Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Fixing The Game Awards - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: December 11, 2024

Thank You For The Support! Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - Fixing The Game Awards - Categories - Ads - A Controversial Take - Another Controversial Take - SuperChats Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Wednesday, December 11th, 2024. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside Forbes 30 under 30, a.k.a. New York Game Awards nominated, AKA TikTok influencer, blessing Eddie O. Yeah. Good day, Greg.

This is a great jacket. Yeah, I got here late. I got here late because Ben had his holiday performance killed it. Oh, yeah. I got videos for you. Those kids singing, killing it out there. But there's some scuttle butt about the outfit. The jacket's great.

I don't know if that was that what they weren't saying or they weren't saying Mike? Well, all I heard was that I looked like I'm Todd Howard trying to market the next Indiana Jones game. Ah, okay. I told him. Yeah. And then the Reddit's got him looking like Luther from Mission Impossible. Yeah. Ah.

Yeah. Got it. All right. And so I'm not, I've not gotten the kind of feedback I was looking for. This is a great outfit, great jacket, great everything. Thank you. Appreciate it. Where did you get the jacket?

TikTok shop. Yeah. Yeah. I'm trying to work on, I want to figure out how to get the link to have other people buy. You have 40 days left of TikTok. You better make it happen. So I'm trying to make the money.

I'm trying to make the commission. But I'm not, I put the horse before the cart, or the cart before the horse. Where I didn't figure out how to like link my account or whatever. Yeah, I just bought the thing and I wore it. I like it.

Well, from now if you buy a leather jacket that's brown with a hoodie in it, everybody, you got to just say, blessing did this. Do it that way, you know? Oh, it's a hoodie inside of it.

Well, it's like a It's like a attachment Yeah, I can like I can take it off if I wanted to Oh, oh yeah Take it off Yeah, I'm not trying to But like there's an extra zipper here

Oh, so it's just Oh yeah Yeah so it's just But then you'd have just like It'd be just a leather towel Well you don't have like hoodie towel Cause it's not a full month hoodie under there Yeah

Yeah But I do have a hood right now It's hot I like this whole outfit yeah Thank you Yeah Let's love this whole outfit Next to him of course

Is the master of hype snow bike Mike Good morning Greg Thanks for having me on today Very excited to talk Gamescast with you And blessing I love that you growing your hair out.

I cannot wait for 2025 when we do something cool with it. We're going to do something cool. Shave it. No, that's not what we do. Put on the 10th anniversary wheel. I like what he's saying. I like what he's saying.

I do want to compliment your champion sweatshirt. You know, I'm always a fan of this one too. Thanks, homie. I appreciate that, Greg. I'm going to go by four more of them because you gas me up about it. That's what I like to hear about it. And rounding out the group, of course, is the Hispanic Hartrop, Texas Street.

Latino heat, clicking heads and ripping him to shreds. The globe trotting head shot and three point shooting rootin-tutin-tutin. Nitro Rifle from Twitch.tv, Andy Cortez. You know, one extra game was not needed last night. I don't know why we felt like we needed to play an extra game of Marvel Rivals. It was good, though. We stayed together. It was really nice. We spent time together. We had such a good run. And why not end the night, why not go back to the hotel room when you're up in the casino? You know what I mean?

30 bucks on black check. But then you got this son of a bitch that just says, you click one more game. We're on a three-game winning streak. Why would you stop right now? And then we got trounced. Yeah. But we got embarrassed. I'll tell you what.

But it was so much fun, Greg. Like the cool part about it was it wasn't me instigating it this time. It was the Gibronies, right? The whole team was rallying behind. One more game, Andy. You can do it. Oh, I got a headache. I got to go to bed.

I'm going to be on games cast. No, Andy. It's only 10 o'clock. Let's go till 11. Let's go to 1130. Why not? You know what I mean? And you just kept pressing that button.

And I'm so proud of you for that. Well, I think you kind of gas up the Jibronis to then start the... You can't do that, Andy. Don't fuck us on this, man. He's big-timing us. It's just the big-time and conversation just would not stop last night.

It's funny you bring up big-timing in Marvel rivals. Big-time. Because what I'd like to do is put out the call. To every one of our video game journalist, critic, friends, get your fucking shit together and review Marvel rivals. All right? The kind of funny fantasy critic league is, we are hurt. I put it on Friday. I put

Friday's games cast, the finale of the thing, because I thought we'll have all the reviews locked by then. Right now for Marvel rivals, there are only eight fucking reviews right now, and it is not helping me. And there's only one that's really bad, and that's what's fucking everything up. So Jordan Midler, stop shaving your fucking head, review Marvel rivals. You fuck yourself on this. Lucy James, Timore Hussein, whoever the fuck is running goddamn game spot.

Stop giving out game of the year, not even halfway through December. Review Marvel rivals. Like, I don't understand what the fuck is happening at all these places. Look at that, Greg. And I need 11 points,

not 7 points. And so in the same review, Jesse Norris at Xbox era, retract your review. All right? I don't need a 7.5. Josh Broadwell, a games radar plus,

retract your 2.5 out of five stars review. 2.5 out of five! Wow, that's crazy. That's insane. Marvel Rivals wants to reinvent the out of school. I don't even know. We can't appeal to that side of the internet. I'm kidding. Josh, you do you think, Josh.

I just care about scores right now. It's turning me to somebody I don't want to be. It's turning me to somebody I don't want to be. I just don't want to lose the fucking... The guy who just reviewed Indiana Jones, by the way. I have another reviewers. Bulletproof, bulletproof. And of course, you know, as I look into the series,

of Indiana Jones' criticism. I'm just so happy to see my kindred spirit, my connected person, Janet Garcia, putting up clips of how mid this game is. Her and Isaiah laughing at how bad it is. And I'm like, thanks somebody for saying.

Again, it's okay. It's not bad. It's not bad. It's not. Game of the year? It's great. It's a great game. Marvel's minimum is eight out of ten.

Yeah, you said eight. So I'm like, oh, yeah. It's a rainbow six extraction again. It's like, oh, that's got a little bit more points for Mike. You know what I mean? He's got seven. Rainbow 6, Extraction, give me a couple more points from that last year. God, extract, what a good game.

Come on, man. Extraction was a good game. But Marvel rivals, we have the whole team working. We got comp in now. There's competitive, competitive mode now. Yeah. Where you start off at Bronze 3. We all got up to Bronze 2 except Chris Anka.

And Chris Angus said, Andy, I'm seven points away or whatever from ranking up to bronze to just play one more game. And Mike was, oh, don't fucking big time us, Andy. Don't you fuck us on this, man. We need you to hop in. So we played one more game and this stupid Hela in the backline just all just sniping from everywhere.

The Captain America was a nuisance yesterday. It was crazy. Jesus Christ. I downloaded Marvel's rivals. I jumped into Marvel because I was like, I got to see Cap. Cap wasn't available in betas or whatever. I jumped in,

played about two and a half minutes is cap. And then I was like, bye. Delete out, uninstall the game. I'm like, I'm never going to like this. I love them with an incomplete squad. Yeah, yeah. That's on them. That's on them for not making a fun game.

Can I put my name in the rotation? of like people to text when you guys are playing Marvel Robles. Okay. Because I'd be seeing, I feel like Squidward looking out the window. Because I'm at home, I'm just opening magic packs. You're just streaming magic. I'm like, last night I was just like fucking opening magic packs and trying to figure out what deck I want to go with.

I saw them figure out who I want to be my commander yet. I like that. I'm zeroing in on, there's this card, Zimon. I don't know about Zimon. No, no. I just like the design so much, so I'm like, you might be my commander. I'll tell you what, me and Barrett started opening up the Assassin Treads packs last night. Yeah.

It was exciting to see some of those. But I was doing it. I was watching you guys stream and I was like, man, I want to be where the cool people are. I want to be with them. We'll hit you with it. We'll put the ball. Today we're going to play Fortnite together, though.

Yeah, come play four to play four and five. I'll play some Fortnite. First person. What do we call that? It's tactical. It's tactical. I mean, the name of the mode is ballistic, but it's a tactical

counterstrike, valerance sort of thing. I'm really excited to see it. This is going to be a good time. Yeah, yeah, 100%. I think this is maybe one. I'll be great at. I'll be God-Noberson. I got a good feeling that Greg Miller. What I got to do is just be, is Nick playing with us right? Yeah. I just got to be better than Nick. That's all you got to do. I just want to be better than Nick. You know, that's the hope.

So we'll see. Of course, that's the stream coming up later. But right now you're watching the Kind of Funny Games cast where each and every weekday we talk to you about the biggest topics in video games. They could be reviews, previews, or just topics we need to get into. If you like that, we'd love you to support us with the Kind of Funny membership. Of course, you can pick up a kind of funny membership on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games or patreon.com slash kind of funny to get all of our shows. That's more than 20 a week.

Add free. The ability, of course, to watch the afternoon podcast live as we record them and get your daily dose of me, Greg Miller in a series I call Greg Way that I often record from my car

but sometimes Mike and Nick record from the kitchen two extra ones just because Roger froze bagels and it's got to be a thing. Great episodes though, Mike. Thank you. Greg, we love giving the people

what they want and that's more content. Yeah, bagging on Roger specifically. Hell yeah. Of course, if you have no bucks to toss our way, no big deal. Like, subscribe, share, wherever you get the games cast. And of course, remember, we're a small business all about live talk shows, which means if you're enjoying this, there's plenty more to enjoy. Before this, of course, you got Kind of Funny Games Daily. It was our last minute game awards predictions. After this, you're getting our stream of Fortnite's new first person mode with a big old team. We're excited to dive into that. Of course, tomorrow is the day. It is the Game Awards 2024. As such, we are running a different schedule. That's right. Programming will start later to go later. Of course, you can catch tomorrow. Kind of funny games daily starting at 1 p.m. Followed by a stream, followed by our live reaction to the game awards. And then after that, our post show for Gamescast.

So you can click it on, kind of funny, and stay there all day long, or catch up later. Or again, like, subscribe, share, leave a review, yada, yada, yada, yada, nice. Marvel, Marvel, rivals are real late then. Yep. Yeah, you get to sleep in. Yeah. You get sleep in a little bit in.

Nice. But we could play Path of Exile. instead. I don't know how many more fucking times I can say buy it and expense it. Buy it inexpensive. Oh, your eye popped. You got a Greg Miller eye going on. My eye popped, yeah.

Oh, no. I don't even know how. Probably from hours. It doesn't matter. It doesn't matter. I think it's just gaming. I was going to guess pooping. I'm insane.

That actually can't happen to. No, I have a very regular. I have a very regular poop cycle. Yeah, but I mean, so if it was irregular and you had to push real hard, blow out your blood vessel. Boom. I know a girl in high school she peaked so hard. She popped all the blood vessels in both of blood vessels in both.

Pete. Puked. Oh, puke. I heard it. I was like, oh, my God. Anyways, if you remember, you can get today's Gregway. It's all about getting divorced. And then, of course, you can cash craving stuff.

Everything okay at home? Is it or isn't it? You'll have to find out by watching Gregway. Give me that $10. Let me tell you, the second of studio apartment's not going to come cheap. He's on one today, ladies and gentlemen. I warned you when I came in. He is fired up.

you when I came in. No, I'm not getting divorced. Don't work. Thank you to our Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs and Delaney Twining. Today we're brought to you by Empty Reel and ORA Frames. We'll tell you about that later. For now, let's begin the show with what is and forever will be topic of the show. Tots, tuts, dots, dots, dots. As I just mentioned, the one, the only game awards.

Jeff Keelees, the Keelees, are, in fact, tomorrow. We are excited, as always to live react. This is the 10th anniversary of the game awards. awards, of course. Very exciting. Of course, I'm the only person who has ever won a game award. No big deal. Thank you, Michael. Is that why you haven't been here to react in about a goddamn decade?

Yeah. How dare you? I mean, they want... Well, he's got to go. I got to press flesh. When you're a winner, you have to be there. And I hope you know, this is this year, I was like, you know what? I want to come up here and support Andy. Last year was just pitiful. It just seems like it's always been the big timing, you know? Oh, he's big time.

He's big time. But now we're all on the same level. We're all going to be here. Well, not really. I won a game award. Bless his future class. He's future class. I was in Times Square. I was also nominated for the New York Awards. Yeah, but so is that guy dressed as Elmo, but we're not like all excited about him. You know, they got all the tourist traps.

The people who just dress as the characters can take a far out. As it is the 10th game awards, there's a lot of things we already know is going to happen. Of course, we're reacting. That's exciting. Everybody will be out there. Expectations are going to get super high. There's no way that'll be possibly met. During the show,

Everyone's going to sour on the show and start being a bunch of really negative nancy's on content. And then the next day, it will just be filled with the Twitterverse and the blue skies of how much they hate the game awards and how terrible the game words are. Nothing ever works and yada, yada, yada, yada. There is no discourse. I hate more. And that's saying something in gaming than the storm that starts during the game words that carries over to the next day. Oh, it's just ads. Oh, it's just this.

Why isn't it like this? Well, why isn't it like this? Well, why isn't it like this? And my argument every year is the same When it gets to the really, really negative part of Make your own fucking show then Go make your own thing This is what Jeff has done

Why every Every fucking year Jeff comes out and shows us his zebra And every year somebody goes Well I want it to be a camel Well guess what? It's a fucking zebra All right

So this fixing the game awards topic And we've had conversations on content Off content Where I'm on the same page Is us talking about How we would tweak the game award? words. Correct blessing? Yeah.

It's us talking about a show we enjoy that we understand, but I don't want anyone to come in and again, everybody can do whatever they want in terms of how you want to fix the game words, what you want to talk about. But it gets me so angry and it was like, well, fucking, I don't want, I just want

devs on stage. And I always go, well, that's the Dice Awards and I host them and you don't watch them. Because there are no big announcements and there are no super secret games that get announced. My first note here is we should have more pre- or we should have more devs on stage. But now, hold on now. I'm not saying, that's not me saying,

I'm talking to the people who are saying there should be no ads. There should be just this. It should just be about devs. There's a conversation here of salt to pepper and what we're doing is we season the game boards and whatever. But I think that there's a lot of people who want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. And I want to make sure from the jump, I make it clear that I hate that fucking conversation. And it drives me crazy when people the next day are like, this is how it should have been. And they should have done this.

And Jeff's horrible and da-da-da-da-da. I mean, I always have such a great time hanging out with you all. And, you know. But again, I think that's- And again- Don't include them. Oh, well, you were sick last week. Yeah, but I've been here the past couple years. What are you wearing tomorrow?

Not you, not you. You just insulted me. Andy, who's my friend now? I know. I mean, I have multiple jackets I bought on Amazon when we were doing the KFFL, the kind of funny football league. And they've been sitting in the closet. They're super wrinkly. Who knows of all bust them out?

Sure. I want to wear a coat, at least a jacket over a, you know, a long sleeve button down. I'm going to wear. My mom was asking me about my blue suit. suit from Tim's wedding and I was like, I'm going to wear that tomorrow. Maybe. Hey. Hey. Hey. Maybe I'll do that too. Okay, good. So anyways, let's dive into this conversation. I don't even think so much about, it's not about fixing the game awards. And maybe it is for you guys. And I don't ever want to

take away what you're going to talk about. I just don't think the game words are broken. I think this is more augmenting the game awards or the little tweaks, at least in my head, because again, I don't want us to deviate so much where we are just planning the kind of funny game awards, which is a completely different show. That's the Smiley's. Yes, it is. You do a great job. with that. Yeah, only me. Just me. First off, don't get me started on Andy. I've never

met seen her. Play the music. Play the area and green music. Yeah, let's get the I just like, it just boggles my mind that like Andy is so open about how Luffy is. We're on the fucking kind of funny podcast.

Great episode. You guys killed it or whatever. He's just like, oh yeah, I almost forgot about that demo. I was like, I wonder why are you just admitting this? Why are you admitting that you didn't? you and then it's like, oh, and he was late by three minutes. Like, why is everybody just blown up each other spots on this content? I mean, I'll tell you why.

I'll tell you why. I'll tell you why. I didn't even know I was a part of it apart from the couple emails. Let me say that. I mean, if you're going to blow up a spot, let's blow up a spot. All right, we're going to blow up a spot. I didn't know I was a part of this until like a couple of meetings ago. There's a big email that said, hello, Mike and Andy. Yeah, we got to change the headline to how to fix kind of funny. That's where this is going.

What was that Earing of Beavis' episode? I got there at time. But here's the thing, though, Greg. I may have been three minutes late, but the presentation was about 40 minutes late. So we were fine. You crushed it. You're fine.

Don't worry about it. I'd like to make sure I'm five minutes early, Greg. Because if you're not five minutes early, you're late. This is, of course. So he was technically eight minutes late. We learned this in fact in the Winter Soldier. Yes, he did.

You know what I mean? Why are you going harder in me? What's a fun? You're trying to stay in. Remember when he went to Japan and, like, was going to bring us gifts and then I'm, Oh, never mind. Didn't call me when he landed.

I'm going to tell a story about how I mentioned it, you guys. Didn't buy me cool video games out there? I mean, I have one goddamn less jacket because Blessing wanted a stupid souvenir. And where is my souvenir? It just did. Blessing, the line was long at the Pokemon store, okay? And whose fault is that? You had days there.

Days. You were there for nine days. We were on a tour, you know. During the tour, just real quick. What were you touring? Uh, multiple, uh, dootenberry. Dulton Bird. What's that?

Just like a little... Kind of a general area. Sure, okay. And all these... There was no tour of shops in any of these places you were going through. Get blessing a cool pair of chopsticks.

No, see that says I love Japan or anything that I could have worn. Well, I just didn't have room for all of that stuff, you know? You know? I don't want to get stupid, like, a little...

Let's get back on track. It's just the fact that he told the story and try to get credit. Blessing. I'm sitting here with no souvenir. It's a thought that counts. Blessing, I'm sorry, this is happening to you. I'm sorry, any big time,

Jets. There's a rash of big timing going on in the office lately. It's really messed up. Blessing, I want to get back on track. Because whenever we do talk about fixing the game awards, changing the game awards, one of the things you bring up that I think is a salient point for 2024, 10 years after the start,

let alone Spike TV Awards and everything else, is categories. Yeah. Well, this is the conversation we were having when me and Mike were on KHD and we went category by category. And we had a big debate about quite a few of the categories. I think the big ones being action and then action adventure.

And I think that conversation and then bled into games cast, which bled into like the next KHD about like, all right, can we fix this? Can this be better? And this is going back to like kind of your preamble talking about what this topic is and why you want to do this topic now, right? Of the game awards, what happens every year after the game awards. I think I'm one of those people that is of the mind of I think the game awards could be better, right? Like I don't think it's broken.

I don't think Jeff is doing a bad job by any means. Exactly. But I do think that there are a lot of things where me personally I look at and I'm like, ooh, I don't like how this happens. I don't like how. And to be clear, I'm in that camp as well. I think there's augmentations, but there's so many people who want to blow it all up, but it's like, well, no, this is the zebra.

And that's my thing is, I don't think you blow it all up, right? Because it is what it is. It is, I compare it more to the VMAs than to the Oscars. Of course. Right? This is a poppy. You're coming in for the flare. You're coming in to have fun.

You're coming in for the performances and all the stuff. The guests. The guests, right? I look at the Dice Awards or I look at the, oh, what are the other? Hosted by me and unemployed, Stella, I look at like the BFTA. I look at the Baptist. I'm my introduce her that way on the Divers

to God. I look at like the Bafas to be like the Oscars, right? This is the more formalized, hey, we care about this a lot, right? Not that people don't care about the Game Awards. They obviously do. But the Game Awards is more so for,

I think, fan engagement, audience engagement, as opposed to a formal thing. So I think looking at it through that lens, I think that then brings us into what we can look at.

And categories is the one I talk about probably the most because it's the one I care about the most. Because I think it's the most fun thing to break down as far as how do you represent game categories in a way that honors the games industry in a way that spreads the love in ways that matter and ways that the audience is satisfied with?

And I went through, my original pitch for this episode was that we all bring our own pitches for what the categories are. I ended up just doing my own, right? Because I don't know if other people had the bandwidth or other people cared enough to like go through and do that. But I did I start,

before you dive in, I want you to start with, what categories you think need to go away, why they need to go, why the categories are outdated. I crossed out like a number of them. Okay. I'll go through them, right? Best performance. Actually, that best performance stays.

I just, in my version of it, I have best leading performer and best supporting performer. Which I think I'm right there with you. Yeah. Is I think as game performances have become so much more important, getting more chances to honor those roles is a great way to do it. Exactly, right? I think, yeah, video game narratives, video game stories, video game performances means so much more. nowadays and maybe they did 10, 20 years ago in video games that I think you want to spread

the love a little bit more there. Best fighting game, I have italicized. I don't think you get rid. That's an easy change. Yeah, well, what's your easy change? Oh, yeah. Well, that's one that I have, like, I don't, you don't get rid of it fully, but I think that should be a rotated category. Every year, I think you don't need best fighting game every year because there are a lot of years where a best fighting game, the category is filled with like just duds, right? Even this year, the fact that multiverses makes it in. I'm like, well,

if we're in a year where, like, you have bad nominees that are making it into the thing, maybe there aren't enough games that fill this category. And I would rotate it with like,

but then the argument it becomes right if you were to do that. How, who's, is it the game awards judging? And is that what if there is one great fighting game that year? But, like,

I, that's where it comes into. I think there's a deeper conversation there, right? The way I would have it is I'll leave it up to Jeff and maybe like a smaller committee of people to go, to look at the year and go,

all right, what's the cat, What's like the rotating category you want to bring in? So one of the ones I have here is Best Survival, because guess what? In 2024, survival games are, they're all the rage, right? Like, when we talk about games like this year, just this year, you're talking about Power World.

You're talking about Lego Fortnite. They came out toward the end of last year. I forget if Enchrouted was this year or not. But yeah, games like that. You have games like Icarus, right? Like, you have more releases that are a bit higher profile in that genre for a year like this than maybe sometimes fighting games or maybe sometimes other things, right?

I have Best Horror as another one here where maybe not every year this needs to be a category, but you can rotate it. That way you can highlight the best of for a year that was heavy in that thing. So that would be my personal fix. I don't know if that's a clean fix because I know there's also just the built-in prestige of having a category B every year. See, that's where my counter argument while I would push back and vote against it as a change, is the idea that I feel like if you already have a judging panel, which I think we need to discuss at some point changing and how that all shakes out and yada,

you have this judging panel that's going through and deciding already if it was a good enough year for any category. Then you're already judging the games against each other. And I think it does take away from the fact that, oh, well, we skip fighting games for two years and then it was here. I think there needs to be a lineage of it of where it was. It's not just there when there are three great games. I don't even, you know what I mean? Because I think there's, and you can tell me if I'm wrong, I'm not a fighting game person. I think every year there's always going to be at least one, oh, that's a great fighting game or a fun fighting game or whatever that you'd like to get flowers.

I mean, this year, I think this year is one of those years where I think it's a good category, not a great category. There have a past years where it's like, oh, seafood gets nominated. And that's just because you run out of fighting games. Yeah, and right now for best fighting game for 2024, right? Dragon Ball Sparking Zero, Grand Blue Fantasy versus Rising, Marvel versus Capcom, fighting collection, arcade classics, multiversis, and Tekken 8. So yeah, great category. Yeah, I think there are plenty of, I could definitely see if that change were to be made in future years, people going,

why is there not a best fighting game this year? Like that game is definitely good enough to have been, you know, like these two games, it should be there that year. And I just feel like we're already kind of, we would be in that territory of needing, you know, an early access category or should we have DLCs nominated to the game. I've just, or for game of the year. I've been seeing a lot of people obviously over the years

or over the past couple months being angry that DLCs can be, nominated and getting angry that last year, Phantom Liberty couldn't have been nominated or even the year before that, other larger DLCs, not being... Was that true that it couldn't have been or just wasn't? It just wasn't. It just wasn't. Just making sure... It just wasn't.

Well, I think a lot of people misinterpreted and think that, like, they couldn't be nominated. Right. Because I saw one of those this morning, too, of somebody being like, oh, but cyberpunk was nominated last year, and that's just because it just wasn't nominated. Right, exactly. And, yeah, I think it, because the landscape is just so ever-changing, you have to kind of pivot and be quick about things. I would love an early access category.

I think that would help out a lot, especially for people like me who even on our game of the year list, I don't know if I want to put Hades too, even though I probably will, but deadlock. There's so many of these games that I put in hours and hours into

and I loved, and they're not finished products. And Tim makes a great point where it's like, well, fuck it, that's their fault for, you know, that's the nature. of what they're doing. They're putting a game on early access.

You, you know, if you don't get nominations when your game hits 1.0, you already sort of had that time in the limelight during early access. It's a weird sort of argument. Best,

or most anticipated, but like maybe you replace most anticipated with something that is like the early access category of, like, game that came out, but a game that, like, is showing potential for, see,

I like, it's full release. That's interesting. And that's another great in comparison to a VMA's or a more popy show. Nickelodeon Kids Choice Awards, right? Where I personally would rather see an early access category rather than most anticipated. Because most anticipated is just like, all right, who's had the best trailer?

Who has the most hype? It's like the biggest thing. GTA6 is going to fucking win this year. Okay, cool. Like, yeah, we already knew we were excited for that. I'd rather, I like the minutia categories that we, I assume you're going to talk about more, getting away from the broad genre stuff, where your early access would be interesting as well.

I would still aside that if your early access, you can still be, if people are playing your game, I think you should be eligible. to be game of the year, whatever. You break outside of early access in the same way, indie game, right? In the old days used to be while you put it in the indie category. Now, of course, it could be best in Indian. It could be game of the year at the same time.

Yeah. More of the ones I crossed out. There's some that I definitely need the context as I talk about crossing out. I'll come to those later. But like best family game, I feel like that's a weird one of, it's just the Nintendo category.

And I feel like it's not a category that I feel like it's super needed at the game awards. You guys can disagree if I'm wrong, but like have that one cross. out. I have most insist. Well, no, I want to talk about as you go, right? So family games this year are Astrobat, Princess Peach, Mario Party, Jamboree, the legend of Zelda

and the Plucky Squire, right? And I think it's an awkward category. Yes. I do think it needs to be tweaked. Every year we joke that it does come down to being the Nintendo category. Of course, this year there is Plucky and there is Astrobot, not Nintendo games. But it is one of like,

yeah, I don't know, I understand wanting to have it in there if I'm Jeff. I understand, especially for a show that, you know, started 10 years ago hoping, and now 10 years later is going to be talked about in USA Today and on the news somewhere, right? And you're going to have non-g gamers looking at it. Family game is a powerful category there of, oh, if I wanted to get in games or my son or daughter has a switch, what should I be getting them and playing with them? I understand that there, but I do think the family game, like you say, does it need to be a game awards? For us watching live, excited for whatever trailers and announcements, no. But for mainstream, which Game Wars is always trying to, yes. But there has to be a better way to noodle and do it. Yeah, I just think how no other award show has the, you know, best show for kids. You know, when do we talk about the Emmys or the Golden Globes?

Like, that's just not a thing. But to your point, Greg, I think it is great for marketing. And it does help a lot of these games sort of be seen. And if you're a mom who has no idea about gaming, but you see this game won Best Family Game of the Year or was nominated for Best Family Game. And my thing is like I think even best kids game would probably make more sense or at least be clearer as to what it is because I could see Best game for kids. Yeah, because I could see the argument for oh yeah like okay game for kids. I understand what that means. Like there is a market for that when I when the best family category comes up right? It is for the best game appropriate for family play respect to a genre or platform. I still don't know what I know what that means. To me I interpret that as like the entire family is playing right? Yes. And then usually nine times out of ten most of the

The nominees are single player games. And it's like, all right. I guess I compare it to like when people say family friendly content. Yeah, the game that you can trust your kids playing. Yeah, that's, I don't, I've never. I just think it's awkwardly named. I just don't think that's my thing. I think early on, I initially thought this has to be a Mario Party or a Mario

cart, a multiplayer thing where, you know, all the kids from around the neighborhood are all playing together with the parents or whatever. But I have more and more understood that. it just means family friendly. It really is a game that you can toss on and not feel like you're going to hear a swear word. And see, I think again, back to, again,

not changing what the game awards are. I think it's so simple to start trying to make them dice, make them the Oscars, do whatever. I think if they were to lean into the DNA of being the VMAs, being the kids' choice awards, where they had stuff like best kiss, right, best fight team. Kids game awards.

You know Jeff's noodling that way. It's got to be a million spinoffs he's thought about. But for this one being like, well, yeah, let's do the best game to play with kids. Best game to have on in the living room with kids. Like that's something we would do, I feel, as a Smiley's Award category or something like that, right? But if Jeff blew this up a little bit, right, and went away from some of these more like locked what you'd expect, what I was doing at IGN in 2009 game a year thing, and you broke those definitions out and made them broader. I think you could keep the DNA of what this already is, but make it more where you look at it and go, I get exactly what

it is. Because for the longest time, yeah, family game it is. And even voting, maybe it was. Well, I'm voting for a game to play with your family, right? And so Astrobot is a single player game. Why would I say vote for your family with that one? Yeah. Also, I've crossed out here, well, mostly insisting game and then also best game direction. I feel like that's another one that when we get to talking about it, it feels a little bit amorphous and it feels like just a like a sister category to game of the year.

And I feel like that's one of those ones where I think that could be replaced by something else. Like in my mind, I'll replace it with like maybe best technical achievement or something, right? Something that is a bit more, oh, I can, like, this is more exciting to judge and talk about as far as what is the game that pushed things forward the most. Best game direction awarded for outstanding creative vision and innovation in game direction and design. The Smiley's has best innovation. Yeah. And I like best innovation. Yeah. And I think it's, I think it's a much better idea. Because yeah, yeah, you nailed it. It reminds me of the Oscars whenever, or it reminds you of record of the year or album of the year. You know,

that sort of thing. Yes. I do agree with Blessed. It should be, these should be titles that even though God of War stunned you the most because of its story and its characters or whatever, the game that was pushing weird tech or that other game that had wild mechanics that you never thought could work in a video game and somehow it all sort of comes together and you're like, wow, what a creative vision. It's not game of the year, but I'm really impressed by that sort of thing. I think of Wayfinder.

Or no, sorry, not Wayfinder. Viewfinder, yes. I think of viewfinder and how stunning that was just on a technical aspect. But, you know, the whole game wasn't incredible, but I still wanted to be recognized for how awesome those devs were and making this weird sort of creative thing work. Yeah. And if I also swinging around to another one,

I could see replacing it with like Best Studio instead, right? Like I think best game direction I think maybe implies a bit of, like, what was, I guess, the director input here? Like, what was, like, the direction in which the studio took this thing in order to make it special? And I feel like so many times that's not applauded or, and that's not right, championed, where I don't think you know behind the scenes who at this studio or whatever, what studio is really going. This is the direction we're going and what we're doing. Yeah, I can speak for it, right?

You can see the games that are nominated and be like, oh, I get that there would have been direction there. But that is a category I agree with that does feel like it's been put out with the best intentions, but it's eating up a space that could be somewhere. else and could be more interesting. Yeah. The next two I have here, I'll bundle together because for me, this is like, I love a bundle. This is the most, this is the conversation that me and Mike were having,

uh, and Barrett, I believe too, that like got into the weeds of how do we really fix this, right? And it is for me, best action and best action adventure. That's a couple of categories that I never loved because I think best action and action adventure and also lump in best RPG with this as well. Because for me, it is all the same thing of so many games, so many action adventure games have RPG mechanics, so many action-adventure games, you could probably categorize also in action, right?

Like, I don't know if you have the, yeah, Mike has here the best action-adventure description, which is for the best action-adventure game, combining combat with traversal and puzzle-solving. Best action game, for the best games in the action genre focused on combat. For the best role-playing game, the best games designed for rich player character customization

and progression, both offline and online, including massively multiplayer. Yes. There's putting so many words into the role-playing category. And I think those three categories have so much overlap with each other, and I think they could be a bit neater. And, like, I'm not going to say that I have the answer. I have, like, my proposal, which I think is going to still strike people the same way of, like, ah, that's still confusing.

But the ones that I have here would be, I would take the RPG category. I'll split into two categories because there are so many RPGs, and RPGs are such a big portion of, like, the big AAA games that come out, right, in the games that people play. I have this play into best action RPG and best turn-based RPG. The justification I have for that, for action RPG, right, it would essentially be the similar description

of everything is an RPG. This is the clearest and easiest and, in my opinion, the most meaningful line that we can draw in the genre to respect how vast the genre is. And so for action RPG, it would be, you know,

game design with rich player, character customization, progression, including massively multiplayer experiences. These games have real-time combat. In the examples that I give here, I am talking about games like Dragon Age the Veilgard. I'm talking about Eldon Ring Shadow of the Earth Tree.

I'm talking about Dragon's Dogma 2, Path of Exile 2, Final Faces and Rebirth. I think for this year, those five games have enough similarities to where it's like this makes sense to compare to each other as opposed to something like Unicorn Overlord or Metaphorie Fantasio or Like a Dragon, Infinite Wealth, or Persona 3 Relo. Those are the games I put in the best turn-based RPG category. I think as far as RPGs, those are different enough at their core designed where I think they deserve to be honored separately. I don't know if that's a crazy thing to say.

I know Barry disagrees because we had this conversation before. I disagree vehemently. I don't know how to say that word right now. My brain is broken. Nailed it. I don't know. It feels othering just because of a mechanic, and I just think that's weird.

But I think that's all video game genres, right? Like, video game genres are determined by mechanics. It's still a same genre, but they just take one mechanic and make it different. I don't know. I just, I don't know. It feels weird to me. I think, for me, I think that's video game categorization, right? Like, I think the way that we create genres is by looking at mechanics.

And I think, again, I look at metaphor refantasio, and I look at lack of dragon, and I say, those are better compared to each other as opposed to either than being compared to Dragon Ace the Vial Guard, right? Can I jump in real quick? Go for it. Live chat on YouTube. Mike Jonas, turn-based RPGs are niche and not so many. Mike, you got to expand where you're looking for your video games.

Yeah. Because this is, again, the... upside to having more categories is more chances to recognize the amazing games that are happening. There are so many turn-based RPGs each and every year. They're not on the scale necessarily of a metaphor or something like that. There's a smaller game on Steam or whatever. And this isn't from this year, but I even have Balders Gate 3 in this conversation, right? Like this isn't even me being like JRP versus Western RPG.

This is me saying that like I think there are like more than enough turn-based RPGs to make banger categories. Like if I'm just talking about this year and I remove Baldur's Gate 3 there, I'm sure there's another I can replace. but Persona 3 Relo, Like a Dragon, Infinite Wealth, Metaphor Re-Fantazio, Unicorn Overlord. Like, if I search, I'm sure I'll bring up Shimagamitensei Revengeance, and I'm sure there are, like, even higher profile games that I'm not thinking about right now. But I think if, I don't hate it, but my only thing is, then we would have to get granular,

granular with every genre. Someone brings up a point of like, there would be best shooter, there would be, Metroidvania. Best, best shooter I have here. The reason I have it for RPG and not those other ones, though, because RPG is such a big genre. Like, find me another genre that's that high profile, that is as big.

Yeah. And it's not even, I'm with you, and I agree with you. It's not even the genre as much as the way RPG mechanics have infiltrated everything. Yes. Every game, you have a skill tree now, you're leveling something up, you're doing whatever. And I'm not saying they should all be lumped in here either.

But it is that idea of, I do think action game, action amateur, in role-playing to toss in for the argument, bleed together so much that, again, 10 years into the game awards and again, decades into honoring games at the end of the year,

I feel like the lines are so blurred that it's worth trying to figure out a way to go through and see these things. To jump in here and keep going, right, one of the things I do feel is like, well, then what about you or what about that? That's where you start to get into. I would say, yeah, let's really,

again, I'd like to honor more games. I'd like to showcase more games, but at what point does it become no longer what the Game Awards is trying to do? Remember, the Game Awards is trying to be mainstream. It's trying to get through a whole bunch of different content as fast as possible while also selling you stuff and also hyping you up. There's so many masters the Game Awards is trying to serve that this sounds awesome again for the Smiley's, for us, for, you know, getting need,

you know, doing a Game Awards, in quote, show that goes on all week, like something Giant Bomb kind of does, right? But like, getting into the minutia of what these things are and talking about. To the shooter argument, like one of the ones that I have here in this conversation is adding best shooter as a category. I think there are more shooter games than fighting games in a year. When we're talking about just 20-24, you got Call Duty Black Ops, you got Hell Divers 2, you got I Am Your Beast, Soccer 2, and Warhammer 40K Space Marine 2. I think those are all games that you could, I think those games make sense to categorize with each other. And I think that's a genre that is popular enough, that is widespread enough that it is worth like looking at as a genre worth awarding and honoring.

Don't forget about that. You would put soccer to you in the same category as like multiplayer shooters. I'm not played much soccer too admittedly so like that's just me knowing that you shoot things in that game but yeah I'll put it I'll put it in that category and like the other one I have here would be like action adventure right like my beef with it is mainly having both action and action adventure I'll just put action adventure as one thing and have it encompassed at all right so I look at that and the examples I have for that would be um hell blade to prince of purse of the lost crown blackmouth wukong and astrobat right like the games where it is you're going on a journey and there is action involved in that thing.

What's up there? It means nothing. Action Adventure means nothing anymore. Oh, it means best action adventure games combining combat with traversal and puzzles. That's like fucking every game. Forgive it back to the RPG coverage. Sometimes you're puzzle solving,

sometimes you're traversing. Yeah, exactly. Sometimes there aren't enough. I wouldn't look at Prince of Persia Lost Crown and say that's an RPG. Some games are 80% you know, traversal and puzzle solving and 20% combat

and some games are the other half, you know what I mean? Totally, yeah. The other half. 20% I hate you. Ladies gentlemen and NBs, what do you want changed at the game words?

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This deal is exclusive to listeners, so get yours now in time for the holidays. Terms and conditions apply. R-Frames.com, promo code, kind of funny. And we're back. Blessing. What else you got from your category-wise? Do you want to get it controversial?

Oh. I mean, I'm the most controversial man in video game criticism. Yeah, in 2024. My most controversial statement, we got to figure out this independent thing. We gotta figure out. This year, not as much of a problem, but, like, last year,

I think the hubbub was so crazy that, like, I don't know. Dave the diver. And that's the thing is, like, I don't have an answer. I just have, like, a one paragraph manifesto of, like, what the issues are, which is for, like,

Right. Manifesto. That's a buzzword that's been in me. He got that from Twitter. I'm going to read about a lot about manifesto. Luigi. Yeah, weirdly enough Luigi is. Hey, man, he's back.

So, of course, right now it says on the website, for outstanding creative and technical achievement in a game made outside the traditional publisher system, which is, in theory, I think, a good pitch for best independent game, but in practice, I think it's a bit messy when we get into the minutia because, you know, is Pentamintimid independent when it was published by Xbox? Is Cyrupunk 27 independent when it's published by CD Project Red, right? Like, it's self-published thing.

Is a game independent when it's published by Devolver? And that's what, I mean, you can jump right into what we're looking at here, right? So this year's nominees, Animal Well, Bellatra, Lorelai on the Laser Eyes, Neva, and the UFO 50, right? And so you look at this, and the first ones that jump out to me, and these games are independent, obviously, because the studios are independent and not owned by anybody, yada, yada, and they're working with independent labels like Anapurna Interactive and Devolver.

Anapurna being Lorelai, never being devolver. But it is that idea of, like, produced outside the traditional publisher system. this is in 24 the traditional publisher system I understand that Anapurna and Devolver

Work with independent game studios to publish independent games and that's fucking awesome and I love it But it doesn't That is that is now traditional That is normal That isn't weird anymore

Me and Andy could tomorrow be like We're starting an independent label And we should But it wouldn't be like Oh my God That's so crazy for us obviously but it wouldn't be weird in the industry. Like, I feel like if they want to do this,

I would blow it up and change it to self-published. Best self-published game. Doesn't that, because for me that comes back to, Balder's Gate 3, I believe, was self-published. There's going to be things like that. You were into. Like the cyro-punk thing. Or, yeah, like cyro-punk slash the Witcher.

Like big studios, AAA studios that are publishing their own projects. Do we then just ignore them? Do we, like, go gentlemen's agreement? And like, Animal Well wasn't self-published. like that was a big mode but i mean that's my thing where again like i think you're into an interesting one of how you do this in i mean like how big the studio is studio size i'm weird but the pitch that i have written down here and this is again another weird one that we'll get to it is you know i'm in favor of like you're saying blowing it up and maybe even changing it to best

indie game as opposed to best independent and defining it as games developed without a triple a means of production and see there you go that that i think would solve it because that would also then you're in that sense kicking up Alder's Gate, yeah? Yeah, probably. Yeah. We're kicking up AAA.

What about Super Giant? Are you keeping in? I mean, would you say, well, that's where this is hairy. It's because then we need to define AAA. Yeah. And can we look in, like, we don't have access to the budgets.

Well, that's what I'm saying. I think, I think if you want to be nominated, you send all your books to fucking Keeley. Keeley has financial advisors looking over and be like, you know what? This spent enough money to be categorized as an indie thing, done deal, you know what I mean? If you,

if there's a lot of zero, rows in that budget. Sorry. Sorry. Double A. Fat cat. The fuck out of here. We don't want this shit.

Because for me, I think, I do think, and maybe Pentamine might be a bad example because I'm not played it, so I don't know how much, like, juice is in that game as far as the production and triple aness of it? Of Pentiment? A pentamette, yeah. Very good. Like, would you look at that and go indie game? Yeah, but how much like, yeah.

That's not, to me, definitively, that is not an indie game. I'm not, well, I'm not saying based on it being published by Xbox. I'm saying based on just like, would you believe an indie developer made it? Erase all the information you know about it and you look at a minimal. I think that's an unfair question, though. Oh, that's, okay. Because then we're just defining indie game by, like, the vibes of it.

Small budget. Well, I guess we're moving in pen to me. I mean, Dave the Diver got nominated last year by the Vives, by Vives. Dave the Diver is by, would be my example then, of, like, is the solution to go, like, let's look at games that are made by smaller teams?

You know it when you see it. Yeah. The prank ads. I don't think it is. But that's vibes. I don't think that should be how that's described, because then, yeah, Pentamint should be indie game

because it looks like an indie game and I just don't think that's, I don't know. I agree. No, that's why I was so against Dave the Dodger last year. Great game. I'm basically trying to find any common ground as far as like, is it the team size?

Is it the level of budget which we don't have access to? This is another one where I think it's a weird solution but again getting, blowing up this category along with several others and then making space for more

genre-based categories like you're talking about. If term-based RPG, regular RPG, or regular RPG, QuestR-R-R-G, you know what I'm saying. Like,

if you then went in and did stuff like that of like, best pixel art game, and I'm not saying that's a solution. No, yeah. But I am saying, like,

let's get specific. The problem with the game award categories right now is that they're very vague, where they are general, and you run into this where you read the, you know,

it doesn't mean anything, and then I read the description. I like, well, that means everything. And it's like, that's where you're at, is that you can't read

these categories and go instantaneously, I know exactly what that is. Best game direction. You're like, what? And you read about it, like, oh, okay, so, okay, I'm gonna go do that and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. Another controversial one. I might get booed out the room for this one. Add best expansion and just like not have, don't have expansions and DLC bill eligible for game of the year.

I love that. I'd boo you for that one. Yeah. I'm okay with that. Because I'm on your side, Greg, of like, I think expansions should be honored. But I think there's been enough hubbub from like audiences. And even just reading like chat, reading Reddits, reading like I think enough people are mad that this is one of those ones where I'm like I'll throw you a bone but here I would do it in the same way we did with the other one uh fuck it's gone but it was the other hypothetical one of all right cool we're doing best expansion as a category right but that's still that can still be nominated for game of the year that can still be nominated for

best whatever it's it's putting it over here to do something with it my problem with the hubbub yeah um else shadow bird shadow of earth tree yeah what the streets are saying right is the fact that it's just to me fucking, I'm in this, I've lived long enough to go back through the Matrix. Where when it was that indie games can't be nominated for the game of the year, you know, oh, this, a downloadable game

can't be nominated for this because it has its own category. It's like, you bought this game and played this game. Yeah, but I would have also had to have bought this thing and played 60 hours. Who the fuck? You would have had to buy the PlayStation exclusive, you have to buy the PlayStation to play that, like, we're just getting caught up on things that there's no

reason. Why are we getting caught up on this? There's no reason and I also think that this is such a rare example. Cyberpunk Phantom Liberty was not available to be nominated last year, correct? No, it was. Yeah. So, I mean, like, and it didn't. It didn't get Game of the Year. This year, Erd Tree is so good that it got, okay, why are we mad about that?

I'm definitely with Greg, where it's like my defense for why I had it voted or whatever, like, why I think it should be nominated is because I don't have an expansion category. And because I don't have an expansion category, I'm not going to not nominate one of the best gaming experiences I've had all year. Like that it's a no-brainer that Erd Tree deserves recognition. And then what I really, really hate is like,

yeah, but Eldon Ring already got a lot of love. I don't give a fuck. Like, I'm still going to praise the thing that I really enjoyed. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly. Dragon Age Valeguard. You should have been better.

I don't know. What do you want to say to that? My devil's advocate argument for it would be that I think there are certain games, though, that just has so much sauce to them. And again, I don't really, I don't believe in this argument as I make it. Best sauce category.

But like, there's some games, like, I feel like you create the scenario where every year, like if Elden Ring had an expansion come out every two years, that's going to be in the best games category or game of the year category every two years, right? Like, I think you're setting up these games that, you know, have the notoriety, have the popularity, have like this chokehold on the industry to then make that return into game of the year every other year in a way that can just. make that category less exciting for like the actual generally new games that are coming out year to year. That's like my.

I hear you. But my argument would be the same of those new games should be better. Like it's fair. I mean like, you know, and I'm not like trying to be insulting, but it's the case. And not to mention Eldon Ring isn't going to do that. We're not going to have it two years, right? And not to mention this is the same argument that if we ever want to talk about categories and how to judge this, which is a whole argument, right, is the fact that like when the best

ongoing support comes out, I'm always flooded. with people who are like, if this was a real category, it would be World of Warcraft, blah, blah, but nobody's playing that anymore. No one's playing. There's these games that are still thriving and going, but no one's playing that. So it's like, Fortnite is easy because this got a giant update and everybody came back to play it. So obviously, that's going to get nominated when in reality, some people who are in these communities would argue this over here. I'd be totally down with the expansion of the year. Would you then say it's not nominable for a game of the year? I wouldn't say it should be, but I personally would not put it in game of the year. Interesting. Like, I'm putting it there

only because that's the only place it can really be recognized along with like action adventure or whatever. That's a really good point. But if I had just the expansion category, that's where I would put it. And then I wouldn't put it in Game of the Year. But because I don't have that, I'm not going to not nominate it. You know, it's like I'm not going to punish it because you don't have a category or whatever. Right now there's not a way to nominate a shot of your tree. And I still feel like it deserves recognition.

I agree with that. Also, community support. ongoing game. That's another one I have here. I have Best Community Support just crossed out. Like we got Best Ongoing Game. And yeah, you figure there... I mean, like, unless you want to say Best Community Management. You know what I mean? Community...

Because what's their definition? But that's also really odd because... No, I guess... Never mind. I was going to say we don't recognize best our teams, but we do... Best Community Support. Recognizing a game and studio for outstanding community support and transparency. Incluses of social media activity and game... updates and patches

versus ongoing which is a word to a game for outstanding development of ongoing content that evolves the player experience again one of the problems

I think with this is the best whatever isn't descriptive enough this is what we've talked about with a few different categories this is another one where when you read it you go okay I see the difference

but when you look at the thing it doesn't make sense so again best community management which I think you could just change the title and then it would also, it would be social media and what they're doing inside of the game to communicate. Cool. That makes sense to me.

The one last thing I have here is more for me, more of like a semantics thing. Best blessing. Let me just put the, you know, put the sample on the table, let you guys taste it and see how you feel about it. All right. Game of the year. I would change it to best game. I think game of the year is one of those, like, I feel like best game feels a bit more formalized for what we're doing here. and it feels a bit more, all right,

we got to make an objective statement about what is the best game that came out this year. Game of the year feels like more of a popularity contest to me. And if you wanted to keep it, maybe that becomes the fan voted thing and it gets a bit demoted

in terms of like the prestige of it. But I feel like best game feels a bit more award show appropriate. Interesting. Is VMAs have album of the year or is the best album? Or is it like song of the year? Well, VMAs is video musical awards, right?

Yeah. So they won it. Oh, so that is your question. Yeah, I guess what I was going to say... They do video of the year. I'll do they? I think so, right? And that's what I don't care about as much, but it's one that I just want to put...

Because I've always been like, I don't know, I like the idea of doing a best game category. MTV Video Music Award for Video of the Year, yeah. So you're talking more about, you know, one category is recognizing what you think is the overall best video game, and one is more of like this, capture the Zite guys. Yes, almost like Times Person of the Year, right? like, I think game of the year should be more of the, hey, this is like the game that defines 2024, but best game is the fucking, like this game was developed as fucked right here. Like, this game fucking brought the fucking sauce and it's the best thing that we played this,

this year. What would be your game that brought the sauce, Mike? This year? Yeah. How it will train together. Man, shout out. Because I think Hell Divers too kind of had the largest moment of the year, but I wouldn't say that that's game of or best game but also goatee is just so nice to say

gody is nice to say gody this is a one i want to get rid of game of the year i'd keep game of the year yeah this is why i didn't i didn't cook on as much this is just one that i had the thought of of like i could see us trying to like maybe make it like a times person thing of the year because i think best game also um it feels like best picture for the oscars and like again i feel like there's a little bit of uh separation of what the game words actually are versus what we perceive them to be, and a lot of people equate it to the Oscars when it's not really, you know?

That's fair. That's all I had for categories. I think I crossed out more things, but... Great job going in depth on that one. Thank you. I was bored last night. I like that. You really thought about that.

That's good. TriForce guy in the YouTube Jets says, Held that was fall off hard. And that's what I fucking hate about an ongoing game that... That's the... Yeah, what? Still completely overachieved

in what it was trying to... where it was so relevant for so long, but it wasn't relevant in the right time. If Hell Divers came out in October, it would still have the moment. Yeah, fell off hard is such a fucking real. It's a moment in the sun, yeah. My PlayStation says I've done like 75 hours of Hell Divers.

Gary has more than 1,000 because he kept playing and never stopped. Like, there's a community that has never stopped. It's just not that zeitgeist, everyone's playing and everyone's streaming. It's not going. And also, who cares? Are we saying it's the best, the most fun you had, the best game of the year? Like, every game goes away at some point. Exactly.

Shadow the Irritory fell off hard. Like, what are you? Like, no. People beat it and moved on to the other thing. It's like when everybody was like, man, Blackmouth Wukong already. It's like, well, everybody's asleep. Like, that's where the player can win. Yeah.

I want to get some super chats in. Remember, of course, if you want to be part of this show, YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. You can super chat to be in here. Zeke speak says, uproar instigates change. Oh, he's talking about the, feedback when game war is happening and then after the fact. Some of it's dumb, yeah. But Jeff not mentioning layoffs, comma, wrap it up while folks are giving tearful speeches.

It was tone deaf, downright rude, and trying so hard to be the Oscars that it was embarrassing. I disagree. I mean, I think again, Jeff not mentioning layoffs, so what was it? That was 2020, right? Because last year he did mention layoffs. Yeah. I'm trying to remember who was that or if it was at summer game fest.

Oh, was it? I don't know. I think so. I can't remember. He has... Whatever the most recent thing was, Jeff went on stage and talked about the turmoil and layoffs and employees and game devs and company, you know, like there... There was a speech that happened. I don't know. That was a chat saying SGO. Yeah, I think it was SGO. Really? I could have swung those game awards.

Well, I remember... So the iterating off of it, I'm more hung up on... The Wrap It Up Wall giving tearful speeches is tone deaf, downright rude, and trying so hard to be the Oscars. So what's interesting about this and the Game Awards is that I said this before I'll say it again and I'll say it until something changes. Jeff cares more about his shows than I think anybody gives him credits for. And so I think you look at last year's game awards and he said, what does everybody think about it? And they were like, you should have fucking talked about layoffs.

So at SGF, he talks about layoffs, right? I think there's a struggle there of when you're trying to do a polished award show. And again, I love the game awards. Jeff's always been nice to us, except that when he's mean to Mike. But it's that thing of, with all due respect to Jeff, Jeff is not the lightning rod of controversy, nor is he the man who comes out and speaks from his heart off his cuff or whatever. I think it's weird for Jeff at the Game Wars to come out and talk about layoffs.

I'm glad he found a way at SGF answering what the criticisms were because whether he likes it or not, he is the founding father. He's the figurehead of games, right, in terms of talking about it. Like he has a platform that none of us will ever have. So I'm glad he found a way to do it, but I don't look to him to ever be cutting edge doing, because again, I think that's what the Game Awards are. are and what Jeff is. The Wrap It Up thing

is a direct response to everyone being like this award show is too fucking long. These speeches are going too long. Every one of you who made fun of Chris Judge's speech while Al Pacino held the statue, that is a direct response to this. And I imagine even though I have no inside information whatsoever

that this year you will see the speeches be longer but still have the just wrap it up thing and you have to play music because otherwise people like me won't shut the fuck up. We will just keep talking. Yeah, we adjust a lot of this as well, like immediately where It was an overcorrection, and that's all it was. And I don't think a bigger deal needs to be made out of it.

I think the memes were funny. The fact of it was downright rude, it wasn't meant to be rude. It was meant to keep the show moving. Yeah, it was, I just think it was an overcorrection where it's like, you just move that slider a little bit more. Let's go from 60 seconds to 90 to two minutes. And that's, and that's all it. I think that's the thing.

I think just because he didn't mean for it to be rude, doesn't mean that it wasn't rude. Like, as a viewer, I was like, oh, man, this feels rude. Like, I think for most people watching, they were like, oh, this feels disrespectful for the people on stage. I know Jeff doesn't mean it to be disrespectful, right? Like, he cares in that way. Yeah. But I don't think we can look at, like, I don't think we can tell people to not feel like he

didn't disrespect people by doing that when like, that is the thing that it comes off of. Content doesn't equal impact. Yeah. In terms of, yeah. So, like, and I, like, as far as like the overblowness of it, yeah, like, I don't, I think he's heard it loud and clear. Like, I'm with you that I think he's going to change it for this year. But, like, that's one that I do for, I 100% understand from people as far as coming

out of it being like, damn, fuck that. Like, you only gave these developers a minute to speak. Like, yeah, it's a response to the Christopher Judge thing. Yeah, it's a response to the length. But, like, I think when people are asking to cut down on the length of the game awards, I don't think they mean cut down on the length of the speeches. That's one of the things that people ask for the most, right? People want to hear the developers, like, get highlighted on stage.

I think people are just like... See, I think a lot of vocal people say that. I don't think that's what the majority of the audience wants. And again, this is serving multiple people. They're watching for the announcements. They're watching for their favorite game to win. But then call it the game announcements. Like, you're watching the game awards.

Like, you're going to watch awards. Like, I think that should be the expectation. I hear you, but you're still getting the awards this way. You know, to blow back again and try to defend the game awards on this, to defend Jeff on this. You know, people last year who were nominated were told you will have 60 seconds. So I think there is an argument there of them being disrespectful to the show, which I know sounds crazy and I'm sure I'll get crucified for. But a great example is when I won my game award, I went up there and I fucking went. And there was no timer and there was no nothing and there was great, right?

Everybody loved me and it was fantastic. When I won the South by Southwest Award, I had a different speech where I was going to honor our community. And I got up there and I go into it. And if you go back and watch that, I go, yeah, I'd like to thank Amy. Oh, fuck, I'm almost out of time because there was a clock down there that was counting down. And so rather than do my thing, I stopped and I thanked who I needed to thank and I was done.

Like there's a push and pull to this. And I'm not saying anybody's got it right nor that I am also saying that the people who got up there and talked longer than 60 seconds. I do not think that they were downright route. I am not saying that. But I am saying that there needs to be an acknowledgement from both sides of this. And it'll be interesting this year to see how they change in. If it is still 60 seconds, if it is two minutes or whatever it's going to be. Yeah, I think a change will be made for sure.

And that's all it needs to, you know, happen. Ariel Nights says dice is better. That's right, because we don't give a shit. We're all drunk. Talk as long as you want. We're taking shooters. When Christopher judged went up, it was me, Mark Serney, and Phil Spencer were backstage laughing. This is great.

I'm wrestling. Going back to the point of, um, Please, Greg, or not Greg. Jeff Keeley is saying something on stage about the layoffs, right? Like, do you see your point? I do think that this is one of those Spider-Man scenarios of with great power, it comes great responsibility.

And to your point, like, Jeff is the figurehead of this shit, right? Like, Jeff might not have chose to be like, hey, he might not be choosing to want to talk about, like, the layoffs and do all that stuff here, but he did choose to be the figurehead of the industry, right? He did make all the decisions to then become the face of all this. I think when you are, what is required of you is to, I think, speak to what's going on in the industry and listen to what the streets are saying and try to communicate that in a way that could inspire people, could uplift people. And if he doesn't want to say it, because, like, I understand also of him being like, I am not that person, get somebody on stage who will. You don't have to, like, I don't think he has to be the one to say it if he wants to bring on a different voice, if he wants to bring on a Greg Miller, if he wants to bring on somebody who can make that speech or make a segment.

in the show to do that? I think he has that power and I think that is a worthwhile thing to think about and a worthwhile thing to do. Well, this is another one. I think that's interesting with the conversation about fixing or changing or whatever, the Game Awards, right? I think sometimes to its detriment, Jeff is two hands off.

Because that's my point of right, like, of course, even the Game Awards being a zebra, not a camel, right? Jeff is the same way of like, I just don't expect that from Jeff because when you look at his Twitter, he's promoting the Game Awards, SGF, randomly some PlayStation News, put out that he's like talking about.

He's never like, hey, I did this, or that's fucked up or this, unless it's Qajima. So I think that, yeah, the show, I just don't expect to be infused with any of that from a production standpoint because Jeff would never do that, I think, right? Good or bad, right?

But then it's the idea that like, since he's not going to, it then falls to the people giving their speeches if they want to bring it up or do something with it, but you're up there for 60 seconds and you're trying to honor your team and all the things and how do you rope that in and make it make sense, right?

in a way that actually works for it, in a way that is whatever you're trying to do and what the game awards are. And the game awards could be that but aren't. And it's the same thing where I think Jeff's two hands off in what we're talking about with categories, right? Where Jeff sends out the categories, and remember Jeff Keely doesn't vote in this.

Jeff sends out the things to the panel of judges he's selected and worked with or whatever, and then they all vote. And so when it comes back, that's why, at least I think, in particular this year at nominations, right? What was it, Game of the Year? When he was like, I want to remind you,

I don't vote in these because it was like, he was already like, this is a weird selection of games of the year, but this is what came in and this is how it nets out. Uh-da-da-da-uh. Jordan likes you, Mike. Hello, Jordan. Thank you. CJ Splits on says,

new diverse guest hosts like the Oscars. That is an interesting question of, I wonder how long Jeff hosts the awards. That's what I was going to drive to as well, where like, I love that Jeff has built to this like trio shows that you have throughout the year. And like it is, he is the face of it. He is doing every single time.

I do think that it is getting to the point of I would love to see somebody else like step in for at least one of these things every year. Right. Like I know he has Sydney Goodman. Always on the pre show. Yeah. Bosman. Yeah. Like I would love to see Sidney Goodman maybe host the main show, right?

Or somebody else step in and host the main show. I'd love to see him like build up people that can take those reins and be the faces of it because I do think that. we like he has the power he has the opportunity to bring in yeah more diverse faces to actually being the hosts of these things what does that happen year 15 year 20 i hope it takes the backstep and just produces it all instead is right i think in the next few years yeah i think i think soon i would hope soon my request would be soon get out of here jess i'm taking requests now and what we're doing uh we have a couple here about games for impact we'll go with aaron lyme Games for Impact needs more clarification as a genre. As it's currently used, it feels more like a

feel-good indie category. He says Twee feel-good indie category. Games for Impact, how do we feel about this category, everybody? Right now this year, it's Indica, Neva, Life is Strange, Double Exposure, Senuous Saga, Hellblade 2, Tales of Kinsera Zau, and Closer the Distance. Of course, the official description of what it is is no longer on my screen, but it is

for a thought-provoking game with a profound pro-social meaning or message. Games in this category should be somewhat non-traditional and focus on creating an experience with a deep, meaningful, and message. That's one of the ones I had crossed out. I didn't mention during the segment earlier, but I did. I am of the mind of, I don't think we need that category. Yeah. Yeah.

It just feels like best story, but like it's kind of weird. And it, like, has like, I don't know, not a typical just hero's journey type of thing. Indy category that isn't an action, rogue lightning. Zeex-Speak... It says it's nebulous condescending and unhelpful, which I get the vibe of. Again, I like the granular stuff because I want more games to get in there,

so it isn't the same dozen games that are getting nominated throughout a million different categories or whatever, but I don't hate it. I would be... I mean, I would love a lot more... I'm with you, Greg, that... I love the granularity of some of these, you know,

nomination categories, but I do understand that the show would then become 17 hours long, you know. Go. Sorry, another, you just reminded me of something that I think Remap was talking about that I would love is for some of these specific categories, like if we were to keep Games for Impact or Best Fighting Game, I would, like, another recommendation I would say is, or best like Sim strategy game,

get the experts from these outlets to come together to DC. discuss the nominations for these things, rather than an entire outlet who is like, I don't know how each outlet does their own, like, nominations and all this stuff. But like, I don't know, it just feels weird words. Like, everybody might have, from one outlet might have played Unicorn Overlord. And that was just like the one thing that they played and all that stuff. So. Motor world hype and superchast and says racing and sports shouldn't be combined into one category. It makes no sense that a Mario Kart or need for speed game would go up against Madden or NBA 2K. game. Luckily, that didn't happen this year, but the fact remains. And I think that's a great way to piggyback off what Barrett's talking, to talk a bit about the judges, right? The judges are up on Game Awards. Kind of funny as a judge. Hooray for us, but it's IGN GameSpot, a bunch of international things, yada, yada, yada. And Barrett just hit, I think, a big nail on the head for why so many categories are combined, why people like, see if it was a fighting game? You know what I mean? There is this

idea that when you have to boil down these votes to, hey, here's what's going on, here's this company's opinion, right? And again, we're an 11-person company. IGN is how many people on the editorial board. You know, you have Gamer Tag radio voting and I don't know who officially with Danny is. There's all these different sizes and scopes and things that are happening. I think it would be a very interesting and perhaps necessary take moving forward to be like, cool, these are all the outlets we work with. And game of the year, yeah, they all come together and they vote as an outlet. But for your JRP category, for your fighting. game thing for your racing game category. We are taking people from those things and putting

them together as the panel to vote and decide rather than coming together to also cast a vote here. Like we're always great I feel up as a company of I'm abstaining from this category. I don't know it or, you know, overall nominations or something like that. But the idea that like it would be all right, cool, I'm sending. And it can be Andy and Mike are the representatives for kind of funny for kind of funny's one vote to do. That doesn't make sense because that's how it works for us. But you understand what I'm saying of. Yeah. We need expert analysis. so that it isn't seafood fighting category, which I don't think makes sense, even though I'm not fighting games. You know, it's a different- I know for, I did the BAFTA game awards. Like I judged for one of the categories in like 2021 or 2022. I forget which one. And it was like that where not necessarily, like, because like my category, I think was like the EE game of the year, which is the fan. So we figure out the nominees and then the fans vote for it. So it was like the fan voted one. But they did bring in a group of six to eight of us that they had reached out to individually to discuss in a room.

and figure out what those categories were going to be. So like, and I'm sure a lot of game or a lot of award shows are like that. I think that's the right move. Yeah, I think like, and I think you have the capability to do it, right? Especially for those categories that are best fighting game or better, those categories where you look at them and immediately go, that doesn't seem right. Like that happens all the time for a best fighting game. I forget what it was.

Seafood was one of those situations, but even before that, I remember like tweeting out like, what the fuck are these nominees and somebody else who, one of my friends who's in like the fighting game community DM me and they're like dude what the fuck is up with the nominees and I was like hey man I don't know you fight in that game though so you know yeah like people like put all the ring in there too generally I think you can make these

make some of these nomination lists better like more quality if you reach out to people I think if the game is F1 or NASCAR related then it goes in the sports category but if it's a Mario card it does not give me the vote arcade sports game best arcade racing best family game best family game I thought him family

I forget who it was. Somebody on the social media spaces had put something up of like, the flaw in the company outlets in voting or whatever is that you inevitably get to, here's the best thing I played for work. Here's the best thing I was assigned. Not here's the best thing I played because, of course, I talk about this all the time that I want to go play this, but I need to go play these things. And so I play these things and that builds up my knowledge base for the year on what I had to play for review, but not necessarily getting back to go. I booted with Ben

Zelda and I haven't actually made it even out of the intro of Zelle. You know what I mean? Like that kind of thing where it's like that then gets to a voting point where it's like well I've heard great things about game X that Andy's talking about but I haven't so you have to either be ready to I'm rocking for this thing because I think it's that good or I need to stand down and let Andy's voice be louder because he's awesome. Thanks sir.

You are. It's shorter games you know. That's what it really comes down to. Sure. I'd have time to play all these damn games if you know Well, I mean, I got to blame myself because I'm the one who put 40 and 60 hours into Inchrout and Nightingale and Deadlock or 90 hours with Deadlock

So many early access games That needs its own category, early access That's the one that I would... I mean, Path of Exile too. Come on, let's get into the game of the year. It's too late for an early access. It's too late for that in my... It's a different fiscal calendar for me.

The Path of Exile was a early category? Best Early Access? Best early access. I don't like it. We started. The Smilies are coming back, everybody. I hope I remember how to... I hope I remember how to...

I hope I remember how to render that little 3D smiley. You'll figure it out again. You'll figure it out on the wall. I'm trusting you. Well, our final comment comes from... Somebody else added it.

No, I'm not doing it. Nesselhan, who says the show is too long because of random celebrities who couldn't give a fuck not having a time limit while indie devs don't get a speech at all.

Now, what I would counter with is, of course, the reign of celebrities are very much on book. They are reading whatever is in the prompter and going away, so I don't think that is. And then I would also pivot back to, yes, because it's a zebra, not a camel. All right? That's what the game awards are. Exactly, exactly. I'm definitely not on the mind of people who are like, oh, we need no celebrities in this thing. We need way less celebrities.

I think this, sadly, you need the celebrities. I'll never forget Michelle Rodriguez. That can. Come on. That can. Yeah. Come on. I guess, like, I, I think as of,

as of recent times we've had like the the correct selections I would say like it's not when you go back and you watch Spike TV and it's like here's Elijah Dushkew to talk about uncharted like what the fuck is going on? Yeah I feel like recently it's been an okay but you know selection I do think that when people talk about celebrities taking the most time it really was just

Simulieu going on really long because he loves video games or whatever. Is Simulu did that one he did an advertising he talked about some sort of like mobile game ad oh yes yeah it was like a top down sort of RTS was that the ad that went on forever

no that's the one with Ken Jong and yes that's what I'm sorry hemisorth was in that one as well they had chickens in it or something sure did yeah sure it did it was also Anthony Mackey as well chat reminded me he was in the game no like he was oh Anthony Mackey game awards and had a bit they got Snoop Dog though

they do have Snoop Dogg though Anthony Mackey needed a tone it down that was one where it's like Anthony Maggie you got to understand your lane you got to understand that like Steph Curry He can shoot three points from wherever because he's really good at it. You got to understand what you're good at Anthony Mackey, and I don't think you're like... He's on stage trying to be a comedian. I like the way he's saying it.

Yeah. He's trying to be a comedian up there. That's Falcon. Anthony Maggie, you're good in Marvel movies, but I don't need you improvbing, you know. That's a lot of shit on Anthony Maccrow. I got a beef with Andy Mackey. I got beef with the MacDog.

I got beef with a MacDog, you know. It's just MacTruck. Ladies gentlemen and Enneys, that's the game. cast in the books, your final Kind of Funny Games cast before the Game Awards tomorrow. Remember, of course, we'll be starting the day late with Kind of Funny Games daily streaming and then going live around

4 or 4, I think it's 4 o'clock for our reaction, so we'll be live during the pre-show for Game Awards, live throughout the Game Awards, and then of course doing our post-show analysis gamescast immediately following. We hope you come join us live to be part of the chats, but if you want to watch it on your own private time and then come to see our reactions, no big

deal. Of course, everything's live and later on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. You can watch on Twitch.tv.tv.com.combed games live. And of course, there'll be podcasts versions of all the shows up for your listening pleasure. No matter where you get Kind of Funny, thank you for your support. Consider picking up that membership to get everything ad-free. And of course, keep the lights and mics on for our 11-person small business. We're all about live talk shows, which means we're not done by a long shot. Gamescast is ending and we're going right into first-person

Fortnite, where I'm going to be better than Nick. Until next time, it's been our pleasure to I will be. I will be. Love you, Anthony Mackey.