Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Danny O'Dwyer (Special Guest) - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 18

Episode Date: May 8, 2015

Special guest Danny O'Dwyer joins us to talk Square Enix announcing they are also going to have an E3 Press Conference, Konami is having a crazy time, ESPN talked some shit about video games, should they get shot, and should games be 200 hours long? That is crazy! (Released 05.01.15) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys, welcome to the first ever episode 18 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. Now you know, see, it's bad. I tell them all the time. No, it's a good thing. It's a good thing. We had to re-record this a second ago. Danny was really excited. Danny liked it.

Then I corrected him and told them no. He's like, Tim, you should keep doing that. It's not exactly what he said. That's exactly the other thing. I like that. They'll never know. So it's all good. Thanks, Kevin.

Anyways, the charm. Kevin's a great guy. I am Tim Getty. I'm here with the coolest dudes in video games. Call him Moriarty, Greg Miller. And I'm going to add him in the coolest dudes. Danny O'Dwyer from GameSpot. It's going on.

Also, VideoGames.com. Also, videogames.com. All right. So, catching up, I found out that GameSpot was VideoGames. com when I first got the internet

and then went on it thinking it was like AOL keyword search. You said you used to work at AOL. I did. I used to work in sales and billing in Ireland, which is great because they don't actually have A.

So I don't know why the fuck is. Yeah, it's America Online. Exactly. America Online. Did they call anything different over there? They called Ireland. IOL. There was a company called Iowelian.

Shalian Online. Yes. Yeah, Darby... Charlie on the line. Darby O'Gillom online. I can't get Lucky Charm in Ireland. Well, no, because it's racist. Yeah, it's just like Craig.

Wait, so when you were in... When you say you were a billing guy at A-Wall, does that mean you were the guy that was trying, like, people would call and try to cancel their subscription? And you would have to try to keep them, but never could. Yep. Cancellations, yeah, it was the fucking most... Six months of my life that I wish I could get back.

It was horrible. Although, on my last week, there was a lady who called up a granny, granny, an old grandmother who had like a student who lived in the house and had like signed up to AOL five years earlier and she'd been billed every month for the, didn't she looked at her bank balance and was like, I don't know what, what's online, I don't know what this is. So

I like, it was my second last day so I gave her back all the gosh. Oh wow, look at you. Yeah, it was like a grand. You put AOL out of business. That was the move. It was you. One thousand Ireland bucks. She got back. Exactly. Um, now I have another, I have another quick question for you guys generally. Do you remember, this was before YouTube,

but it was like maybe 2005 or 2000 around there so you you know online video was the thing but it wasn't really prevalent there was there was a guy there yes there was a guy that recorded his conversation with aOL's billing to cancel a subscription it was like a half an hour thing do you guys remember this oh yeah yeah and like the guy ended up at a oil ended up getting fired because like he refused

basically to like cancel the guy's subscription it was like an amazing people I'm sure it's somewhere I thought on eBolm's world oh yeah that's world was ahead of its time it was remember emailing and funny MP3s to people oh yeah oh yeah I remember down I said it before, I remember downloading the MPEG of Conan O'Brien going to the episode one premiere, and it took like five days. Like for me to download it. I just left my computer on it.

Yeah. That is amazing. I remember I downloaded Christmas lights to put on the top of my monitor. It's like on the screen every Christmas light. Oh, do you customize your desktop? I did. Yeah. Like the whole thing.

Viruses of a mini Christmas carol behind it, I'm sure. My desktop's got a little animated person on it who I can click and they'll go woo. And I've got no ram to run any games. That's so awesome. So yesterday, me and Nick went down to L.A., and we did this thing with Mega-64, which was fucking awesome. Sweet. I don't know a Mega 64, but they're great. And they were telling us the story of their friend, or not friends, but they've worked with the people that stayed in line for all the Star Wars movies, like, that were first in line.

And they were saying that, like, So Conan did stuff, and there was a bunch of other people that would come and, like, try to bribe them away. Oh, really? And they were just like, no. Like, we won't leave. And they ended up getting offered, like, $50,000. Jeez. They leave their space in line. And they're like, you can't buy them.

this experience. Heartbeat. You can't buy this experience. It's like, you could literally buy tomorrow the experience for you and all of your friends.

Like, your own theater. Yeah. Nah, man. Nah. They didn't do it. Wow. Dumb. That's called dumb.

Do you remember the guy at the front of the PS4 line in San Francisco? No. I think someone paid him to be there. Oh. I think it was one of those situations.

You think Sony paid him? He didn't look like somebody who would necessarily be up for playing some hot PS4 launch titles. He wasn't looking forward to Kill's own Shadowfall? No. Was he a Japanese gentleman and a tan blazer

with a blue shirt? Oh my god, it's him right there. That's the man! What? Oh my God. Ladies and gentlemen, if you do not know, the Kind of Funny Games cast is a podcast that we do every week where we talk about video games and it's great. You go to YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games and we break it out topic by topic Monday through

Thursday. Friday, you get the full episode on YouTube or over on iTunes and it's a great, beautiful thing. But if you want it early, you can go to patreon.com slash kind of funny games and get it early there. Was that the best I've ever done doing that? I was the best you've ever. I was going to say, you're hitting your stride now. I'm trying.

Now you're turning the ship around. No, I wouldn't say that. The games passed on board for a long time. Now, I was reading, it's funny you say that. I was reading about ships the other night. Of course. And about how ships are steered. Well, Greg knows all about how ships are steered.

Oh, yeah. Greg has an idea. Well, he has this ship steered by his video game slaves. Yes. that are all there for some reason trying to protect Greg. I don't understand that. But, you know, the rudder or whatever just goes back and forth. And I didn't realize that, like, in all these epic movies, wherever

where they're, like, turn in the wheel. It's just to keep it from not moving back to the center. It's like not, it's just over, like, after one spin of the wheel. You're like, squint in the wheel, and I get all fucking emotive about it. I'm like, it's a little dramatic. There's like resistance against the waves. I don't think that's necessarily true. One of the things that I don't know if you guys knew about me is I'm not a sailor.

I didn't really know that. I would assume you are. But you tie me up so well. You're really skilled a thing. Damn. Well, that has nothing to do with this. I was in casual carpool with a guy who was what... Casual carpool is a thing when you live in the East Bay and you want to get San Francisco.

You get in a stranger's car underneath the freeway, pay them a dollar, and then they drop you off for work because they get to use the carpool lane. But it's like rolling the dice on like what crazy motherfucker you're going to have today. Some of them are like lovely people. Some of them are nuts. This one dude was telling me all about taxation. You would have love them. But one of the things he was pissed off about was the son was playing Assassin's Creed and he saw him doing the boats.

He was like, boats aren't that easy to maneuver. He's like, bullshit. He's just able to like fire the cannons and work against the waves and stuff. He was like, what's wrong? Because I mentioned I work in video games. That's when he went for straight away. It was like, you played that assassin's game with the boats? That's fucking awesome.

He pissed them off. He used to do that, by the way. That's the thing that's been. been going on for a long time. Boat? No, the casual... Oh, carpool thing. I was really lost on that one

and where we were going. I didn't know what's thinking of like, boats? No, Shin used to drive cars and complain about Assassin's Creed. Yeah, classic. I do only half of that

which is to complain about Assassin's Street. Sure. You don't do the drive. Well, Greg, so remember last week when you got the show sponsored three times? Oh, did you get it sponsored? I did get it sponsored.

Is it the same person three times? Different people. Oh, okay. For real? For real, for real? I mean, it's the same person as last week for the first one. But we're not doubling up in one episode. We got two different sponsors, which is awesome.

And it makes my life a lot better. So, proflowers.com, once again, I don't know if you guys are familiar with them last week, because we did it three times. But we've heard a lot of good responses from these guys. Our fans are loving this because their girlfriends are happy. Their wives are happy. Their moms are going to be happy on Mother's Day. And it's a whole great thing. So keep tweeting at me if you're using the codes and stuff.

because if you use the code, patron, P-A-T-R-O-N over at ProFlowers.com, you get 100, not free, 100 blooms of flowers with a free vase. They give you a free vase with it. Whoa.

That's 100 flowers. And these are professional flowers. These are pro flowers. These are not amateur flowers. No. They're not AAA or AA flowers. These are Major League flowers. They're guaranteed to be fresh and beautiful

for at least seven days, which we can attest to. Yeah, they sent us a beautiful bouquet, and they're still going. And that's what I want to talk about real quick. Stuff your ad, up your ass for a second. This thing comes from pro flowers.

I was doing a live stream. Colin got all excited. He showed me the box. And then I walked out there and I saw the hundred blooms in the vase, right? And I'm like, oh, this is the difference between a bloom and a flower. Because these are like all these little buds and stuff. I'm like, oh, it's a artsy, farsi flower. I don't know anything about it.

And then the next morning we woke up and these motherfuckers had exploded in color. Like, for real, they were real flowers. Like, oh, damn, it's a good deal. It does have a note in there that says, like, you know, remember that these have been in a box for 12 hours. I'm paraphrasing me. Yeah. And then you have to put in her. And the note says, bro, remember.

Put the flower food in there and put some water in there and they'll perk right up. And they did. And that's no, that's no joke. That's no joke. They said us wanting to celebrate our little campaign here. And what's awesome about it is so it was just me and Colin sitting at the table. And like, he's pulling out of the box. And I'm looking at it.

I'm like, this is the moment that I realize how much of a dude bro I am. Where I'm like, how do you do flowers? I don't know. Because you just send him to your former long distance girl. Yeah. And she dealt with it. So that was great. But what was awesome.

here is there's actually instructions and they're super simple and it's clear yeah it took water all and put it together and stuff it was awesome but then now they're beautiful yeah it was great it was there was a moment and this is a really happen because they're all wrapped up like there's like a like a brick of like clay like dirt to kind of like for them to feed off of and then the blooms around and everything's covered I can't really see and there's at one point Tim's like I think it's upside down and I'm like oh you're right and I turned out bull flowers it was great but yeah so you visit proflowers.com you click a little blue microphone in the top right corner and you type in patron P-A-T-R-O-N and if you do that you get the

hundred dollars the hundred blooms with a free vase for twenty dollars for ten dollars more you can get a premium vase Jesus some chocolates premium vase I come with like a steel book and a like a you wear it on your rich art book and a DLC character but and we can vouch for the chocolates as well because our friends of pro flowers did send us you know the the flowers is kind of a celebration of our campaign here and they sent us the chocolates as well and Cheryl and Christine went in on those I didn't realize those were what those were no

I mean, I knew they were chocolates. I didn't realize they were for grab chocolates. Were they pro chocolates? They were pro chocolates. These were also pro chocolate. These are semi-pro. Semi-sweet. Oh, man.

But it was good. All this is really good. You guys, Mother's Day is coming up. Make sure you get that done. Treat Mom well, huh? Yeah. This deal expires on midnight on Friday. Damn.

Of next? Of what? Yeah, what's the day? Of the day. The way to record the show is really confusing. So I'm a little confused. But it'll be like, whenever you're hearing it, it's this Friday. Yeah.

I mean, unless you're just, unless it's after Mother's Day in which case, it's not. And Mother's Day has already happened in the UK, but that doesn't mean you can't just buy her mom's with flowers. See, I'm being really ignorant. Just buy some porridge did I? Oh my God. But yeah, all right. So cool. So there we go.

That was the first sponsorship, so thank you guys for supporting us through all this stuff. Yeah, thank you very much. And enjoy. Now, topic number one for today, guys. It's E3. Boom. It's E3? Oh, shit.

What are we doing this? Here. No, no, no. No. Not yet. I think we're in breach of our contract. The topic is E3. Now, here's the beautiful thing about this.

We're going to talk about a couple things here. One of them, the fact that Square Enix announced that they were going to do their own press conference this year, which is not unprecedented. They've done this before. This is now adding on to Bethesda and aforementioned before Ubisoft and EA and EA, Activision, all that stuff that we already know. Of course, the classics, the Nintendo, we got Sony, we got Microsoft. Do we need more of these third party things? Is this necessary? Does score need to have been doing this?

And we're also going to talk about the fact that kind of funny is working with these guys over a GameSpot at E-D-H. Oh, man. So that's pretty excited. So to answer your first question, yes, there needs to be as many conferences as possible. Yeah, so we can talk about it.

But right, let's go with that second part first. We're working with you at E-3. How excited are you about this? Pretty excited about it. We've had two stages on the GameSpot E-3 show floor for a couple of years now. It used to be one stage. We expanded it out to two so we could have...

I think we had a really bountiful year of like game coverage that year. We just needed two stages to get all these hot games on. And then next year we didn't. And still filled up those two stages. And then this year it was kind of like, oh, what are we going to do with these? You know, we bring it back down to one stage. And then lo and behold, I didn't know anything about this. They come to me and say, kind of funny, you're going to take the second stage.

And it was like, perfect. Perfect. Because we can concentrate on our sort of like straight-laced, like information. based programming where it's like we're getting games that have been announced at the show we're just going to demo them we're going to talk to developers about them get all the information we can and get it out to people as quickly as possible and then you guys can basically like provide entertainment get all your crazy fans and like the ridiculous people that sort of live within the game's ecosystem and beyond Cisco for instance um beyond and you can have your own like entertainment

based stage so it like works out perfectly I can't wait it's gonna be fun I'm really excited. Here's a question. I haven't seen you. You've been gone. Things have been happening. Cisco confirmed he wants to be a part of this. Cisco.

The thong song. The guy, not the company that makes routers and shit. Yeah, he listens to this show. We're talking about Cisco, the dragon. The song, man. I'm so excited. Now here's where it gets where we need to have a serious

kind of funny business discussion right now. Cisco is down to do this. Apparently, I'm talking to his assistant. She's in. He's in. Do we want him for one day? We want Cisco for all three days. That is what we're being presented to.

I'm thinking what we do is we get Cisco a pass. We say Cisco, go see games, check in every so often. This is coming back and he just comes back. That's it. We have Cisco for all three days and we send him come back. He just comes back. What did you see Cisco? Dragon, what did you see?

Yeah. Oh, I love that. Cisco, I can't wait to meet to me Cisco. It's so funny that Cisco listens to the show and likes us because we love Cisco a great deal. Yeah, so much. Danny knew the thong song back and forth. And I don't mean like knew the song. I mean, he like knew the video yesterday.

Oh yeah. Where he does the leg stomp and it shakes the camera. And then he does the Jesus thing, but instead of running across water, he runs across women. People. Women, yes. What? Yes. Cisco's in.

We confirmed yesterday as well, Devin Saw was in. He's in negotiations. All these people could easily fall through. But all of them have responded back. Yes, I'd like to do the show. Chloe Dykeshire, Sam Whitwer. I was going to say primarily. the point, not the point, but primarily we're

going to be staffed with a lot of our fellow YouTube friends and internet personalities, or that's kind of the idea. GameSpot is going to do the more traditional, see the games, and here's kind of the information you need and the games and developers you want to talk to. We can't outdo them, so why try? That's the whole premise of kind of funny is there's already

people doing that shit properly and well, so we want to just interpret the news and interpret it with people, and what better way to interpret it then with our friends from Epic Mealtime, for instance, or something like that. Yeah, exactly. Rooster Teet people. Rooster Teet, exactly. And all this stuff. It's going to be so much.

We're going to have a party. That's how I keep talking about. Exactly. We're bringing our dev friends, too. All the devs are like, I want to go show their game and then just come on and shoot the shit and talk about. Like Bithel said that he wanted to spend literally all three days with us. He told me he was welcome to do that. He hangs out with that Japanese man in a tan laser. Will he show up?

Who knows? Anything could happen at GameSpot Cross Eat. Kind of funny. Man, I'll tell you what, you nailed the opening. Yeah, you know what? I tried to. Here's the thing, Greg. Yesterday we did, for the first time ever for me, one of the first time ever for me, one

of those all-day L.A. trip, where it's like 4 a.m. flight down there and then midnight flat back. Yeah. And it's just like, all right. Now you know how the other half lives. The entire flight, I was practicing that intro. Damn. And then you're just like from there, and then I just took care of itself. If I was sleeping, I forgot everything. But anyways, yeah. So I'm happy about this. This is a good show. You did good. I'm happy about it. Yeah. I'm really, I'm really excited for E3, though, because I think that this is going to be something very different than what people are used to seeing from GameSpot, O IGN, or like, you know, all these things where people are used to seeing us.

It's not going to be that same-all, same-all. That's a complete of a different act for you guys around. Like, we were talking earlier about, like, what it's like reporting on the show for, where you're literally like running to a point. And it's like, just writing down stuff. It's like, you'll actually be able to enjoy E3 this year. Yeah. Yeah, and that's what I said on Colin and Greg is that a lot of people have been like so

much for Collins relaxing E3 because I've been talking about that. But it's like, we've been talking about this for months behind the scenes. And this will be a much more relaxing and much more funny E3 than I am accustomed. That much I can guarantee. Our boots in a great spot as well. It's website where you guys used to be. Yeah, and it's great. And that's the thing is I think this is the first time ever.

And I could be wrong about this. But it's the first time ever that there's going to be like a live stream from the show floor that isn't just either like... Show your game. Show your game. Like showing game. Like, Dev stuff. Or actual like crazy, let's have a Ubisoft dance party or whatever. This is actually just going to be, hey, we're a bunch of dudes talking about games and talk about cool stuff.

Come and let's have fun and do dumb things. We're going to be doing the whole rubber neck and be like, oh, they're seeing whatever game. They're seeing Uncharted 4 over there. You should probably click over and go, watch that. We're going to do the same thing. We'll sit there in silence and watch them. I mean like Cisco's talking about rock band again. All right, Cisco, it's day two.

We asked you to go see as many games as possible. You just keep coming back with different rock band games. You see different rock band's songs. Let me tell you about Bravely Second. I want to see him like just go out there and pick up the most like obscure ass game that he like mechanically complex. Behind closed doors, they are showing Nino Okuna 2. Let me tell you about it.

All right, well, speaking of JRPGs and stuff like that with no Cooney. Yeah. Squaresoft. Do you say JRP Jesus? No. I didn't. JRP Jesus?

JRPG Jesus. Squarespace. Yeah, I did. Man. Good memory. It's just a damn time. 12 years, but yeah. All right.

So, Square Enix is having their press conference. What do you guys feel about this? Uh, I don't know. I don't think that. I understand why Bethes is doing it. I'm not going to, I'm not going to presume that Square is copying Bethesda because a lot of thought and planning goes into this kind of thing, but it does kind of like an afterthought

to have announced it this early with it or this late rather but that said I'm sure this was probably planning it in the cards for a while here's the problem

with everyone doing their own conference now again is that this dilutes the ability of third parties to make meaningful appearances at the conferences that actually really matter which are Microsoft's and Sony's

so like we're gonna see Far Cry 5 or whatever we're gonna see it's actually and then they're gonna show it again you know and now it's square it's like

they're gonna show Final Fantasy 15 probably at PS4s and their own and like different kinds And I'm like, why? You know, like, I don't, unless Square has something really substantive to say, and I'm kind of doubting that they do, compared to what I think Bethesda is going to announce.

It seems like it might be a bit of a letdown, but I hope that I'm wrong, you know. Because clearly they're going to talk about Final Fantasy 15 and how it's clearly not going to come out this year. And Kingdom Hearts 3, which is clearly not going to come out next year. They're going to open with goofy walking out. Who? Yo, motherfuckers doubted me.

That would be awesome. I'm back in. I'm back in. That would be awesome. But hopefully they have, you know, some new, announce some fresh announcements and you know here's the funny thing Tim about Square Enix's

kind of stage show as opposed to Bethes is where it's clearly obvious what they're going to talk about what are they going to say and like what kind of crazy I was thinking about like are they going to like what is fan boy Colin Wathen to announce like a parasite eve or you know something like crazy or you know something totally off the you know a chrono game or something like that like there has to be something more than Final Fantasy 15 and something more than

Kingdom Hearts or this is going to be a letdown also they published Tomb Raider and all that I was about to say the new show Tomb Raider right Yeah, but then they're going to show, this is exactly. It'll be at Microsoft conference. And it's like, clearly, so it's like, why, why, why? Because then they can get the double dip, right? And then you figure at your own show, you can go more in depth than you can at Microsoft or whatever. You can show the five-minute demo there and the 20-minute demo at Square, vice versa.

Or like single-player demo with this and then multiplayer demo. Don't even wrong, I hate it too. I think it's stupid. But it's just like, it's everybody trying to compete, everybody trying to act like their dick's bigger than everybody else's dick. Yeah, I'm being able to, like, control your own message is really blind. Yeah. So they like to be able to say, all right, we've got like this much time to talk about, whatever we want, not just like last minute changes all the way, you know, until the final day before Sony's conference or something.

But yeah, that is the problem. It's like, it's the problem with EA and Ubisoft at a moment already is like we know most of the stuff before they even get to their conferences. So, like, in a way, Nintendo now it just becomes its own little world again. Like, I know they're not doing a conference or doing one of their directs again, but like that's the only spot where you're actually going to get information that won't turn up anywhere else at all. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that's a great point. The rest of them are all just going to be. Like, I'm totally with. you like the Bethesda one,

you can name off four or five games that they could talk about which are going to be interesting and one game that they could do a whole conference about and everyone would be happening

and I think two games that they are absolutely going to talk about which is fall out for in Doom so it's like you don't think dishonor guarantee I think dishonor is probably

going to be there but I don't think that that's what's really going to matter you know if they're like like Doom I'm really

I'll fucking love Doom so I'm like really excited to see you know it's a full circle kind of thing because my first E3 was 2004 and that was

was when Doom 3 was there. And that was like one of the first games I was ever really excited to play. And that was one of the first games ever played really early. I remember getting, you know, with the IGN guys that we were able to get in front of the line.

It was a very like, that was a great E3 for me. Just was like, wow, this is so cool. And same Resident Evil 4 was there too, that E3. So to see like Doom is so exciting and see what it, what it could do with,

what it could do with, what it could do without its founders there now at all. And like kind of a new team and how this game has kind of been drawn out for a long time is really exciting. But my hope for Bethesda, too,

because I think maybe pray will be, all right, Fallout 4 is, like, absolutely going to be there. We fucking riot burn the place down if there is no. There's no way that fallout 4, or whatever they call it,

is going to be at that. There's no way that that's not going to be there. It's impossible. Can you imagine that? I would, like, I don't, like, there's no way. Everyone was, like, I was so sure that they were going to do it last year,

that I'm almost convinced now that they were, going to announce on one of those stages didn't so they could do this this year and then there are so many rumors about it coming out like that this might be a super quick turnaround thing that like The Colin plan. Yeah like that that just

leads credence to that again like they've just been sitting on this sitting on this on this oh yeah they're going to announce it. They got an answer before this I think the game and we said before we won't belabor it is is this I think the games are probably already internally in alpha like I think the game's probably pretty done I think that like now they're polishing and they're fixing and they're translating and they're QAing

and all kinds of things they've been working on this game for a very long time. Well that team's been frees and Skyrim was released. Yeah. So like they've been working on something for a long time. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And presumably we don't, you know, but that's the game studio is pretty secretive. Yeah. We don't know how they've scaled up and how many teams they have.

And like if they've spun off some of their guys to work on Skyrim, DLC while they were making this new game with presumably a new engine, presumably next gen only, or this gen only. There's a lot to be excited about it. And that's the difference between, and maybe it's just me speaking in, for my personal preferences and probably is why I'm much more excited about Bethesda than Square Annex is because I'm just much more excited about Bethes's games because Bethes's games are much much better yeah yeah so it's just like at least recently it's sad to say that

square has fallen that far from grace and Bethesda seem to have their like they have their communications in order a lot more than Square do like even yesterday I think they announced that they had like a patched version of the demo going live like why are they patching demos they just like I don't trust them to put on a conference that will be like I'm not saying it'll end up being like the Canami conferences of all those were so But you don't know. Like, it could end up just being like,

yeah, Tak Fuji, sadly, no longer doing conferences. Yeah, I, the one cool thing about what Square is doing

with Final Fantasy 15, though, with Duske or whatever is, they did release all of that data which we went over on Colin and Greg Live yesterday about like everything that people hated in the game

and in the order that they hated them, which I thought was even, like, funny. By the region. Like, people complained about this the most.

Really? And this second most. And then Tabata, like, had something to say about each of them and how they're fixing them. And I thought

that that was pretty cool and very unsquare. And a lot of moves they're making are very unsquare lately, which makes me seem like they're actually learning a great deal. But one of the things that I felt very vindicated what was everyone hated that blonde guy's voice acting. Fucking told you. So what do you think they could do to make it worth the press conference? Like to me, I think release dates would be a good.

Yeah, they have to have a release date. And I think you will get a release date. Don't you think? A 15 release date. I mean, people are dreaming if kids are. If they think Kingdom Hearts 3 is anywhere near being done, it's not. And I hope I'm wrong because I know how excited people are about that, but I've said it before it. That's a 2017 game, I think.

And I think that Final Fantasy 15 is a 2016 game. And I think it's probably spring, maybe around this time. And so maybe it'll be cool for them to announce, you know, April 17th, whatever. That's the date and show like a new portion of the game. But the way they're talking about Final Fantasy 15 and what they're learning from the demo is that they're going in and fixing shit. And that is not going to be a minor. It's not going to be a...

That's not just a minor kind of trivial academic thing they're doing. They were talking about things like camera and targeting and all these kinds of things. These are things that need to be programmed and honed and redone. And someone was telling me on Twitter, I don't know, but true or not that the voice acting

even is placeholder. You know, like, they were talking specifically about how the blonde guy or whatever that, you know, just the voice sounds so bad. Like, comically bad, especially because the other three guys were fine. So, like, there's a lot of work to be done. I think it's better that they take their time with this and do it right.

Do you think there's any chance to get a Kingdom Hearts 3 release date, even if it is? No, but I don't think you'll get a release date, but it would be smart for them to say it's not coming this year and finally put people out of their misery. And if they say really state, you know, 2017. Exactly. Or 2016, if it's a fall game, maybe. So I'm a little hazy on this, but I remember back when the PS4 was first announced in that February event, the square guy came out and he said something about home. Well, he's being excited for E3. Yeah.

Deep down. And then... Oh, no, that's Capcom. Sorry. No, no. Oh, no. I'm sorry, but I was thinking about... Oh, no, with deep down.

That's what you're talking about. No, then at E3, then they showed that, like, tech demo final fantasy game? Like, I don't know what it's called. Agnes philosophy. Agnes philosophy, yeah. And was that just a graphic demo thing, or do you think we'll see something from that? It could be. I mean, it reminds me a great deal.

Greg and I have talked about this. And I don't know how, you know, Greg and Danny feel about this now, but it reminds me a great deal about the way Quantum Dream does things. where they'll release a demo, a graphical or engine demo that ends up being spun into a new game and so we saw that with heavy rain and with that girl at the table

Yeah, the acting ring, yeah, yeah. And I think that yeah, casting call, whatever that thing was called. And I think that what we saw from Quantick at PS4's reveal, for instance, with Kara is probably going to be their next game. So, and I think the game might be called Singularity or something.

I don't know, like there was all these weeks. Singularity? Yeah. Raven will come out of hibernation swinging if that happens. Well, I mean, we'll see. There's all sorts of rumors about what they're doing, but I bring that up just because I think they're probably maybe going to do a similar attack. There's a lot. I'd be excited for that, though.

That looked really cool. I don't know if it needs to be a Final Fantasy game, though. If that was some new franchise or whatever, I'd be into it. They need some new IP, and it's not to say they don't have new IP. It's just that they, like, Bravely is a new IP that's doing very well, and they're bringing out another one. But they could use a new AAA IP on console that differentiates itself from Final Fantasy in a more substantive way because a lot of people like me

I mean like some people give me shit but like I am not it's I feel like it's more rare to be a Final Fantasy fan than not around this time and like I think that Final Fantasy fans are somewhat of a dying breed and I think that Square like Square knows that it's their fault that that's happening and that they need to reinvigorate

the thing I'm most curious about are two things with Square Annex. They'll slow Dragon Quest Heroes probably which is the Muso game being done my Omega Force that I don't really care about. The the bigger thing that they've been quiet about is Dragon Quest 11 and like what that will mean and that's going to be a significant game especially in Japan significant and I think that they have to win a lot of hearts and minds back with that as well because

Dragon Quest 10 puzzlingly was an MMO so I think that that could be the wild card is Dragon Quest 11 the thing is that seems like a thing you might want to show Japan first but E3 is global and they have to show something and it's got to be more than five it's got to be more than 15 in Kingdom Hearts 3 I mean if that's all they really have and this is really a waste of time they should just go to PlayStation and do it there. Yeah. And they probably will anyway. So, and then do Tomb Raider at Microsoft and just be done with it.

So the other thing that's not trivial is the cost of doing something like this. So again, they have to have a plan, you know? And so Dragon Quest 11 would be my prediction. There's always the possibility that they just didn't get the time they wanted at those big conferences as well. Also true. They're like blocking them off. And then they realize, you know what? Actually, we've got three or four games that we want to show off that they're not going to give us the time to do it.

So they just end up ponying up and getting a bit. Yeah. You're bumping us for no man sky. Yeah, people are interested in that game. See you later? That's something. Sony better not show that game again. Like, they keep, like, let them finish the game now, like stop showing it.

Because it makes it seem like it's so much more imminent than it is. The game is not even close to me. No, it's no, like people, it's still on, like, people have it listed for this year. Like, there's no chance. Like, and Sean and the guys, oh, I talk to them at the PlayStation experience, they made a very real commitment to being like, okay, we're going to get out of the public eye now because people are a little bit too fervent about when they think this might be coming out. Sean had, like, been pushed onto it.

Like, he genuinely hates doing his conferences. Like, that whole, like, humble thing isn't an act. Like, he is the loveliest guy in the world, and he gets terrified doing that stuff. So they were very much like, all right, we're not contact with anyone for a little while. I think they've got something to announce later on the summer or something. Hopefully something like a release date, but I don't really expect them to be at E3. Or at least not on the Sony state. Cool.

So, second topic of the day is Konami and all its ridiculousness. Taking down PT, all this stuff. I just snagged it. Did you get on my phone? Look at that. Look at 2015, everybody. So how does that work? You just, you added to your download queue.

Yeah, it's downloading in my home right now. But okay. You have to redeem it as all, that's all, yeah. So I added it to my queue like yesterday. Uh-huh. But I haven't been able to use my PS4. Okay. Am I screwed?

My PS4 is off. So it's not doing... The auto-download stuff. I don't think you have to download it. Well, is they... Are they... Are they... Check out, you know?

Ripping it from the entire... There's taking off the store in terms of being able to purchaseable. So if you own it, it should still be there in the background, correct? Yeah. Well, yeah, if it's downloaded on your system, it's there, but you can never download it again. Okay, so they are just whitewashing it from the store, so you're fucked, yeah. Okay, when's it done? When's it off? It's supposed to be all today.

Today? Yeah. But you have to understand that, I don't even think Sony understands how PSN works. So, like, whether or not they're going to be able to go in there and actually remove that game remains to be seen. I'm sure it's something that Konami wants to do. And they probably have a legal right in their contract to do it. And games have been removed from PSN completely before, as we've been scrubbed completely. Like, dude, I was trying to buy Mortal Kombat last week, and the only version that was on the store for at least two errors was the, was the,

like special edition $90 version. And you're like, and there's a kept refreshing and eventually it's like, oh, there it is, yeah, I can get it now. PSN's a jumbled mess of whatever. John Drake's over there staring at. He's like, I don't know. All right, before we get into

all of that, our second sponsorship for the day is Warby Parker. They're a new concept in eyewear, contemporary eyeglasses that are extremely affordable and fashion forward. Have you guys heard of them, used them? Are those them right now that you do? No. Oh, okay.

I was just, we were all touching our glasses. Sorry. Do you use glasses at all? Contacts. So I use contacts as well. Yeah. But I also needed to wear glasses like at home and shit. No, I was used to wear glasses,

but then I became the face of game spot. And you're like, I can't be doing all that. God, your face looks just like that guy's face. If you just got some more gray hair, we might be okay. I'm working on it.

Yeah. No, here's the deal with this. Is that as part of this deal or whatever through our MCN, they reached out to us and have Colin and I doing it. So I've gone through and picked my five frames.

They haven't been shipped to me yet because Colin's dragging his feet. Oh, Sorry, I went to do it last night, actually, and I was like, I need to find my prescription because I'm not entirely sure what my prescription is for my lens. One of the guys in GameSpot uses this service, actually, I've seen it in the office.

He was picking through them. Yeah, their whole deal is that they're, like, cheap glasses that are, like, with fashion in mind and, like, trying to make it look nice. And it's for prescription glasses and all that stuff, and it's trying to keep those down because glasses are expensive. Yeah, they have frames. When you go to, like, the mall places, and you're looking at all of them, it's like hundreds of dollars.

It's just, like, why? And it's just, there's this whole system they got in place and all that. that stuff. The system. It's because the insurance is my thing. Because I think these were like 300 bucks, but then like your insurance covers 150, so then you have to cover 150.

You're like, 100 videos and that bad. But it's all designed that way. No, I know. I know. The system is a design of screw you and keep you sick. Let me tell you about the government. Oh, my God. But I got a lot of friends that use this stuff.

A lot of our friends over at Roosterty have it. Like Aaron, Zek, she uses it all the time and Meg Turney and stuff. They use them. And like they use them not even just from the, because of Rucastity, they use it just for their own personal stuff. Because they buy them. And they're awesome. Like, they look good.

They're good looking glasses. If you want to look good on Instagram, you got to get them, you take all the selfies and stuff, you get all the likes, it'll be great for your career, I'm telling you. So, okay, Roy Parker is the new way to shop for Iowa. They've got the cool selection of vintage-inspired glasses, and they're all available to you online. So you've got to go online, and you can choose the ones you want, and you can choose five of them. They'll send the frames to you so you can try them on. They don't have those ones. They don't have those.

We can email them and ask them to work on that, though. So they start at $95. their titanium collection starts at 145 if your titanium collection starts at 145 for glasses that's pretty good Rihanna's saying about it

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But it's too accurate It was not reality So yeah, you can order five pairs to try them on. There's no obligation to buy it. So if you don't like any of them, you can just return it. And if you want to support the show right now, you can go to warby-parker.com slash K-F-G-G-E-S. That's K-F-G-A-M-E-S. And you can receive...

Kentucky Fried Games. It's something like that. Yeah. So that are kind of funny. I'm pretty sure it's Kentucky Fried, though. You'll receive a free expedited three-day air shipping. So that's awesome. You order five.

You got them in three days. Try them on. Take a bunch of Instagram pictures. See which ones you like. I wanted him on the same time. Yeah, you could. Nothing's stopping you. It's a free country.

It's why I moved here. Now, how do you spell the full URL? The full URL is, oh yeah, because Warby Parker's, I mean, you'll see it here. Kevin's going to put it because he's a good dude. It is W-A-R-B-Y-P-R-K-E-R-K-E-R-K-R-K-R-K-E-R-Games. Orby-P-F-E-F-Games. Very cool. And his glasses wear, I appreciate the kind of fluidity of the whole thing about the choice

and all that because glasses are expensive. People always comment about how they like deep these frames, the other frames that I wear. And the fact is, it's true. Like, these frames are like 400-something dollars. Yeah. And they're nice. They're beautiful glasses.

They are. But like, and my other ones were expensive too, but it's, like, it's, like, it's, Greg's point. It's like, because insurance covers so much of them, you don't quite realize how expensive some of these things are and lenses and all that kind of shit and that whole. And so I think if you, especially if you don't have insurance, it's like that, this seems like a pretty affordable. I also really hate trying on glasses in the opticians place.

I just don't like it. That's pressure, man. Yeah, there's like, it's a real kind of sales heavy situation. Yeah, they're over, they're walking around. they're watching. Yeah. Like, oh, you like those

little stupid-ass mirrors that are like, oh, fucking barely fit your head in it. So, like, being able to do it in a comfy your own home, just put them out of it out of your clothes and stuff and see with,

without your clothes? That's true. That is true. But with different clothes and stuff, like, I care about these things. Like, to me, glasses, it's an accessory. Like, watches,

I like my shoes, like all this stuff. And I want to know what it looks like with the outfits that I wear every day. So I like this. Or naked. Or naked, yeah.

Well, you need to know because you need to be able to see That's why I hate shop to go to the optomages because I go naked. Yeah, and they're like, all upset about it. Please get out, sir. You're like, I need to know what I look like this and I'm like. All right, guys, we're up. orgia.com slash KF games.

Definitely check it out. Let us know what you think about it. But now, back to it. Konami. Oh, Konami. Shia, Shia, Sia, that's the female vocalist in Titan. Sia. Shia LaBuff.

That songs by Sia? Yeah, I guess. According to what I was able to dig up on Wikipedia, and I doubt that's wrong. You don't, you don't search it. You don't have time of search it. We're not going to Konami. We're talking about Konami here. So, Colin, I know you have a lot of thoughts about this. Specifically, the whole.

Let's get the PT talk out of the way. Yeah. Should they take it off? Or should they just leave it? Yeah, it's a demo for a game. So, I mean, the whole thing was to find that is, the whole idea of PT was to find that if you could beat it properly, that it's a demo for a real game. So it makes sense for them to take it out since the games canceled.

Just patch it. Patch it like the patched devil may cry. So instead of it being like, yeah, we're going to make another one. It just goes, nope, this is probably the last one of these we're going to get to make. Norman Rees is just like, thanks, but not happening. Yeah, I mean, I understand why they're doing it. It's sad. It's too bad, you know, because eventually PT.

PT's one of those examples of you, like, we were talking about with, I think we were just talking about it with digital games versus retail games last week or physical games about how, well, emulation and all these kinds of things lets these games live in perpetuity. But will PT just kind of disappear in 100 years forever? Like, is it something that, is it going to be a lost game? Like these mainframe games we were talking about in Colin and Greg Live yesterday? I don't know. But I understand why they're doing it.

Yeah. I mean, that's the least of, that's the least of everyone. But that's the thing right now. I mean, it's been so much turmoil behind this whole Kajima Konami thing. What's really happening? What's not happening? People are talking. They're scrubbing his name.

The ill will they were already engendering now. And also we're taking out of that game you all fucking love. And like we're breaking your hearts and telling you it's cancel and all this other stuff. It's like, man. Konami's in a shit storm right now. You know what I mean? Sucks for them. It does, man.

I feel really bad about it too because I love Metal Gear and I, like, I was very interested in Silent Hills, and it's just like, man, this is just, they got nothing anymore. So how much is it though you feel bad and you're interested in Metal Gear in Silent Hills? So how much of it is though you're interesting what Kajima does? And you'll just follow him rather than Konami. I mean, that's 100% it. Yeah, right. I didn't care about Silent Hills.

Yeah. But it is sad to see, like, this company who's been around making games since whatever, like, early 70s when they started making, like, arcade machines and then eventually sort of accidentally went into the software world. Like, they've been around forever. So it's kind of disappointed to see, like, in the space of a moment. month. Like when Peter broke the story about Kijima on GameSpot last month, like since then it's just been a

number of these things. Bad news. And they're like game stuff like I think it retracted by 5% in third quarter of last year whereas they're like arcade stuff, their Pachinko business is getting bigger. Like this isn't like a normal game developer here in the West. Like these, a lot of like the Japanese companies have got like way more

diverse portfolios and they have their weird business in like health spas and they have their gambling stuff and the Pichink and whatnot. Like, it just kind of looks really disappointing as if they're like slowly just stepping away and that's soon enough thing for a consumer right now,

especially on the eve for the launch of Metal Gear, right? It's like, what is what is the average gamer taking away from this right now? They're delisting themselves on the stock exchange and stuff and this is like the shit that the last time you heard about this kind of crap was T. T.H.Q. going bankrupt and stuff. So like that's the vein you start to think in it, but

is it just the other realigning themselves corporately. They're getting out of software. They're going to say goodbye to Pez and let FIFA rule the day. Yes, you know, in a way, it's like, it's not a bad time for them to do it because the Metal Gear, like Metal Gear fans, this is hopefully going to close the loop on that whole narrative. So it's, yeah, it's kind of done. And like, fans of Kajima, I, like, I love those games, but I want him to make something else. Yeah. He said he was quitting Metal Gear games before Metal Gear. I was going to say every Metal Gear game. So like, sounds like he's finally getting pushed out of way. Like, the PT was really interesting. I would have liked to see a new Silent Hill,

but I can live with Ed and another, without another Salentale if he gets to do something else. Yeah. And ProVolutions are cool. Like, I buy book games every year, but, you know, FIFA's got it. Ptie was just so different. You know what I mean? Not being a huge survival horror fan, never really getting into the Silent Hill before, or Silent Hill games before. Like, playing this one, like, first person, like, I was never, like, trying to be in combat with anything, right? You're just like, and I know there's a scare around the corner, but trying to piece it all together and I'm playing in a dark room and I'm getting, it was like, That's so fucking cool.

And then, you know, apparently Guillermo Bel Toro is just the kiss of death for any video game or any company that's publishing his video game. You know what I mean? It's just bizarre. Bals are still doing okay, but that's about it probably. It's just crazy to see a company that once had press conferences at E3 every year. Now be here. You know what I mean? Like, Konami is, like, I always remember growing up and it being like one of the big five.

You believe. You know what I mean? Or whatever. Like, and it was definitely a huge thing. And now to see him essentially just backing out, completely and it's really crazy. But the other thing is, is the only reason that we're noticing all this because there was that one new story so then all the other things are latching on, they're looking for all this.

And so it just kind of like avalanches from there and it just seems like a bigger deal. Yeah, like if they pulled out of the stock exchange, would anyone care? Also, what does that mean? Like, none of us are economists. Yeah. Like, it seems like most of their, I think like something like, I did some reading on it during the week. I think something like less than 1% of their like equity is in North America anyway.

Like, it's all in Japan. So it just, they were saying like it's not really feasible that much. much for us to be open. Like it's still, you can still run it. It's just not on the open exchange. So, yeah, like, maybe you're right. Maybe there is a bit of, like, confirmation bias happening with some of this, but just with the Kajima stuff,

that looks pretty damning to see, like, him getting kicked out, all that stuff getting rebranded, like even the one down in L.A., all the Kajima production stuff has changed. Like, I think the one part of this that people care about is what's happening to Metal Gear. Yeah. And once that game comes out, what will Klami do next? Anything or nothing, because they've nothing else really to show for, you know?

Pez makes them more money in Malaguer does. It's crazy. Yeah, it does. Yeah, Pez sells very well. Yeah, I read into it the same thing with the New York Stock Exchange thing. They're still on the Stock Exchange in London and Tokyo, obviously, would be their most important place. And they're still vibrant there. I mean, you're right in the sense.

When you go to Japan, we've been to Japan and you see Konami signs everywhere. And what you realize is that it has nothing to do with games. It's like their spas and their gyms and all these kinds of things and they're gambling and all these kinds of things. Like a lot of people, not a lot of people, but some people have been, you know, saying something interesting about this recently, which is maybe Konami is being really smart. They're not, they have these, they have like real estate business and shit. Like they have like all of this random stuff. Like, and maybe the number crunchers there, the bean counters and like all of the executives are like, we don't really make any money here. Like, why are we even doing this?

Like we have all these other things where we make money, as you were saying, you know, there's a more profitable way to run our business. And we have stockholders and we want to make money. So like, are we going to make money making traditional software? Are we going to make money making Pachinko machines and, you know, all this kind of stuff. And they're probably saying like, maybe we need to scale back. the reason that we should be scared as gamers about this is because they're locking up a lot of IP presumably and Metal Gear is important but the one I care about the most is Castlevania and you know watching Mercury Steam with that 3DS game in Lords of Shadow 2 just take a

fucking shit down Castlevania's throat was a really sad way to see was really a sad way to see that series maybe end do you know what is it Simon Belmont you see getting shit no I see Mercury Steam is like a big machine, a robot that's shitting down shitting down an open cases. It's an amalgam of cartridges and discs

and construction manuals. That's a splattering all over. And so that was really sad to see but the writing's been on the wall with Konami for a long time. And like anyone who's played games for a long time knows that this company has been on a steep decline. And the Kojima thing

is salient and important because Kojima is Kanami and without Kojima they have nothing you know they don't have Koji Garashi anymore they do not have Kojima now so the two people that were in charge of their two biggest franchises are gone so why you should have any faith yeah that like we already saw what happened to Castlevania when when no one's mining it you know it turns into shit and then we we are going to see probably in five years what happens to the Metal Gear when Kojima's not involved in it and I'm not saying Metal Gear is like my favorite franchise anymore because it's not but like there's there's reason for them to be nervous

The fact that they got rid of Kojima and letting him walk away says it all because Kojima, as I've said several times now, can kick Bobby Kodick's fucking door down, be like, hey dude, my name's Hideo Kojima, I want $25 million, $100 people, an office building in four years. And it'd be like, sure, sure, and then guys from the EA are going to bust through the wall like the Kool-Aid man, be like, oh, dude, we'll give you $35 million and $150 guys in five years. And then Sony and Microsoft, he doesn't give a flying fuck probably, you know, he'll be

totally fine. All I want from this, all that I want is to hear Hideo Kajima. and say hey dude that's it yeah yeah it probably says in Japanese but you understand what I'm saying like Kojima is a big deal Kojima will work for another it's again Greg and I talked about it reminds me

it's maybe a lesser of a deal but when Amy Henning left naughty dog I can't imagine how many people are fucking tripping over themselves to hire her yeah like she can go wherever she wants and she walked into visceral and is and is writing a Star Wars game you know I mean like so and a canon

Star Wars game by the way which is like unbelievable. So he can do whatever he wants. The fact that Konami, maybe Kanami, but again, there's another side to the story that I don't think we're getting where it's like Konami's probably looking at him and be like, Hojima costs a shit ton of money. He probably has an

entourage of, I mean, presumably a couple dozen people that probably have worked with him forever that like are just and I'm not saying they're not doing any work, but they're just there. Like, they come with him, you know? And there's probably a lot of politics and internal things that we don't understand and don't know about that the Japanese media probably knows and understands a lot better than we do.

So there's always another side of the But I understand why people are upset about this. It's just that we have to look at it from different, through different lenses. That Konami is a company that needs to survive. They're not here to make games and be, you know, a charitable organization. If Metal Gear is not going to make them a lot of money, then why the hell do they want to do it? You know, and it's the same thing with, you know, just getting out of games completely, maybe, and getting out of software completely.

It's sad to see, but the middle ground continues to shrink and Konami is in the middle ground, just like Capcom. Do you think there's a chance that they will back out of games and kind of give their not give sell their yes I think there's a I think there's a substantial chance of that do you think they sell their properties though because that's like a how does that even work I don't know I mean just why would you

like if this is something that in the future you can if this is an area that you can re-expand into with the time comes why would you like get rid of those properties who would buy them yeah oh my god commitment how much money do you need like they have three or four properties that people would scoop up in two seconds right like Metal Gear

and Castlevania there would be a huge bitty war of both of those I think and you also have to say they own contra which is They own dance, dance, dance revolution. They own like sui code and all these like random things. So it's like, there are games. They have games and they have back catalogs. Like to own the Castlevania back catalog would be an extraordinary thing. Like even if a company was like, we're not making any new Castlevania games.

We just want all the ones you already have. Like that would be money for years. They could just republish them and put them in collections and do all these things. I would do that if I had the money in the capital. But, and I think there's money to be made there, obviously. But I think there's a reasonable path for them to exit the industry because they're letting their biggest guy go. So it's not like you don't make small games to make a little bit of money. You make big games to make big amounts of money. If they don't want to make big games with big guys like

Ojima anymore, then clearly they don't think they can make money anymore in games. So I think that that's a harbinger. Like it would make sense that they were like, well, when Igarashi left, it was like it was sad, but it wasn't like a big deal because well, Castlevania lives on with Mercury Steam and you're not Kojima, you know, like you made the Metroidvania Castlevania what it is, but we can do that without you and stuff like that. I don't think Metal Gear can live without Kojima and I don't think that you cut off the you know cut off your nose to spite your face kind of thing either

like I just don't think it makes any sense I want to believe and I do believe that can not be smarter than they seem right now you know that there's a plan and that we just don't understand it because we're not I don't want to put it in such a base level but we're not the Japanese consumer that consumes the other things they do so this looks really bad but I think there's more to within that

cool there you go Colin I like I love when Colin does that when he fucking makes a point and then just This guy fucking loves. It makes the thing and backs up. Well, I let it someone else. That was your mic drop. I talk a lot.

No, I like it. You start it, though. You always end it because you do the thing where you lie and wait. You're Batman about it. You let us go. We talk. That's what I think. For a while. And I see you over there biding your time.

And then the show swings to you. You go. You deliver your thing and you're done. That's great. I'm so happy to be here because I love all you guys. He's one of the smartest motherfuckers in video games. Oh, he is. Oh, thank you.

That's very nice. He's also one of the coolest dudes in videos. All right. Thank you very much. Topic number three. I cannot wait to see what happens with this one with Colin. Our e-sports sports. This has been a big topic of discussion recently in video games

because on ESPN they showed some esports stuff. What they show? Heroes of the Storm. Yeah, Heroes of the Storm. Yeah, there you go. And it was at UC Berkeley versus someone else. It was called Heroes of the Dorm, I believe. Yeah.

I love that. Yeah, like what I did there? I love that a lot. But yeah, so really what I want to know is our e-sports sports. And why does this upset so many people? I saw there was some ESPN dude, and he's like talking mad shit. You know what happens to people that talk shit? They get shot.

He didn't get shot yet. But he was like just being like, if this is... If he gets shot, you're going to get, the police are going to be rat-atted-tac-tab. I mean, like, no, it's a body count song. You got your internet fans to do it, didn't you? But yeah, so some dude that's high up at ESPN. Colin Coward. Yes, Colin Coward.

C-O-W-H-R-D. He's been doing this. It's a shitty name. He likes to have. So he comes out and he's just like, you know, if ESPN turns into, like if we're going to cover video games, I'm fucking out. I'm fucking shit. I want to work with this. It's just like, wow.

I was okay with it when it was Donkey Kong. No, even then. No, he tolerated. He said that. He said, he tolerated. He wasn't okay with it. We all did. I know we all, back in 1982, we all talk.

All you kids doing the Mario, get out of him. Yeah. And so then we see the internet get kind of split. And I feel like the majority of people are kind of saying fuck him, whether or, you know, not they care about video games or care about e-sports or any of that. They're just more just like, you don't know what the hell you're talking about. You're not connected with our generation. Be positive and don't talk shit, right?

Because that's what people are doing. It's, you know, the Facebook trending thing of the day. I'm like, oh, someone's saying something that sounds mean? Fuck you. But then there is the other side, I'm assuming Colin's side. They're just like, well, they're not sports. He's right. You know, and whether or not he's right.

That's the thing is that there's a big huge gap there, right? This is something we talked about extensively on Colin and Greg Live, and the fact that whether you want to say it's a sport or not, right? It's the choice of how you're framing it, right, for this guy to come out on ESPN and be, you know, be an ESPN reporter talking shit now about ESPN and video games in general and going after all these fans that he doesn't understand this thing he doesn't get. That's where, like, there's a giant gap to jump from between.

There's two questions is, you know, how big of a dick is this guy and then are at ESPorts to sports. And that's the whole thing is, like, Colin doesn't think the ESports are sports. and that's fine. He's presented his case on why he thinks that, right? I think calling them esports and not like

just competitive gaming was like one of the could have solved so many fucking discussions. Like it's, I'm totally with you. It's like the idea of them being sports even or that there is this area

where these are like they're individual games. It's not even like we, every game is involved in this. They are like individual games that are like a handful like a half dozen games that are designed in a way

that makes them competitive and designed in a way where they can be leveraged into like tournament structures. So it's, it's not like a sport which will be around for decades. Most of these games are going to peter off and have new versions of them. Like they'll go CounterStrike back in the day. Like I know there's like a resurgence in going whatnot,

but like everyone knew that Quake wasn't going to be around in the next 10 years or so. And like that fundamentally changes the person who want to like the culture of what that thing is. Because it isn't something where people are like, oh, I like watching all of these. Like there are two people who like watching Loll. and they're different people to the people that are like watching CS.

Like NBA versus WNBA. It's like it's just, it's the idea of like forcing it as like a... So it's not like that. Yeah. It's just... It's forcing a mobile to like a square thing or something,

you know what I mean? Sure. Like it's calling them sports attached all this like social cachetta and they don't apply in the same way. So all it means is that we just have these endless discussions about you know, the legitimacy of a thing

that is... It's a thing people find entertaining. That's what it is. What's weird to me is that people get so caught up on the words of sports. Like, why is, I mean, the fact that there's an E in front of it is just like, I feel that's the worst thing. Colin, if they were just sports and people like their sports, people would be upset about

that, obviously. But like, why are they not sports? What is a sport? And that's where we're getting a huge problem. It's chess is sports. Exactly. I mean, that's the thing is that, you know, I play chess. I love chess.

And I've said before many times, chess is my favorite game. I love chess more than any video game. chess is, according to the Olympic committee, a sport. But that's stupid. Chess isn't a sport. You know what I mean? And here's the thing that we have to remember, you know, when we're trying to define things, is that the way Colin Coward went about it, and we talked about this again on Colin and Greg Live,

is that we, he was completely rude and disrespectful with what he was saying, how he was delivering what he was saying. It was totally improper. There's incredible, and I've learned it over the years, an incredible amount of crossover between the audience that likes what traditional sports. sporting events and video games. And I am one of those people. So I don't like hearing someone disparage someone for playing a game or lock your parents' basement all that. Go fuck yourself.

You know what I mean? You don't have to disparage these people because they're doing something that you don't understand, which is really what the problem is. Now, in terms of definitions, to me, a sport is basically something that's athletic, right? And so people were asking me, like, is golf a sport? And I'm like, I don't really know. Is bowling a sport? I don't really know if it's a sport or not.

Hunting, driving, racing a car. No. here's the other, but this is why there's different degrees in different gray areas, because it doesn't disparage what it is. You have to have incredible talent to play golf. You have to have incredible talent to play bowl at a high level. And you have to have incredible talent to play League of Legends at a high level. You know what I mean?

So just because there's an argument about whether it's a sport or not, Colin Coward crossed the line because what he was basically saying was like, this shit is illegitimate. And my whole argument is, no, it's just as illegitimate to shoot a puck in a net as it is to, you know, lead your team to victory in a MOBA. one is not better than the other. It's just to say, like, how do we categorize that? And I think that we have to look at a sport as something that is physically grueling. Soccer is a sport.

Hockey is a sport. And there are proper definitions of sports, obviously. Well, so, yeah, the proper definition, according to Merriam-Webster, is a contest or game in which people do certain physical activities according to a specific set of roles and compete against each other. So the thing there is the physical activity. Sure. But then they go on to use examples such as hunting, fishing. You know?

Yeah, no, no. I mean, hunting and fishing, yes, there is physical stuff. But I mean, there's still physical stuff in using a controller. Well, there's a physical thing with literally everything, unless you're like sitting in a box, just not breathing. But I feel like the physical thing is the one weird question there. But like besides that, if you just read it, a contest or game in which people do activities according to a specific set of roles and compete against each other? I guess the way to like form it is if you take out the competitive nature of it. Like a sport is something that there is a professional part of and there's all.

also an amateur part of I can go out and play soccer outside with my friends. Do I consider sitting down and playing Uncharted playing a sport? No. But that's the thing, though, is there is there traditional sports that you can do non-competitively similar to Uncharted? You get what I'm saying? So, like, shooting hoops in your driveway. Bad in practice.

Bowling. Yeah, bowling. Yeah, I mean, it's an interesting point in the sense that. Yeah, bowling. That's a good example. There's an interesting point in the sense that I mean, it's just one of those things about how we define words and like what things mean.

And again, it's not a disparaging comment because again, being good at League of Legends takes as much talent, just a different amount of talent than being good at golfing or being good at basketball or something like. That's just a different rule set. And in terms of the physical nature, there is stamina and agility necessary

to play a shooter properly or to do, you know, to use a mouse on the keyboard. I mean, there's no doubt about it. I just think that like we have an idea of what sports are. and a sport like when we talk about the big four in the United States baseball, hockey, basketball, and football, like there, those are physical things, you know, like that's, that's, that's, and, and this is where I kind of differentiate between maybe

what I play as chess, even though people consider it a sport and what I did as a hockey player when I played hockey. When I played hockey, I was an athlete, you know, I worked out and I was sweating and, you know, all those kinds of things. When I play chess, I'm using my mind, you know what I mean? and I'm playing a game. And I feel like playing a video game is more of a mind game than anything else. It's something that you have to use your intelligence.

And now, that's not to say you're not using your intelligence when you play football. Football, I think is one of the smartest games in the world. And I'm talking about American football. Not that dumbie and sorry about it. I've been here for a year and a half. I'm good with it. It's football. Got it's just a level of degrees.

I think that like this is all erupting because of the way he positioned himself. And I think that that's the unnecessary thing. And, you know, a friend of the show, Total Biscuit, put up a video just a day or two ago where he really, I think, explained it in very base terms, which is to say, like, no one in the esports, and he knows much better than I do as being a PC-centric guy, and that's where kind of e-sports is happening. He was saying, like, no one in the esports is really claiming this is a real sport, and who cares? And that was, and that was the bigger thing. And, of course, I'm reducing his video of 10 or 50 minutes to something, you know, more bite-sized. But his whole argument was like, who cares? Like ESPN is entertainment and sports.

I mean, that's in the name. And they put on things like poker and the spelling bee. So, like, why is it a big deal if they're putting on video games? You just want to disparage it because you don't understand it. And I get that. I think that something like Lou LaLegians is incomprehensible. But that's me. And I can only, and I play video games.

And I'm in the gaming industry. So I can only imagine what someone else watching it feels like that does no idea. But that doesn't mean it's wrong or it's bad. Yeah. And ESPN has a long history. In the 90s I was watching the spelling bee on ESPN. So it's like, you know, and it's fun. I like watching the spelling bee on ESPN.

there's just nothing wrong with it. So I think Total Biscuit had a really good point when he was like, it doesn't matter. Like ESPN's going where the money is. This is not an altruistic pursuit. You know what I mean? They want to make money and people are playing video games competitively. Do we have to figure out people are watching it?

Exactly. And they're getting new advertising revenues. They're getting new metrics in terms of the people that are watching it, maybe non-traditional fans that don't watch ESPN. I watch ESPN every day. But there are people, I'm sure, watching the heroes of the storm on there. They've never turned on ESPN in their lives. And that's a new demographic.

So this all makes sense. It's just a matter of like, well, what are e-sports? I don't know. I agree with Danny, what Danny was saying. It should have never been called a sport to begin with. And it is not a sport in the traditional sense. Do we want to expand with the definition of it? Sure.

And do we want to include all those things. Fine. But that's not, in my mind, in my opinion, very respectfully. I do not think that it's a sport. See, I don't know. I disagree with that just because I think that, like, you're defining it by, like, the big four. But it's like sports also include a lot of the other ones, too. Like, sports does include all these other things.

And that's where it gets fishy, though, is because Colin's saying that, like, and I'm with him, right? The fact that I don't, I don't look at esports as sports, but I'm not, but I don't look at bowling as a sport, spelling be as a sport, but they're, you know what I mean? I mean, they're being lumped in here too. So that's the thing. I think the definition's already broken and weird. Yeah. You know what I mean? I don't think there is an easy way to box any of this up. The fact of the matter is when you talk about it, is there a better network for any kind of competitive gaming to be on any ESPN? No. Yeah. I mean, that's a good way to put. When I heard it, I was like, oh man, what a perfect fit.

Yeah, the ways in which competitive games and traditional sports are the most alike is in how they're broadcasted, which is the weirdest thing about this is that, like, no wonder he was mouthing off about how they had commentators, and they were like mimicking what it's like when we commentate on real sports and stuff like that. It's like, well, yeah, I guess in a way those games have sort of lended themselves. Like the path that has been trodden down already laid by sports broadcasting is where these. games went when they decided to like try and broadcast them to a wider audience so like in that way it perfectly fits the espn mode like you could not be a better place for them to expand whether or not it's a sport yeah like tv said yeah yeah but it's just it's the same argument we

always have on the internet right whether it be this or consuls or whatever the whole people are riled up right because now somebody's putting down something they love and somebody doesn't understand it not even i mean we're getting hung up on the espn guy but i mean like there are so many tweets that night, right? They got, you know, I saw on wrap-up articles the next day, they're just like, what the fucks is nerd shit doing on ESP? You know what I mean? Like, then it just immediately, like, there's a dividing line of like, well, I'm not,

I'm not, I don't even understand what a fucking MoBA is, but I'll tell you what, it should. I, you are wrong, sir, and video games are up and coming, and they're bigger than movies, and it's like, things, your ire starts to raise on that, it to regardless, let alone just like, uh. Yeah, it's just a way of positioning the way you speak about things, like, and that,

and I think that that was the bigger thing than the point he was making, and if he wants to quit SPN, because no one's going to make it. Colin Coward doesn't know anything about video games. So like, why would that? That was the confusing thing. He wasn't saying he's quitting ESPN because they're covering. He's like, if I was ever asked to cover it, I would quit. It's like, why would they ever do that? You know, like, you don't know anything about it. Like, they're going to find the people, the people that were commentating that are the people that would do it. You know what I mean? So like, you don't have to be, it seemed to me that he was, he felt isolated in some

strange way about this is kind of a movement on ESPN to maybe get more video games. And it's not, he's an older man now and he's not into it. But he's entitled to his opinion, I just think you should position it a little more politely and a little less rudely. Because again, I'll say it, like, as someone who watches hockey compulsively, as someone who has not missed a Jets game in years, you know, and watches literally five or six football games a week during football season, I'm quite offended for my fellow gaming brethren. When I hear someone in sports that's well respected, talk about us like that, because I'm one of them. You know what I mean? And that's the kind of shit that really bothers me. Because, again, there's plenty of crossover between sports and games, and I see it every day on Twitter when I tweet about hockey or I tweet about football or whatever.

it is. See it on the commercials during games. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, Call of Duty commercial or an Assassin's Creek commercial. PS4 commercials were on during football all the time. UFC has got Assassin's Creed stuff on it all over. So that really bummed me out because I was like, I'm like, man, what a disrespectful thing to do. But you know what? Like many things, there's two different topics here. And one of them is it is a esports a sport. And that's like a different topic because that wasn't even what this was. I don't think. This was more him being like, this shit sucks and this shit doesn't belong.

And to that, I say that's bullshit. The people are speaking clearly loud and clear. They sell out arenas and fucking coliseums all over the world. they play these games and they deserve a respect. And that's the way I'm coming forward with it. I'm like, just because I don't think your competition is a sport doesn't mean I disrespect you, I just look at sports as something that is physically grueling, which this isn't, any more than when I sit down to the chessboard across from someone, I'm not breaking a sweat. And therefore, it's not, you know, it's me playing a game.

And that doesn't mean that chess is worse or better than football. And it doesn't mean League of Legends is better or worse than baseball, you know? And that's the way we have to, we can have these black and white arguments. That's the problem. And I think the total Biscuits point, who gives a flying fuck? If this is what you like, I think Greg made the point when we were talking about a day or two ago, which was, you know, we want games to be called art because we want them to be taken seriously. And we get into these huge arguments. Our games are art.

Or games are. Like, who fucking cares? Do you like games or don't you like games? And if games are art to you, then games are art to you. And if League of Legends is a sport to you, then God bless you. League of Legends is a sport to you. You know, that's, like, we don't have to have these, like, systemic arguments over definitions. We can just all have our own if we really want to.

I would just prefer that we all had a unified definition. That'd be nice. But now real quick, too, the thing about it is if you're super offended about how this ESPN guy handled himself and everything he did, remember this next time you go to talk shit about sports. This is easy because it's the sports, which is this big mainstream popular thing picking on video games. But I see it flipped all the time where it's Super Bowl or playoffs. And all of my video game friends are like, oh, sports ball. Can't wait to stay off Twitter.

Shut the fuck up. I'm enjoying that. I don't need to hear you talk shit about it. You know what I mean? Like, I'm sorry you don't enjoy it. I'm sorry. You're going to get shot. You are talking shit, which is going to lead to you being shot.

That's how this shit happens. Fuck. All right, guys. I worked in Raider for years and years and years and years. And this is just like number one. This is Howard Stern. Rile up controversy. People say her name.

Yep. Next time. Now a lot of people know this guy's name. They'll forget what the thing was about. Yeah, man, that sucks those names, coward. And the one thing I want to point out real quick and another reason why, you know, what would Colin Coward think of Colin and Greg Live if you saw it, right? Like, Colin and Greg Live came out of my mind because I am obsessed with pardon the interruption in Mike and Mike.

I took something out of the sports world and made it a video game thing and it works. And we were really one of the first people to do it, if not the first people to do it. And I was inspired by sports. So why can't there be some cross-pollination and some love between the two things? And like you were saying with the commentation of, you know, League of Legends or with Heroes of the Storm, whatever, is being commentated as if it was a soccer match, as if it was a hockey game with the same excitement and verbiage and all these kinds of things. things. There's a lot to be learned from these different things. We learned it firsthand with Colin and Greg Live. This is a sports show about games, you know, or a political show about games.

And so we took something from another environment, another ecosystem and made it our own. And now these guys are doing it with that too. So he can be a relic of the past if he wants to be. He's tilting against fucking windmills because it doesn't matter. You know what I mean? And that, and so it doesn't matter. And that's, and that's, well, you have to kind of walk away from it. Be mad if you want. I mean, it's more, more power to you. Everyone's mad on the internet. But, you know, but, But if it's, you know. Or just don't. Or just move on.

Yeah. And play your games and enjoy it in spite of him. Revenge is best served, Tim, when you're having a good time and you're not letting other people bother you. That's the old thing goes. The old thing goes. Well, no, best serve cold, which is not the way I feel at all. You could feel that way. Or revenge is living well.

Yeah. But what I'm saying is that revenge is really something that like, if you want to have revenge on this guy or like get it back at him, go about your business. Yeah. And just ignore him. Ignore him. Do you? You know what I mean? There you go.

Because someone like that, as we said, loves the controversy, loves being talked about. It's not going to suffer. His viewership is not going to suffer. He's speaking to his people. You know? There you go. All right, guys. Final topic for the day.

Of course, comes from the community. If you have topics for us, tweet at me at Tim Getty's or, yeah, actually, just do that. Just do that. All that love. There's all that love. There's so much shit that we do, guys. All right. Question number one comes from at Snarky Starkey.

Dots on something like Witcher 3 being 200 plus hours. How do people have that time? Is this too much? I think it's awesome. I don't think many people have that time. You know what I mean? That's the whole thing. I think I look back at Skyrim, right, where I put 25 hours and 30 hours in and never beat the game, right? I just went off and did my thing and then eventually got distracted and left. And is that going to happen with Witcher? I don't know.

I'm excited to get Witcher and dive into that world and get lost for a while. But I'm one of those guys who wants to try to do all this. side quest or run off from this or get you know what I mean like am I going to go back and do everything I don't know so the most exciting thing about when I was out there in Warsaw last month and talking to these guys about the game is that the way that they're handling the sort of additive content all that side quests or like secondary quest stuff I think it's pretty interesting because I had the same problem with like Skyrim and like fallout where I was all often like scared to do the main quest for fear of like not being able to do any of the side quests afterwards or

how much stayed impact on it or whatnot so like the core story in this game game is going to be 200 hours. It's going to be closer to something like 40. It's got about nine main story missions and each of those has got about two like secondary missions that split off from it and those ones can affect the main storyline if you so wish. And if you do the next bit of storyline then no secondary missions have stopped. But once you complete that game, the open world is still available. You can still level Gerald. He goes up to level 50, 60, quests go up to 50. So you can complete the game probably at like level whatever, let's say like 25. There's still loads more to do if you want to do it. And from my third,

time, I've only played about six or seven hours of it when I was out there, but like it was the type of thing where you would find quests off the beaten path that then turned into quest lines that kept going. So a lot of that 200 hours is not like stuff you are required to do. And what I think is the most interesting about games like this is this while of fallout is that the idea that there is that stuff to do is almost as exciting as doing it. The idea that you are playing a game and you had this great experience and you only touched about 40% of the content, that's as good as for some people as actually going out and playing every single ounce of the game.

So, yeah, in that way, I think it's... That was one of the best things about Fallout 3, right? We'd be coming into the office and be like, oh, what did you do? I went into this, where is that? I've never heard of that or seen that. You know, I ran into this mission. It was this robot thought he was the president. You're like, what are you talking about?

That's fucking awesome. Yeah, I think what we talk about Fallout 3 in a sense of, you know, that moment when you walk out of the vault and you see this world. And for me, that was one of the most mind-altering moments in gaming. and I played games for a very long time, as many of us have. And that experience, I was like, holy shit. Like, this were, especially coming from a console background,

we never really, we don't, we didn't often get games like that. It's not to say the fall through was the first, that it clearly wasn't, but we don't often get games where it's like, here you go, you know, like do whatever the fuck you want. This is more of a PC heritage kind of thing and Witcher obviously has its heritage on PC. So I'm looking forward to being filled with this sense of awe

and wonder and, and this kind of explorative nature of like just go and do whatever you can. It's not even whatever you want. It's like whatever you can. I remember when I played the game, which are three, when we were fucking around with it,

I walked into the woods and there was just these bandits camping. And I got too close to them. And they like freaked out on me. I'm like, I'm not even trying to fight you. And I was like, it was too late. And I was really just trying to like walk through.

And it's like how many of these moments are there going to be in the game that are like, not even side quests or missions, but just encounters. That said, always skeptical of a developer or publisher talking about how long a game is. We always put you on Biotis called DevMath

and you can typically subtract 30, 40%, sometimes 50% from a number given to you. Like when they would be like... 12, 15 hours? Oh, so like 8 or 10. Got it. Okay, got it. But there are games sometimes where I understand how you play it like that.

Last of us was supposed to be a 10 to 12 hour game to be 18 hours because I was like so enamored with it. I was just like running around looking at everything. I don't think this might be one of those games. But I think that Witcher 3 is going to be a game that I'm going to spend a lot of time with and I want to see it all the way through, but I don't know how much time

we're going to have to be able to do that. But there's nothing wrong with giving someone 200 hours of content. In a world where people feel like they're being nickeled and dined, in a world where pieces are being cordoned off where DLC is being sold to them that should be in the main game.

You cannot complain about CD Project Red giving you a game that is 200 hours long, even if it is dev math and even if it's 150 hours long. You know what I mean? Or even if it's 100 hours long. Yeah. I know what I mean?

It's an incredible. It's incredible. God bless them. Congratulations to them. I feel like that. that game's going to be something special. Very excited about that game. Awesome.

How do you, like, growing older, one of the things that I've had trouble with is finding the time for those types of games. Like, when I was in college, fucking no problem. I'll just dive in and play oblivion for like 500 hours. Like, I'm just soaking up the time. I don't even need to go to college. Whereas now it's like, like, the ironic thing

of like working in games is you spend so much time making all this content. They're like, shit, I don't have any time to play any games. I got to go home or. Somebody's like a game The game's only four to five hours long I'm like fucking perfect Yeah

God damn yes Do you because I've literally like telegraphed this For my girlfriend I'm like look We've only been living together for like four months No real big games come out Like I've been playing games here and there And I've been like

Diving in Moral of Combat and shit When you were doing your own thing But like I'm gonna be playing this game For like weeks And it's gonna get weird And it's been like I'm gonna be in my underpants You're gonna have to bring me the nachos

I'll just say there So like how do you you guys deal with that like do you still have that time do you like see a game that's got like two hundred errors and think fuck how am i going to find it i mean for certain games right like witchery has been on the list and i did this whole breakdown of like where how i was going to spend like i was in the best six months of gaming right now just the way all these releases were lining up but i'm lucky enough that my girlfriend's super into gaming way she's currently on the quest to play to beat all the witchers before witcher three oh really she's already got one she's

done with one she's into two now i mean she's crazy but like when we came back from Mexico, I wanted to play borderlands. She wanted to play borderlands. So, like, for, like, a week, right? That was our dates. We'd eat, and then we'd go and we just play there and play a borderlands, whatever, and it was great. And so, like, this is the same thing where we'd get each other on that level. But yeah, it's totally hard to fit in these games, right? Especially with everything we do, and all the crap we're doing running around. I know you're the same way. Just like, yeah, you come home, you're done with work, about six, you eat, you do the dishes, it's already 8, 8.30, and it's like, well, how much, how long, how long do I'm, how long,

I have to go in the airport tomorrow at 6 in the morning and that-da-da-da-da. That's why I like the Vita so much because it just comes with me and goes Yeah that thing like for me it's a hell no I hear it's 200,000 I'm out yeah not game for me It's just not the type thing I'm gonna do it's like a special game that's the thing no for sure I get that But I just know for me that's just not my cup of tea I like the shorter games like all this stuff

But then when you're talking handhelds totally different thing Like Pokemon I love that I love that I can put 100 hours into a Pokemon game whenever I want here and there being on the airplane Doing all this stuff and like those are games that I just get into And I'm just get lost forever and like they give you so much side missions and so much like that Yeah I love that, all about that.

But yeah, 200-hour console games? It's like an automatic like, no. You rather not try, then get three hours in and then not have the time to share that. That's my thing, though, is like, to be fair, I've never really gotten into a Fallout Witcher, like any of these type of games, just because I'm just like, I know that that's not for me. You're going to have a great retirement. Yeah, I know, it's going to be dissuery.

I don't know if Witcher is maybe the one for you, but when Fallout 4 comes out, I feel like you know because you think you know But there are these games are special You know like You might feel like it might be more worth you playing a game like Fallout Than it might be worth playing 10 other games I mean that's certainly the way I felt when 3 in New Vegas came out I think New Vegas is better than three

Like where Okay Like I'm wiping my slate clean this month This is what I'm playing this is better than playing X and Y and Z On these other you know Well see that's my thing like you know I'm a huge Metal Gear guy huge Fall Fantasy guy And it's just like

Fall Fantasy 15 Metal Gear Solid Fun Well, Metal Gear first on the list for me. That could be a 200-hour game? I know. To me, I'm like, oh, God, no. I don't want that. But you'll have to make it that way.

I mean, because that's what Peace Walker was. Peace Walker, you know, I spent, I think my final game clock on it was 98 hours. Really? Yeah, and it was, but I beat the game in 16. I was done with the story. You know what I can see? Maybe even less. 12, 16, done with the story.

And then it was all the side missions. I want to get an S-rank. I want to unlock these people. I want to do that. But, you know, I mean, like, you don't have to be that way. Metal Gear is going to be the same way. I hope. Yeah, I guarantee it's not going to be like a hundred hours of just story.

Well, I mean, it's just 80 hours of cutscene. Right. Well, I mean, that's the problem, though, with Metal Gear. I mean, they've described it more as, like, a TV season with, like, episodes and stuff, whereas, like, the other games have been movies. It's just, like, I like the fact that movies I can get in and get out in 10 hours or whatever. With this, it's like, to get the whole story, I'm a little worried that it won't be 200 hours, but it'll be 40 hours. You know what I mean? It'll still be, like, if I want to hit enough of the TV episodes to get that season.

You should play Quantum Break. No. There's a game. You're not going to play quantum break? No, no, no. What? Why not? Because.

Because why? TV merging with time travel and shit. Yeah. It's got that's a hate it. It isn't on his precious 3DS. That's why, ladies and gentlemen. It's vaunted libraries. There's so many games.

The atomizer wants to know. Is it ever too late for young gamers to jump on well-established series? No. No. I don't think so either. Have ever gone back and played a series that you were too young to play? when it came at. Or like,

I've done the thing where I've like gone back and played Zelda's because I didn't have Nintendo growing up. I think Zelda's a good example. So, yeah. Well,

you are European. Indeed. There's nothing more European than owning an Amiga. Yeah, no, there certainly is, yeah.

It's literally girlfriend. Yeah, I went back to link to the past because I was too young for it when it first came out. So I remember I first played through that on a GBA when that was the real.

Yeah, that was a good, that was a good port. Yeah, there was that. And then the Mega Man games, I didn't really, can get to until more recently. Like, just because we've played him here and stuff.

Now it's just something that it's never too late to get because it's, it's never too late, right, to go back, but I mean, some things just don't hold up. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like some kid tweeted me today and he was like, oh man, all you're talking about metal gears got me so stoked. Sorry, I'm back and I'm when these controls suck.

Yeah, I'm like, yeah, I do it. Metal Gear solid controls are not great. You know what I mean? For like what you know now. That's true. If people are looking for suggestions, thief, go back and play the thief games, first two ones. On PlayStation 4, yeah.

really good. Nope. Pate original DSX. If you want to get all the hot Aiden, not Aiden Pierce,

what's his name? The ASX man. If you want the rich history. Oh, JC Denton was the old guy. Adam Jensen. Adam Jensen, yeah,

yeah. Yeah, I think, you know, I'm a game history nerd, and so, I think it's important for people to go back

and play games. And I disagree with Greg. I think that some games don't hold up, but many games do, and it's important to know. What did I say? You're wrong.

I said, all games don't hold up. I heard him say, you said, all games don't hold up. And you can go, like, we've talked about many times that in the polygonal era, games don't hold up. And I think that that's true because, like, a lot of people ask us, like, why aren't you doing let's plays of N64 and PS1 games? And it's like, we might, and I think we might have at some point. But, well, we did Simpity in the Night and something like that, but.

Superman 64, which was a great example. Yeah. But these games typically don't hold up. They look like shit. And while I'm not a graphical guy, like these games are just relics. Like, they look like relics. They look and feel even older than the games that they actually came after. But when you go back to like the NES and S-NES and even old PC Apple 2 games and so like that,

these games hold up actually really well. I've said it before and I'll say it again, Super Mario Brothers on NES is a masterclass in gameplay and it always will be. It doesn't matter like what happens afterwards. This is a place in time and a group of people that figured something out that everything copies. Like everything after it. What do you think about Castlevania or Mega Man or all these other, you know, these

Contra, all these games? Like they're all Mario, just rifts on Mario. And some might say Mario is a riff on pitfall and so on and so forth. The only way you make these connections and know these things is if you go back and play them. And what makes me cringe is when someone old or young plays a game or gets into gaming but doesn't know anything about the history of games. You have to take the time to know. You can't know where games are right now unless you know where games have been. And it takes time and it takes effort.

That is becoming more difficult and more difficult now because there are just these like to use a really shitty business term. There are like verticals within gaming now. It's not the same as before where you could have this like wide appreciation. of everything, like there are plenty of people who will just play like Minecraft forever or just play mobas forever. Like, I feel like I'm the same as you. Like, I really, I really, when I meet someone who knows that stuff, like I value them so much and like, I love having like conversations about that stuff. But they seem to be, that's the thing that makes me feel old and like an old gamer is that that doesn't seem to be the way things are anymore. It, it, it, it's funny about

that is that, and I agree with you. I don't think it is like that anymore. What's funny to me and gives me heart is that sometimes I'll talk to, you know, interact with an older gamer that maybe doesn't know a lot about gaming history. But then I'll interact with a younger kid that, you know, on Twitter or whatever that is talking about how he played, he just went and played Castlevania 3 or something. Good for you, man. Like that's awesome.

It takes effort and time. It's like being a fan of literature, but only starting in 2010. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like you gotta go back, man. Like you're missing a lot of classics here. And you understand the genome and the kind of the genetic nature of a game

by going back. Like, you can't know that Symphony of the Night is Super Metroid. Unless you played both. of them. Yeah. You know? And that you can't know that, you can't know shadow complexes like symphony the night unless you play both of them.

And expand your palette and that makes you enjoy every new game more because you can, you see it in the wider context and like you can see where it pulls from. Like it's, I think it makes for a much more like enriching. Like one of my favorite things to do is like actually put some time aside to get into a genre that or a series that has been like, I evaded intentionally growing up. up. You know, like, getting into like Zelda or like trying Final Fantasy's or like trying devil may cry. Like it's, I think like if it's so easy to get access to like this massive library of all games now that if I was a kid who was like able to save up a bit of money, I'd be

just going on eBay and NESs with like a bunch of different games or just getting emulators or whatever the fuck and just like soaking up this stuff whenever I had the chance because there's so much of it now as well. Yeah. And that's the brilliant part of it. And I think that, you know, 3DS and we are interesting devices. to me not because of the games that are on them right now because they have access to all the games that were awesome you know and like I would you could spend a thousand dollars on the virtual console and like not even be satiated because there's just so many great games on there so I always encourage people to go back I understand if people want to you know someone wants to play just Minecraft or just Candy Crush saga more to you but if you really want to understand games you can't understand games by playing them from 2010 onward any more than you can understand rock music by starting with Green Day you know I mean at some point you have to take the time and effort if you can't understand games you if you want to really delve into something to go back to the beginning. And I think that that's important and it's easier to do than it ever has been. So I always encourage people, new games are great.

We play games. Greg and I are definitively different in the sense that he feels like generally old game is old. And for me, like, I'd rather go play Mega Man 3 than anything. Yeah, I mean, I'm with you totally. As we very well know, I like older games, way more than new games. I just keep going back and playing the old ones. But what are you going to say, Gary? To not misrepresent my case of old game is old.

I'm talking about games that I grew up in the era of. Getting into games now, different story, I would imagine. I'd want to go back and play Super Metro. I'd want to go back and play Mario, whatever. Yeah. Super Mario. Now, another way to take the question, though, is it ever too late for Young Gers to jump on well-established series?

I think he might be asking. Yeah, we deviated a little bit. Like Metal Gear? Yeah, Metal Gear. Can you just play five or Witcher? Can you just play three? Well, maybe on this stuff. And it's like, I think it's just, it matters what the franchise is.

Because Witcher, they know that a lot of people are. Oh, dude, it's called Witcher Wild Hunt now. Like it's like it's with the slash It used to be a three on that logo Like they have Very clear about trying to like Start a new And that's awesome

But then you go to some of my Metal Gear But here's the metal gear But here's the metal gear is gonna be an interesting case Because this is the whole argument We always had and we did the top 25 PlayStation 3 listed ICHAN Is that Metal Gear was a perfect 10 We didn't put it on the list

Because my argument always was I'm building a list for you buying your PlayStation 3 And you're sitting down And you want to know the best games are Without any other knowledge You know what I mean Now that said That's how I feel about four

I think Peacewalker is a game that I would recommend to anyone to go play. Because Peace Walker isn't bogged down in the three games prior to it, trying to tell you what the story of Solid Snake is in his relationship to big boss. This you start, there's a cutscene, you know, understand, you know, you killed the boss. Now you have the boss's voice on a thing. Is she alive? You have to find out. Go on your mission. That's all you need. You know, you're like, got it, done. Okay. Yeah.

So I don't know, but I don't know what we're getting into yet with Fan of Panopang. I get so much more complex with these because like Final Fantasy is they're not really connected. But then they have their little weird sequels. and then like games like Fallout are like Yeah No like they're they're all riffs on the same Like thing but like I really like playing Fallout 3

If you play Fallout 1 and 2 There's actually quite a lot of like really cool references there Yeah you wouldn't get but like no I think that's the thing is it makes the experience better Having played the other ones But I feel like majority of games Probably a high majority of games 90% of games are designed

To be able to just play that one Because that's business You're not going to sell You're going to sell way less If you're limiting the audience for that game But if you are committed to all the prequels and stuff, you're going to enjoy it more. You're going to get all the references. You're going to get all that stuff.

You're right. It happens so much more on games as well. Like even Half-Life 1 and 2. Like direct sequels in terms of story. You can play too and love it without having a clue what happened in the first game. Yeah. And I would put forth, by the way, about Metal Gear Solid 5, that there's a pretty good opportunity that you will not understand the story anymore. Yep.

Play the other ones or not. Totally. I mean, if you look at the trailers and stuff, yeah, but I'm just putting it out there. All right, cool. Dan, we got a couple questions for you. Camacross wants to know. What's the last time you've, cried playing a video game. Oh man!

The first time I cried, I remember, was, which is not the question you asked. It was a call of duty charging Stalingrad. Like final Russian mission when you go up to the top of the... Oh, yeah. That fucking killed me. The last time I cried, God damn it. I don't know.

I know a couple I did do. Like, Depression Quest was one. I did that on a live stream as well. The like final page of that, like fucking killed me. because I have a history of mental health depression specifically in OCD and stuff probably that I can't God I can't think of any off to top of my head

that otherwise I got it's always stuff that like rings through to you personally like I know lots of people who are like gone home for instance was like that wasn't going to affect me because the subject matter and the story wasn't something that was going to and that's the thing that happened what games are still good at that they're good at like tapping into something

that's innately in you like I feel like films are better of making you empathize with character and making you cry and we still haven't really cracked that one. That journey at the end kind of got to me a bit, but then I've sort of a weird thing about death as well that it hit that little nerve. Yeah, so probably journey or depression crisis. Awesome.

Chip the Ripper wants to know. How offended are you by Greg's UK acts? Oy! Well, I'm more offended by him by saying that I'm from the UK because I'm from the Republic of Ireland, which is not part of the United Games. Damn, son, Chip the Ripper, you just got ripped. I think he just knows that you're foreign and you'll defend. fend how bad the oyas.

That's far right. Nearly put Gary Witt in a coma. Global Aggie wants to know, how was Europe different in the early days of video games from the United States for you? We dipped into it a little bit earlier. There was, Nintendo didn't permeate as early because obviously it was Japan first, then North America and then Europe was kind of took a little bit of time. So NES was more Super NES or SNES, as we say, back home.

Sorry. That sort of got in there. PlayStation's incredibly popular so when the Xbox stuff happened nobody gave to fuck nobody bought Xboxes wasn't until the 360 that got popular

but the early day stuff we like you things like the BBC Micro never made it over here the Atari ST was huge Commerce 64 was huge but like way bigger over there like the Amiga the Spectrum like these were things

that everyone had so it wasn't consoles it was computers and computer games that people had back then PC was always massive as well so those were the consoles there was a degree of

imagination when the PlayStation era came in but like for instance like PlayStation in Ireland it was the second highest per capita rate of consoles of PlayStation's in the world

second only to Japan was first so that's how popular PlayStation's are in Ireland Wow yeah so it's kind of homogenized a bit now I still think

it's more of a PlayStation thing in the UK in Ireland on the continents it's a bit harder to read because it was very much like a UK gets stuffed first because of English language and then it sort of slowly went

into the rest Like one of the weird ones is like Pro Evolution is super popular on the content. FIFA is really popular in the UK in Ireland. Like what has that got to do with marketing as much as it has to do with anything else? But yeah, in the early days it's mostly that stuff. I talk about Commodore games. Like my favorite games were sensible world of soccer and cannon fodder and stuff like that. Like games that like people over here generally didn't play.

Games that eventually reported or some of them never did. Like Zool and James Pond, you know, games that started off. Commodore 64 was the first console my family ever had. It was my dad's. Yeah, James Pond. my god that jump man my god yeah jump man those are ridiculous my favorite game ever during that era on my amico

was the secret of monkey island and like and that's like how I feel so lucky and the job I do now is because you guys came on the lobby yesterday and that was the third or fourth time we had Tim Schaefer on the show who like literally is the dude who made one of the games that made me want to do this that's fucking awesome man we live crazy ass lives

totally all right final question for today it's for all three of you guys Cody Lewis wants to know what's it like covering a game you think sucks or not interested in. Preview? Yeah. It's kind of hard

because you kind of want to give a game a little bit of a benefit of a doubt. You don't want to be slamming something that's early. I feel like

I feel like we have a responsibility to the people who listen to us to warn them of games that are of poor quality. I think it's disappointing.

But I think the thing that happens mostly, maybe you guys have been in this gig a lot longer than I have. But the thing that I've seen a lot is that the games that suck you tend not to get a lot of access to and the games that are like the most confident like we went over to play this witcher we went over to shoot these features

and we were in Warsaw for like four days like those guys know they've made a fucking great game so they're like go play it and they're like allowing YouTubers in Europe last week to just fucking play it for like 15 hours go for it so in my experience that's been the case where the real shitty games you just don't really see that much has that always been the way no you'll still have to go see shitty games and like yeah it's it's sucks. Seeing a shitty game sucks.

You know what I mean? Especially if it's preview, right? Because then where, like, I, you know, I usually just clam up, do the thing. And I'm done. And then if they ask my opinion, I have to say, I don't like it. And then I get into a whole rigamarole of like, why didn't you like? What do you like? And then I'm just like, I just want to go.

Like, your game's not good. I don't know. You know what I mean? Like, it's not working. And like, the bigger thing is he said, a game you're not interested in. That was really the worst. When I'd be, back when I first started at IGN, it was like, you're a reviewer. You're going to review.

everything. I've never played a game in this franchise, this genre. I'm not a fan of this genre. No, no, well, that's just, now you're developing, so you're fucking, they give me these RPGs that are just like 30 hours long on the PSP, and I'm like, this is fucking terrible and I hate it. You know what I mean? But

then you have to sit there and separate do I hate the game, or do I just hate the mechanics? And then, is it a bad game, or is it just that I don't enjoy this kind of game, and I have to balance that? That was really hard. And then, of course, the reviews, or even the previews of a game you're not interested and are always the worst because it's so easy to be like I love this, this and this or I hated this

this, this and to be like when you're in that mid, that meaty 6.0 area, it's a game. Fans of the genre might enjoy. What are you calling? Yeah, I don't know. I don't know much to add that these guys haven't said already other than to say that the beauty of kind of funny is that if we

have to deal with a bad game, we can identify and just not deal with it anymore because we're kind of out of the more traditional business. So like when we do let's plays, we do let's plays intentionally of some bad games, typically like something like Superman 64 or whatever, to show you like, wow, look how bad this game is, but generally like to celebrate games we like. And that's kind of, and so while we warn people about games that we don't like, as Danny was saying, it's almost like something that's telegraphed now where it's like, well, we can maybe say

that we can cover this game because we don't like it and we don't really have anything positive to say about it, or you can just kind of focus on these games that we know we do like, and you can kind of like risk it with these other games we don't talk about. I think the only game we spent a lot of time with that we didn't really like. was the order. Oh, yeah. And I think that that's probably fair to say, right? I mean, even that I didn't hate.

I didn't hate it, but I think that that game was a massive disappointment. Sure. I remember meeting you, we ended up bumping at each other, a couple of different press ones. And that was a game that I fucking did not like from, for whatever reason. From the jump, I just did not like it. And I was pretty vocal about it because I was sure that I really did not like this game. But you're right. It's like, it's the stuff where you're kind of just like disinterested.

It's just a middling middle. And it's interesting you brought up. the like, like, stops being telegraphed. In a way, this, like, E3 is like this kind of relic of old where, like, oh, the press are going to play these games and we'll get, like, early previews, and then we go and report on them, we tell people what they like. But, like, in, especially the space you guys work in, in a weird way, the script has been flipped, because the games that you guys want to play are the ones that are, like, doing really

good on Greenlight, and, like, the ones that, like, having good early access, you know, like hype around them. So in a weird way, and I definitely feel like it on when we do GameSpot plays on the side, is that we're being informed by. like the masses in a way like those games are surfacing now like the good ones so it's not like before where publishers would present this

platter of games and you're like oh which ones would you like to taste today it's like now it's like oh no that's a good one that's a good one that's going to check them out yeah it's brilliant I mean that's what that's what's that's what's kind of satisfying about the space is we don't necessarily have to we don't necessarily have to persist

in the space where we have to be all encompassing yeah that's good I like it a lot well guys that was the first ever episode 18 of the kind of funny games I'm back on board. I'm back on board. I'm sorry. Thank you guys so much for your time.

Thank you guys so much for your time. Until next time, I love you.