mother, fill in the screen with shit going, blah, or the, or the chef. And 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.

And then you get infected and gross. And yeah, with those ones, I'm just like, go cogflies. Fuck this bullshit. Oh, yeah. And they do. But what ends up happening a lot of the time is like if I don't see like a phase two begin or something, then I'm like, okay, never mind, go in clean, learn the movement, do the whole bit, right, and pull them out.

Then pull out the bullshit if you need to, exactly, you know. 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? It took a, it took a while for, you know, I talked about it with the grim troupe in the first game and then the same thing for the judge, you know, the last judge. and with this when fighting the

the fireworks dancer Trobio Trobio! 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 rules so cool so cool all right you're watching you're watching

phase 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'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? A skill that I 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 that was great. I properly appreciate the feeling I'm getting off the first center. 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 build up. 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. It's like, hey, I'll tell you who the fucking super boss of fucking Zopso 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? 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 threadstorm. I got cross-stitch and the sharp dart now. And I was like, ooh, 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. It feels like it. If you mash it out and you combine all the hits into like one damage number, it's like super, super, super high. The Perry is great because it's not as much damage as Storm. You can mash!

Yeah, you can mash it. Ah! So the Perry isn't as good as Threadstorm damage-wise, but the Perry is also free and is also defensive. Like you can hit the Perry's 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, 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 I fucking blew it but like Threatstorm was the game changer for that super gauntlet when the when the the bot fly summoners come down and I'm just like shut up leave me alone Threatstorm deletes all the bot flies and the dude you're fighting right? Right? And threadstorm was the difference between loss and victory against the Super Beastfly. Because Super Beast Fly or Beast Fly 2, 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 have 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 um so um yeah i'll see i'll see how it goes but for now i'm just like i'm relying on it for the leave me alone button um also big i appreciate the now i get the face you made but like the fake out on mount fay was pretty solid solid. I'm like, I'm going to come back here when 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, 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 nothing compared to like having the fucking being timed. Yeah. But it's crazy how much the harpoon saves you, you know? 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. 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

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 like, um, like there's those clockwork nights that are just like,

no, I'm just, I got a shield up and I'm gonna be defensive and I'm gonna block everything. I'm gonna be really annoying. Yeah. Really annoying.

Find your way around it, you know. Um, 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 hollow, 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. That's not going to be easy life, you know. And a couple of them are I'm just like, nah, ah, fuck this. I'm going back to the bench, you know. Good stuff. Good stuff on that. I'll, I'll check back in. That game's great. And you know what? I think, I think that I think that, I think that, I think that his difficulty is like genuinely like like i think it's perfect for me um man i think 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 uh stage hazards from doing two pips of damage to one pip of damage okay yeah yeah yeah that's 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 it's 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 obnoxious. And like. I'm glad it only took me three tries. I'm really glad it only took me three tries. 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

With this fight out about it afterwards I just I just did it 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

Maybe there's a way to do delete this bullshit because the fact that you want to hit this entire zone up and it's the most annoying zone and you can barely traverse it and then healing is a problem and the enemies are the worst ever they totally did. God, man

beyond obnoxious just too much and mandatory so anyway I don't know how much of that game is mandatory honestly it's actually fairly complex as to what 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 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 light 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, uh, starting yelling. Uh, a chakra is

insanely beast. She's so cool. She's so fucking good. Just show, 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, um, I don't, 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. That is like a sequel-ass fucking sequel. Well, don't call it that. That's not supposed to be. That's not what it's through. 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 costs like 60. And I'm like, ah, they're fucking smart. Yeah. Because trees and grass look the fucking same. Officially,

officially, Ghost of Yote is the next chapter in the Ghost of Shushima world. However, it is not a sequel, and it is not to be referred to as such. however okay well you can say that

I understand that and I respect it but me that is a sequel ass motherfucking 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 I'll be down for that when it comes out on PC in 18 months so first off Reggie came back over

and it came in and you know said hi to baby and was immediate 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, baby vibes? 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 in 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? Like, you know, like kind of leaning. 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. Good stuff. Good stuff. Yeah. Yeah. But right now, right now it feels like joy is, the joy economy is scarce. stonks are extremely rare. They're high.

You know what? After having a tiny little baby, I discovered that being a tiny little baby must actually suck shit. It's actually terrible. Yeah. No autonomy. No food appears to be random. Your eyesight is terrible.

You've never done this before. You can't, you don't even know that you have limbs. You have to 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 though and then now also you feel cold

what is this cold that happens no existing is suffering um 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 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, the thought process, uh, was, was pretty on point in terms of like getting this YouTube streaming shit going.

Because, um, I tried that out. And as I discussed last week, uh, 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 poking at this for months.

Oh, yeah? Okay. So when you said, I'm going to YouTube stream, that's why I was like, oh, yeah? Hi, yeah. Okay. Because I said that, And then I'm like next day, next day, Pat is streaming live on YouTube?

I'm like, oh, is he then? Oh, is that what's going on, is it? No, no, no. Okay, so part of the story is going to sound really, really familiar, right? Okay, part of this 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 little. 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 there's like a lot of fucking tech and I'm fucking 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 guide out of how to fix

it which I really appreciate by the way that was incredibly helpful no problem so I don't know what I'm fucking doing so I'm poking at it and 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 gonna, I'm gonna fucking stream

on YouTube. I'm like, well, fuck, okay. Wait, shit. Okay. Wully 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 assana also now all of a sudden knows everything about youtube streaming and the interim part of that was like dad asses did you know anything and like here comes screenshot after screenshot after screenshot gotcha gotcha gotcha yeah okay yeah I mean look that that was not requested that just automatically 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, I'm gonna start a YouTube stream on my sponsored show. And I went, wow, I bet he really knows that it's gonna 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 it's not. So in my opposite version of that, I'm gonna break the subreddit robot by fucking 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 on to fix that part. So the rest of my tests were private. However, everything was, of course, working. And but what I discovered

Of course it fucking was. Yeah. Until it doesn't. Until it wouldn't, right? And it turns out the one scenario that it doesn't, that it's not working under, which was exactly 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. Yeah.

I did notice that. Right? And so that's where the YouTube stream was going to nothing and nobody was able to... 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. Doesn't want to do it. Yeah. But like the upcoming streams part, it seems like 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.

And just start the fucking show once a day. Okay. So I'm looking for the, I'm looking for the, the ability to hook it in, but 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 a 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 bits at, man. What's your bit rate?

I set 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 insane. So here's what's happening with that. Your bit rate is not actually broadcasting at that.

because that's way, way, way, way above the Twitch bit rate, right? So when I joined the Twitch Enhance Broadcaster beta and ran tons of OBS beta shit for like a year, right? My account got flagged for, you know, whatever. So in stream under OBS settings, if you have your Twitch account logged in, it will have multi, under multi-track video,

it'll say enhance broadcasting. Yeah. It optimizes your settings. You turn that on and it just, it fucking, deletes all of your bitrate 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... The 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 expert. 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. Yep. That's all you need.

Everything looks immaculate. Everything is local. It looks super fucking good. Because the enhanced stuff, all the other steps you were talking about, I had those going. But the... Yeah, okay. Then it's that. fucking canvas to 1440 and it'll work. Right. There you go. And turn on the enhance and then ignore the

other settings. They don't even matter anymore. Right. Here's the kicker though. On YouTube, if you want to stream at 1440P, you've got to broadcast that shit with like a 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. 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. 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 screen. 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, nope. So, um, in any

case, in any case. So, you go into the YouTube memberships, part of urn tab and you're like, I don't know how the fuck this thing works. This is complicated. 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, so that. That didn't end up happening. Like, yeah, no problem.

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 to go and somebody I know I can rely on if I'm like, dude, I don't know how to make 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 of the feeling in those games.

The feeling of Tsushima was certainly one where you could hit a point towards the end of the open world where it could 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. In fact... Because in Sushima, it was like to...

two and a half hours. Like you were like four missions in before you got stealth kill. So what was the recent Team Ninja Samurai game with the with the flying? 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 Ronin. Rise of the Ronin. Yeah, it was Ronan. 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, that game. 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 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 um freedom in your uh uh abilities and and it's pretty open right off the bat um 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 maybe you actually know what the fuck you're doing person who put a hundred and i'm like let me even look 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 your kill bill list. And I don't know if you saw the end of the intro, but... I didn't see anything.

Okay. I saw you like running around the open world. I'm a, I don't know, looks like a ghost of... So, light spoilers. for the intro of Yote you mark down the names of every one of the people that wrongs you

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 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... That's classy. That's classy style. Oh! It's the sickest shit. You do the blood wipe 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. and then yeah it's doing stuff

that I think like you mentioned like Ratchet and Clank with it's about time jumping back and forth between sequences there's a little bit of that where 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 katana 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 going to pick the weapons I want and just fucking deal with it. because I like dual wielding, and I think dual wielding is super cool. I want to fucking rock the Odachi the whole fucking time. As a Musashi fan, I think it's rad as shit, right?

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. shout-outs 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, you know, 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 this 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,

you're not getting any damage in on them. So you're making it harder, you know? I prefer one style switching 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 a 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, right? You're fighting the Japanese, yeah, you're just, you're fighting assholes roaming the countryside. I know. 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, 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 Ghosts 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 champlu 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 with 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 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 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, 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 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 steps 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 Watnabe, 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 Nujibest-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 could also combine, so you can combine Kurasawa mode with Watanabe mode, and get the, like, Nujibest-like tracks over the black and white. And that was incredible, too. So, really cool.

Yeah. Just off of the first session so far, I'm saying, like, great job with that. And, like, some of the early abilities I'm seeing here, too, where the 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. This time around

there's a 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 do you mean like upgrades or do you mean like

location? Okay so you pause the game and then you pull up 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 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 is a chance 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 the fight. It's super badass. It's great. You know, it's the, um, fantastic mixture, Mr. Foxwolf 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 advice.

venture wolf. You have your own game. That's great. I love that. Yeah. Yeah. So, so that vibe is immaculate to as well. So great, great stuff right off the bat on Sushima. Definitely if you've played, if you played Tsushima, enjoyed it and it's been enough time that you're ready to jump back in, 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 long. 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 2XCO 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. There was a point where in the middle of a 2XCO match, I had to 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 about to encounter the most incredible type of ranking in fighting games i i had you were gonna 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 ronk of match 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, oh, 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, that happened a lot when I was like climbing to master with Bison.

But like, when I was in Diamond 4 with M. Bison in Street Fighter 6, 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. I love that there's still people that are like, the honor is still out there, you know?

Absolutely. The only problem. Sometimes you come back and you're fucking dead and you watch the replay and like, wow, they just went in. They just saw you weren't moving. They were like, yeah, the points. 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. But anyway, that was Yote. That was Silk Song.

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 2XCO. Okay. So we'll jump into that right after this, but I will say, yeah, I think what we're going to do is we're going to start back up slowly next week. I was, man, 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 enough. No. 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 answer is I legit was not sure because it's depending on how we're doing over here. And, you know, some days are better than others.

But like, you're doing great is what you're doing. But what I mean to say is thank you. What I, 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 13th. 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, see what's going on. 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, 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 emergency poop, then if it's a yellow, I can run off and like Reggie can chill.

If it's red, I'm going to hit that Be Right Back button, you know? 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 focus. hours. Yes. And it's like, well, while you're, 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 do it. You figure out how to even it out. So my, my brain is kind of mush when I'm done streaming, but like... Same here, but luckily, babies, uh, don't give a shit as long as you don't drop them. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Fortunately, yeah. Hey, dude.

So, so I had a conversation with someone, uh, really, uh, really, uh, really. recently who is a parent and they were I was talking to another another parent and uh there was a moment I don't know if you've had any of these but oh I bet I have let's see it was it was it was when basically we're talking about when to meet up and stuff and it's 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'm I described them like okay so when I get off the night shift you know and punch mom tags in, then we'll be able to make it over to at this time, you know. Yeah.

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 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, 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, 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, dirtbag. 100%. A hundred percent.

A hundred percent. Some people go work in a fucking factory. A million percent. And if you come back and you've been, you've been fucking, you come back from the coal mines and you're just, you're done. You're cooked. I told. totally.

You don't know everybody's family situation, but you actually do know this person's family with a situation. Yes. Are they working in the coal mines?

It was not the coal mines, but it, you know, yeah, 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. So I have not, I have not encountered that. I have not personally encountered that. Though I know Paige for a fact has encountered some variation of that. And I know that she's encountered like people talking about like, I don't know what to do about birth control. And 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. Oh, 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? 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 fight. There is a fucking fight that is going to happen in like one hour. Yeah. Like, oh man. Yeah.

Now here's the thing. is what I... Oh man. It feels so good. That shit's wild and that is unfortunate. I just ruined that fucking dude's day. That afternoon is probably toast. However, I have seen people and friends

like 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's my mind yeah and I 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 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 there's always that big old study that we talked about were just like what is your

what happens to your average happiness you know and I think I've quoted it a couple I think we brought it up a couple times on the show but like it's the one where 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 sometimes 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 like negligible negligible uh however then it immediately grows as you get older and all of that turns into immense happiness of a happier person than i was three years ago as so this is 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, there's a, a, a, there's a, a, a, a, a, uh, a mountain that grows there versus the, the, maintaining your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, drop-off point. And then as you get older, you start to regret it more, right? That's, that's, that's

basically what the study showed, um, which I thought, I was like, huh, interesting. Okay. So, yeah, you eventually got to find your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, your, 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 I want a nut and then, oh, give me a Pokemon. on, you know?

But, but yeah, it's, it is a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, a, uh, a, uh, uh, just, like, uh, uh, uh, just by your sure existence. Um, anyways, so, uh, 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 he can steal

some more smiles I bet he can Mm-hmm. Hey, man, can we take a quick break? All right. BRB. All right. You ever hear just like a shotgun,

diaper-filling poop that jumpscares 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, 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 diapers down here and literally had a jump scare of just a, like, it was like, oh my God. And I will say that like, you know, as I've as I've described the ability to faultless defense and, you know, use a diaper as a shield a couple times. my heart has never raced more than 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 no no please please please

please now no dude what's the worst that could happen you're already in the bathtub right you're already there Just, just, it can get so much worse. It can get so much worse, you know. So, thankfully, false alarm, but boy. Anyways.

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 2XCO reveal marketing strategy appears to be Yeah we don't give a shit Just leak that shit

and put shit out there and whoever sees it is going to go wait what and you're going to be like 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 great Rick leaked out mm-hmm right warwick Blair wolf leaked out out and and it would he 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 that just went out there. The videos came out like six hours later. It was right away. And then of course, of course there was like prior to that. We talked about 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... 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 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 Shadowjop's character on launch. And, 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. January. 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. And then. Going on in that trailer. It's really funny. But, but, but yes, the, the big thing with this is, Timo will be dropping as Will Warwick. So there'll be two new characters right off the bat. So we're going straight. And also that's three weirdos in a row. Three freaks 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% of the roster is freaks now. 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? Um, so one, that big expensive trailer, um, so we're just shipping Ari and, and Echo now, like, so their homies are more. A different game shipped Ari and Yasuo. Oh, interesting. Okay. And then I saw a comment where someone was just like, lore accurate, Yasuo jumps in, tries 2V1ing, fails,

and then warwick gangs and loses the round for this team. Absolutely. That is a peak, big interaction. So what's the start? Okay, Yasuo has been crazy fed, and he is a hypercarry. and so he is he is effortlessly 2 v oneing a fucking fight is warwick a jungler no warwick is a jungler yes yeah okay and so

right when it turns yeah 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 um also i find it like, so 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 going, 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 the,

and so they have like the definitive moment of both of those characters' backstories presented. Yes. And Echo's trauma and Ari's trauma and they're both, you know, they're leaning on each other and they both find common ground 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 2V-Wening 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, the fuck? He got touched.

He got touched. I said, first of all, I think Yasuo 2 v. winning 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 nerves. 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.

Yes, he had no weakness. So. He was a fully completed, kidded out character. that could do everything. But so back to this cinematic, though. And then at the end, you get blitz and allowee jumping out. Hey, 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'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 a. Collie 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. O'Kalli is also more fun to play. Are the other two like more obtuse or are they?

Super, 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 pass 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 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 it's such a it's so unfair because the titles they get like you get Vye who's the Piltover Enfor 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 Nark around. Hey, I'm satisfied because not only is Vye here, but then they showed off among all the cosmetics, because you best believe they want that much. money. They also showed off lesbian breakup. Yeah, yeah, the fucking pit fighter outfit, baby. Drag that mascara. Like the leaky goth breakup vi.

And I'm like, that's the vie 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 they should have been the defaults i don't give a shit echoes mask and the pipe

and all that and the yeah yeah yeah 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 the the 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, 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. Yeah. You know,

and to throw some currency and tokens and so 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's now, like, an entire humongous pipeline of, like, stages, outfits and cosmetics that we've been previewed for 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

2XCO came out, it immediately broke like that, just fucking crashed its shit off. And then I went, well, fuck. And then 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. Because the sticker shock on that arcane costume pack being $140 fucking dollars plus tax Canadian. Oh yeah, it costs $165. Wow. Okay. 140 times

114 is equal to it costs $160 I thought okay I thought less you did you what did you think um

and then uh what did you think what did you think it was gonna be no I I yeah I mean I was I again I thought you were talking about like you know 20 bucks for the skins and and or so but like there's plenty here to talk

about. Because I saw that there was the like conversion of this because there's you know points that you earn there's the whatever fight money and then there's like a three week period before you spend all right. Let's just let's just start this from the top okay there are three currencies going on in the two XKO 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 a 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 750, 7,500 credits,

and 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 COPO points, which is their fake money currency, and CO points are in U.S., I mean, I have that all written down here.

In U.S. currency, a CO point is approximately $5 for 500 CO points. Okay. It would be $100 for $11,500. Right. So, and then tokens, character tokens are also parts of, certain passes, 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 U.S.D.

Stages cost approximately 5 U.S.D. Characters cost approximately $10,000. Yeah. But are obviously the thing that you should spend. you're 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 to go 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. It's really expensive. On top of that, your bundles include

K-O points and character unlock tokens to muddy the value, but then I mapped it out. So the $140-dollar starter ultra-fuck pack or whatever comes with three costumes. It comes with eight character unlock tokens and 5,000 fucking credits. Okay, so that is basically a premium edition.

That is future... 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 if you buy the fancy $140 bundle, the costumes add up to negative $40. Okay. So buying the character passes, cash, and buying the K.O. 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. 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 create 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 for three weeks.

And if you like those costumes and you're going to be spending K.O. 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 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. um, 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.

Okay. Um, so, uh, sounds like the, yeah, so the monetization plan is ultimately what, are you somebody that wants to,

uh, pick and choose an occasional purchase of, of, of, of, you know, buying whatever, you know, small amount is.

Or do you want to hit one of the battle past kind of gatcha timelines? Not gacha. 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,

were you whaling, dolphining in, dolphin plus or free? Or minnow, you know, or so. 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. Now, 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 the free tokens. So if you do all your weeklies and all your dailies, you get $7,500 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, I guess, again, this, this monetization plan 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 dollars for one costume for one character. It's fucking nuts.

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 CAD, okay? So I know most of our listening audiences from the States. You're going to have have to adjust these down 40%. This is a CAD. It's

500 for 7 bucks. It's $1,000 for $14. It's $2,200 for $28. It's $4,500 for $56. 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 $5. U.S. It's 100 K.O. points is a buck 40. Yep. That's how it works. 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... Because what would happen with Fortnite is people would, like, go to the subreddit and people go, oh my God, the alien skin is back out. Come now! Right? What determines that? No, no, you have to check.

It has to be you. Valerite and League both do that. Oh, that's fascinating. So what is it, is it just user, like, not random? Is it just, what determines, is it area? Is it like? I don't know. Probably your user ID.

User ID. Huh. Yeah. So, so how, with the free-to-play fighting game, how does the heart feel about cosmetics, right? What is the, what is the, Cosmetics are trash. Like straight up. I mean, beached areas is not doing anything for anybody as far as I can tell.

I don't, I don't know. It, uh, meh, maybe, 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. Some characters just kind of can't have a bad costume because their base designs too sick. I'm hoping that Tekelai 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, the free final color that you unlock, which is the green and black ones, make your effects also. green or different color. Yeah, there's vise like punches change from the regular, you know, blue or so into like a special color. Right. 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 would say, you know, you got these multiverse kind of previews, multi versus previews, or we talked about like, you know, fucking tech and revolution or whatever. But in this case, you're getting the pricing. I also say you're getting the pricing after years

of development, you know, where this is showing up late? But, 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'll let's compare it to Street Fighter 6 which is the easiest possible comparison point

because people are looking at that bundle and going what the fuck. Okay. A hundred USD for the Arcane Starter bundle is the equivalent of buying two years of Street Fighter 6 character passes because you get you get eight characters, eight tokens for it, right? So it's like buying year three and year four.

That's 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 6, that'd be about $20. And getting three costumes 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 of it's 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 not like other fighting games, right? And 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 monetization 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 Runtera, their card game. Oh, true. That ran it straight into the fucking.

ground. Everything was free and everything was like giving you too much. Yeah. And could easily be acquired. And then the skins were, they were like, pricester 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. Um, and like, they were too generous. So it's 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 Um 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, like, eh, 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, um, and this is in the best of cases, I fucking love me some Hades. What a great game. But, um,

in a lot of cases, you know, 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. 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 there You know, there's an element too where I'm like, 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 were in multiverses, the characters are much smaller because it's a smash-like game, and 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 Call of 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, I don't know if that's relatable at all, but like, after running all my maths, I'm like the, to anyone who actually wants to play and enjoy this game, I'll 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. Um, yeah, well, so the way I always feel when it comes to anything I'm playing that's free. And, um, you know, where, where the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, the, 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 on 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, 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 case is, then 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. Looks 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 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... Somebody in the chat said that, by the way, that 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 60-1. dollar bundle that gives you

eight character unlocks and the retail quote unquote version it's the version but it doesn't get you those hot ass arcane skin okay well I that I

think is a good idea I generally am like yeah when you're if a game is free but it gives you what is the equivalent of purchasing it if you want it to 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 this, is you doing the math also, uh, you calculating your heart? No, I actually just want to know. Okay. Okay. I, like, so, 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 Router, 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 going to work. Oh, yeah. I think it's going to work. I think it's going to work. 100% going to work. 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'll give a fuck, I'm just gonna play warwick all day. If you're telling me it already worked in league and it already worked in Valerent and it didn't work in Rune Terra, then

I think it's gonna 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 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. which is the... When that character...

And when fucking Pike or fucking Nautilus or Tom Kinch or fucking Talon 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 got to 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 monthly event. And the missions that they have make it actually really easy for anybody that plays somewhat regularly fighting games to get a free character.

Pretty, I was not expecting to see that many missions. There's like 20, two 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 a limit.

You'll actually have about 75,000 credits. So you actually had time to spend it on a dozen costumes, sorry, a dozen colors in all the stages by the time the free character comes out. Yeah. 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 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, 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 into that, but it'll ensure its survival. Then it's like, it's a, 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. I mean, the only reason they can get away with that fucking $100 USD thing is because Arcane is attached to it. And Arcane is what people that, yeah, non-league fans. This might as well be the fucking Arcane fighting game too. Exactly. It's nuts. And I'm somebody who knows Arcane more than the 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 this really complicated thing. It's a really excellent, it's a really excellent, um, view of exactly all the costs and benefits and pluses and minuses of a free to play game in general.

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, however, as you do that, the game will be actively manipulating you every time you log on by showing you everybody else with their cool-ass fancy costumes and hit effects and special COs and taunts and shit like that.

And then they will 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 which gives you four skins and like all these still. I don't know. Put your credit card information into the game. Yeah.

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? Because it's personal. It changes for everybody. I know that you can make it especially exploitive. in certain ways. One of the ones that comes to mind, which always I find

is bullshit no matter what, is if you cannot buy a specific thing that you're looking at, the only way... Oh, you mean like the Arcane Warwick skin, which is exclusive to the $35 battle pass? No, what I mean is a loot box. What I mean is a loot box.

Oh, yeah, no, there's no boxes. I mean a thing where... I mean a thing where you have to roll multiple times to gamble to get the thing you're interested in. Yeah, no, I would much prefer crazy high prices than the fucking dice roll. So 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 not just tapping on FOMO, you're also tapping on gambling addiction with people and 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 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 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. fuck you get in there do it now otherwise never I also don't know as skins get added to the game that rotation which is personal to you

is going to get uh if you miss it it might be might be months so 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 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 individual right to make most of their money by far yeah I think I think you gotta

you gotta do right by you on it ultimately you know if this is the way it goes and this is the way that 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 profitable enough to keep things going. 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 would 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... For you personally, Wally, this discussion is actually worth more than you would ever be able to pay that.

because we're providing them free advertising. Well, there's that element. 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 even. 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. It's crazy. And we're going to talk about, there's this exact discussion in the difference between the dev team and the people in charge of pricing and marketing. Yes, we are going to talk about that. There's a, yeah. It's the Street Fighter Six comparisons you've been making are pretty apt.

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, rather the next character's out right now is a really good move in terms of, um, getting the roster back up, which was the biggest part of the discussion.

You know what? Okay. Good. 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 of a shit post of a Timo trailer. Is, uh, yeah, cool.

Good stuff. I like that. I think that's a good way to, 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 the money, you know? I mean, you might see the data. Well, I, I, I, you might actually see the data. But then you'll pretend that you didn't.

I bet you the fucking devs don't get to see that shit. I know, they have to. 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 iPad 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 canons 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 $250 on this bundle and use this costume, it'll commonly match you up with people a full rank below yours? Oh, fuck. Yep. Yep. There we go. 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 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. 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, you know, as the,

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. Okay. And was there anything else on your side? Yeah, Silent Hill F, I'm going through New Game Plus. It is absolutely stellar.

The new game plus. additions 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 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 like, 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, to every, 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. 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, ah, yeah. Oh, that's a good noise. Dahlia Gillespie does not fly over to meet you in Japan. Darya Gillespie. Okay. Jailen C. Oh, you know, like, 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. Mm-hmm. Yes. But yeah, that's the FBI.

Zagoup. Over at Twitch.tv.tv slash Pat Stairs 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 Timone Warwick that day. And then Friday, I'm busy getting my hair dyed. And then Saturday and Sunday, I'll be back with Silent Hill F and Lisa. Okay. How are you liking Lisa so far? It's miserable.

Yeah. But really funny. I think it's too funny. I think it's way funnier than it is emotionally arresting. Are you having those parts where you're like, I can't tell if 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.

I think the art style goes a lot, goes a long way with it too. 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. Okay. Cool. Hopefully there's not too much news this week because I do have a hard out. I was just looking.

So that is... Because I got to watch this shit off my face and get things done. And that's a whole process. Okay. I'm doing the math on that. Okay, so we got about that. Yeah.

Cool. 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. That'd be really 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. Oh, good. That's great. 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. 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. This week, the podcast is sponsored by Shopify. Toching.

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Thanks, Shopify. This week, the podcast is sponsored by, yeah, the absolute sickest when it comes to getting your gaming headphones getting your gaming headphones needs taken care of Turtle Beach

so Turtle Beach has I've praised it many a time and I'll praise it again the Gen 3 Stealth 700 headset has incredible comfort features and all that good stuff

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Yeah, my preferred headset when I'm over gaming on the couch and when we're let's playing. Shoutouts, thank you, Turtle Beach. Thanks, Turtle Beach. And this week, the podcast is sponsored by the Ridge Wallet. Oh, yeah. Yeah. It's super clean.

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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 could have 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 TEO 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.

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 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 ESports

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 ESports 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 Tat Nakayama 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 this side of the, the, the, That's crazy. Of Street Fighter 6.

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 Yanakiyama is effectively going,

I can only say so much, but yeah, I agree, this is some dog shit. Please ask me about it. 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 Eat Sports 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 6th, Japan, videos and live streams with vtubers 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 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, oh, I wonder who. And they had like a sad face. Like, oh, oh, you're a guy in any sports. Yeah.

Yeah. I was like, oh, 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 cat ears and the mouscular 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 then... Those 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. be like, thanks for all your hard work, we're going to take it from here, is fucking just the absolute audacity, you 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 esports exists for 30 years that no one can no one in the corporate side of esports has literally known how to make even a single dollar uh yeah oh man

well 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 Oh yeah. I think Microsoft has what it takes. Yeah? To what?

To make some profit. Yeah? What do they got profit? What? Big profit coming. Yeah? Well, yeah. Is it? Yeah. You know? Have you seen Game Pass? Wait, that was this week? 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 where 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 a bunch of Game Pass related shit rolled out. and was announced. In particular,

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 20205, game pass, as it was, was making money. All right? Yeah, but they have to hit, they have to hit the targets for 100 million users. So just, just, and, and upcoming costs of all kinds of other new, new initiatives that were 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 some details on tiers and streaming.

So different Xbox GamePass 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 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 such as you cloud game. This is all going to be up to the type of game. past 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 a big chunk of one console's market is like, actually we're selling the

resolutions back to people at different streaming rates. So 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.

Hey, well, there's always the ad free, the ad version that you can also get, 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 is streaming? Who the fuck is? Well, no, you pre-watch. Streaming a game for five hours a month. No, no, no. 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 4.59. 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.

And to say nothing. Who the fuck is that even for? To say nothing of whatever resolutions you're limited are capped to, by the way. Five hours a month. More than enough stream gaming for you, young man. This is so weird. This is like a fucking complete loss of understanding of how like a normal person works, which is appropriate for Microsoft.

Now, 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 weeks ago.

They don't sell that shit anymore. No. And according to someone that works there, there's rumors going on about, um, uh, 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 GameStop's Twitter is now

dunking on all these Xbox announcements. Just with a series of like, well that's dumb, just come by it here. And it's insane that they're right. You know? Yeah, no. Just

again, you think you'd be the one with the clown makeup, but it turns out that a perfectly profitable thing, 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. Um, Xbox division. Sony's gonna get so shitty with the fucking Xbox dies. 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 to, like zooming out from Microsoft in this context? where Wall Street Journal

consultants at Bain & Co. AI infrastructure spending will require $2 trillion in annual AI revenue by 2030. By comparison, that is more than the combined 2024 revenue of Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, Microsoft meta, and Nvidia, 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 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 dollars 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 this so i i was doing some some some economics looking into and apparently like like a very like above 80 percent 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 nothing. Or just nothing. Or just nothing. Yeah. It's, I, did you see, um, did you see? Did you see? see who the fuck was it? It was like Nvidia's investing in Open AI

so that Open AI has the money to give to Nvidia to get their orders. So that they don't fucking implode. That's a check scan. That's a check scan. Okay guys.

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 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, um, there's a bunch of folks that are like,

I don't get it. What's the problem? This is fine. This is, there's no issue here. No, I'm not going to engage with the conversation about when you talk to somebody about a concern about a large,

about an any issue that's larger than your front yard. And they're like, I 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. And 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 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 far, that's almost like its 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, over-processed 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. 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 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 eight that's crazy I should say crazy

look at this 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 Super Beast mail at gmail.com that's Castle Superbeast mail Beast Mail 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 dead. I am so dead.

I'm just going to throw the dog as far as I can. Hopefully he escapes the blast. I am face-timing 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?

It blame toxic. There's a fucking trash robot named like fuck ass. Death. Hold on. Death due to... Junk bot. I'm gonna go Junkbot. 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... dude, I can't even find it. John Concord. John Cord? Was John Cord one of the characters? Okay, the Junk bot's name was one-off. Oh. Oh, there's a fucking character named Baz, dude.

shitty goggle doctor lady I didn't have a shit I didn't have a chance of shit Not even close Not even close Never I never would have got I'm dead I'm so dead

Thank you Thank you jigsaw Sorry Fucking rip me Uh Okay So let's see Ambrose from Albuquerque

Says Hey like a dragon Mini game completionists I'm a competitive, Ritchie Mahjong player from Albuquerque, New Mexico, where there's effectively

no community around the game. I've 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, I, 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 your, 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 dude's not gambling mahjong, but majong is gambling. It's as much gambling as poker is gambling. 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, like, it's such a strange situation. Um, Yeah, I mean, look. You probably skip a couple steps in this process. I'm just saying, do you really 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, 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.

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. And then what's... 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. I mean, it's a no flaccid mahjong zone. Look, just just just to call Ricci by hitting the table from underneath. Oh, there we go.

Okay. Good, good. The four wins. 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. I can't believe it.

I, it's, it's, listen, it's the vacation, isn't it? It really is. You just, 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 Majong, 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 Majong 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. Chris 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 he's right he's super right now instead of getting mad I just feel bad for them after all they can't read it's it's crazy how many people will not internalize signage if it disagrees with what they want to 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 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 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 for. 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 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 percent 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, 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, uh, 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. Yeah. 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 synchement. Like the scenario like manifested post

trip I the thing like it's it's there's always because I always feel there's always the slip and fall version of that too where you're kind of like ooh dollar signs in their eyes right but with the fucking with the street traffic

moving the pylon 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. That science for other people. That's it, right? 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 and next that overpass and there was the Tim Hortons on the corner so those lights people in that neighborhood were just like I don't care for these lights optional yeah these lights and there were cops

that would hang out at that Tim Hortons 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 tabachnack, I can go right. True. Yeah.

Amazing. Amazing when those calculations happen. You know, you just... 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's, there is.

The, well, the thought, it didn't have one. Slash, um, 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, we're downtown Toronto and one of those big gigantic intersections, X that big mall. And she was at the furthest rightmost 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 Yeah 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 gonna go have your dad pick us up We're not gonna 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 Backs back up. Not even. The person just had a, 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. You're going to be able like that 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.