Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Has Xbox Lost Your Trust? - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: May 7, 2024

Greg, Gary Whitta, and Parris Lilly get DEEP into what the closures of Arkane Austin, Tango Gameworks, Alpha Dog Games, and Roundhouse Studios. Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - Microsoft Closes Four Bethesda Studios: Our Reactions - Do You Trust Xbox? - Ads - Workers’ Reactions - Does Phil Need to Go? - What are the Alternatives? - What does this mean for OTHER Xbox Studios? - The Game Pass of Things - Dinga’s Insight Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast for Tuesday, May 7th, 2024. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside the best voice in the business, Paris Lily. Hello, Paris. How sick. It's the X-Cass. One week later, the X-Cass is back. Don't worry about it. You have to worry, wait long for that reunion to come back. And then, of course, rounding out our trio, the Rogue One at Gary Whitt. Hello, sir. I, um, that was my first time seeing the lovely character select intro. Am I in there somewhere?

No, no, no. No, I don't think I would be, yeah. Well, and I see. I mean, because there was obviously, it was a lot. It seemed like there's so many boxes there. It's me, Tim and Andy, I think. You're blessed. That's it.

No. But when you're selecting, there wasn't there like 16, 20 characters? But there's like different outfits for us or whatever, all right? We learned a lesson a long time ago. Because what would normally happen is in January, we would put in Andrea, a Jared Petty into the intro. And then by the next year, they'd be gone. So we just said, let's keep a team.

people whose health insurance relies on us. And they're in it. Okay. But you're here. You're here in the Gamescast. I'm very excited to have you. Yeah. Thank you all for audibly, Paris and Gary. And of course, you audience, as you know, kind of funny gamescast is daily now starting last week. And we did it because we want to be nimble and be able to have the conversations the industry is having. So today we were supposed to talk about revamping the kind of funny review scale. But of course, we woke up and saw the Xbox news and said, you know what? Probably a more

important discussion to have with our Xcast compatriots. here. Gary and Paris. Of course, Mike is off for his birthday. Bad time to take a vacation, Mike. But also, happy birthday. This is your gift from Xbox, the company you love the most. But before we get into actually what's going on, let me run you through all the stuff that is happening here, kind of funny. Remember, this is the kind of funny games cast. Each and every weekday, we get together to talk about the biggest stories in video games. That's reviews, previews, obviously, topics, and we do it live on YouTube, Twitch, and of course, podcast services around.

The Globe. If you love what we do, please support us with the Kind of Funny membership, either on Patreon or YouTube, you can get all of our shows ad-free. You can watch the afternoon podcast, lives as you record them, and you can get that Gregway each and every weekday as an exclusive show. For your chance to be part of this episode of the Gamescast, make sure you're using those YouTube super chats for your thoughts and your answer to the question of, has Xbox lost your trust? Some housekeeping for you, of course, Kind of Funny Games is an 11-person small business. That's all about live talk shows. As you can see, you've already seen the breakdown of the Xbox

shuttering of four studios on Kind of Funny Games Daily on YouTube, Twitch and podcast services. And after this, Nick will return to his Nuzz-Lock Pokemon stream on YouTube and Twitch. If you're a kind of funny member, today's Gregway is Barrett sounding off on, if this is the end of an era for Star Wars animation. And don't forget that you have an hour-long Gregway that we posted and did live yesterday available for your listening and viewing pleasure.

Thanks for making our dreams of reality, Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, Fargo Brady, Delaney, Twining. Today we're brought to you by ORAFraim's Shady Ways and Better Help, but we'll tell you about that later. For now, let's start with topic of the show. Tats, Tats, Tats, Tats. I'll see on the PlayStation show we used to say, it doesn't matter. I just don't feel like the energy was there for that one.

It's also a very subdued one. It might be like a Friday the 13th thing. Tats, Tats, Tats, Tats. Well, we, I guess. It sounds like, yeah. Yeah, a little bit of that. Yeah, I'm following what you're putting down. Ladies and gentlemen, if you haven't heard the news, I will give you a quick recap and read from IGN.com, where Wesley Yinpool reports, Microsoft closes Red Fall developer Arcane Austin, High Fire Rush, Developer Tango, GameWorks, and more in devastating cuts at Bethesda.

Microsoft has closed a number of Bethesda studios, including Red Fall Maker Arcane Austin, High Fire Rush, and Evil Within Developer Tango GameWorks, and more in devastating cuts at Bethesda, IGN can confirm. Alpha Dogg Games, maker of mobile game Mighty Doom, will also close. Roundhouse Studios will be absorbed by the Elder Scrolls online developers Xenamax Online Studios. Microsoft currently valued at over $3 trillion, did not say how many staff will lose their jobs, but significant layoffs are inevitable. On Redfall, the disastrous vampire co-op game will now not receive promise updates, including an offline mode and new character DLC, as Microsoft has ended all development on the game.

Microsoft said Redfall will remain online to play and it will provide a quote-unquote make-good offer for those who bought the Hero DLC. Arcane Leon, which is working on Marvel's Blade, survives the cull, as does Bethesda Game Studios, which of course makes fallout the Elder Scrolls in Starfield and machine games, Indiana Jones in the Great Circle. Doom developer id software is also unaffected.

In the email, the staff sent by Matt Booty, head of Xbox Game Studios, Microsoft, you know, Microsoft blamed the cuts on, quote, reprioritization of titles and resources. I have a few excerpts pulled from the email. We won't read it in full. Today, I'm sharing changes we are making to our Bethesda and Zenamax team. These changes are grounded in prioritizing high-impact titles

and further investing in Bethesda's portfolio of blockbuster games and beloved worlds which you have nurtured over many decades. To double down on these franchises and invest and build new ones requires us to look across the business to identify the opportunity that are best positioned for success. This reprioritization of titles and resources means a few teams will be realligned to others and some of our colleagues will be leaving us. With this consolidation of our Bethesda Studios team,

so that we can invest more deeply in our portfolio of games and new IP, a small number of roles across Bethesda publishing and corporate teams will also be eliminated. Those whose roles were impacted will be notified today, and we ask you to please treat the departing colleagues with a respecting compassion. We will provide our full support to those impacted in today's notifications and through their transitions, including Severin's benefits informed by local laws, Gary. These changes are not a reflection of the creativity and skill of the talented individuals at the teams or the risks they took to try new things. I acknowledge that these changes are also disruptive to the various support teams

across Zanamax and Bethesda and bring our games to market. Bethesda remains one of the key pillars of Xbox with a strong portfolio and amazing games and thriving communities. Gary and Paris, we have been wrestling with this and diving into this on games daily, obviously, is the breaking news. But what I'm more interested is, of course, you guys, the Xbox team here are kind of funny for so long, obviously with the X-Cast folding you in here. Gary, when you wake up and you find out this news, what's your knee-jerk reaction today? I think what's most depressing is initially, and I'm not trying to minimize it at all,

and we'll get into how I feel about it in a moment, but I think what's most depressing is this is now so commonplace that you almost feel numb. Numb to it. When you see, you go, oh, there goes another one. Yep. You know, it's like, it's lost its capacity to shock because it has become so commonplace.

Yeah. So that's depressing. For sure. Beyond that, as always, the first thing I want to say, and I care about the most is my heart goes out to everyone affected. Of course. Because it wasn't their fault. They didn't do anything wrong. But these decisions are made so far above your pay grade.

Of course. It doesn't matter what you do. And there is a contrast. action and a disturbing trend happening across the entire entertainment business, including in film and television where I work, where simply doing excellent work is no longer good enough. And enough, Chief. It's not enough. It should be.

In a just world, it would be. If I need to point it out, of course, high fire rush in 87 on Metacritic, critically acclaimed, beloved four million players that includes game pass and not just people straight up buying. And yet, not enough. Not enough. Couldn't do it. Can I get it though? I don't know.

Have either of you ever been laid off from a job? No. I survived many, and I shouldn't say that. I survived a couple IGM layoff, so I had friends laid off. Okay. Because I have, and it sucks. It is utterly soul-destroying. And, you know, this is why I have zero time at tour for when companies talk about being a family.

Because it's, no, companies do not give a shit about your, their employees. I promise you, I don't care what they say. They don't. Yeah. They don't. And that is always evidenced when, as I've been involved in the past, people, are corralled into a little room and an HR person comes in and starts, you know, reading, you know, opens the folder.

With the COBRA health insurance and here's how, you know, because there's no health insurance in this country is a disaster, right? So not only do you lose your job, what if you've got a pre, you know, you've got kids, you've got pre-sixies and you're going to come from. Like, your world fucking falls apart. I was so utterly depressed and demoralized when, you know, because it wasn't just me it was my whole team

there was a whole magazine and was working it we all got laid off at once and you know you basically come in in the morning and there's a red sheet of paper how other companies did it in my case a red sheet of paper

that's like it just says you know you're sacked yeah or whatever it is and then you have to sit through this it's so dehumanizing and it's so belittling I remember like I didn't give a file in the middle of it

I just stood up and walked out like I could not be in the room yeah I'm not going to subject myself to this indignity. And I just fucking left. Well, that's always the fun one of how news breaks around here too, right? Where, you know, from this bat, Matt Booty letter, right, where he's talking about, you know, first off, this news is everywhere. It's Shire at Bloomberg.

It's literally everywhere, right? And there's this thing of like, the individuals impacted will be notified today. Awesome. You know what I mean? Like, obviously there's the fact that if you're at Arcane Leon, if you're at the high-fi rush developer, Tango GameWorks, like, you know what's. over because you're closed. But then there's also these throwaways ones of like, well,

some of the Bethesda corporate positions also are going to be. It's like, Jesus Christ, right? Like you don't even know. Paris, I'm sorry. Your knee jerk reaction today when you saw this. My knee jerk was shock, honestly, to see the news and to see the studios that were affected by it. But if you can allow me a little bit of grace here,

because honestly, my thoughts are all over the place when it comes to this. It's disappointed. It isn't even the word to describe this. And I echo everything that Gary is saying about, you know, we need to, the people that are affected by this is the problem. But I will say this. If I was a game developer, especially a senior game developer whose salary and bonuses are at the top of the food chain, I would be absolutely terrified right now to be in this industry as

a whole, let alone just within Xbox Game Studios. there's zero job security. And to Gary's point, it's not even the fact that these people are doing anything wrong. Some of the smartest, most talented people out there are being put on the street. Their lives are being completely disrupted because of things like this, because of business decisions. And again, if you allow me some grace, I go all the way back to 2020. We obviously had the running joke about, you know, me, oh, 7.5 billion, change things, right? You know, that thing. Then Activision happen and we talked about it on Xcast a lot about okay they did this but man we are at the red line now i like people were saying oh they should acquire Sega and all that i'm like no we cannot have

too much consolidation in this industry you cannot take another major publisher off the board and now here we are sitting here in 2024 and you you look at a studio like tango who made hi-fi rush And again, this is where you bring Xbox into it and everything that they've been telling us over the years, that the whole point of game pass and them being able to acquire these studios is basically to give some of these smaller studios a little bit of security to allow them to go chase their passion projects. So you can get a high five rush. So you can get a Pintamette. So you can get a cyclone that's freaking too. Do you realize how concerned I am for double fine right now?

We're going to get into all that. Yeah, yeah. We're going to get into all that. It's, it's so disheartedly. heartening to see this kind of news because, okay, y'all just spent $80, $90 billion or whatever the hell you all just did, acquiring Bethesda and acquiring Activision. If anything, I remember the talk at the time about Activision was, okay, this is actually going to free up those studios in Activision so that they aren't on the hamster wheel of making

Call of Duty every freaking year. Maybe Call the Duty can take a break. Maybe we can see something like Raven bring back singularity or something like that, right? that this was the talk. People were excited, hell, the Transformers games might come back or something.

We were excited about this thinking that Microsoft Xbox acquiring this publisher is going to give us more games that can take more risk, that are more creative. And instead, we're right back to the same old typical bullshit

that we have seen over the past few years with these studios being closed and people being laid off because you put out a game like Callisto Protocol that try, to do something not necessarily unique but they tried to do their own thing different it didn't work you know like you even think about um immortals of avian right now they tried something different yeah with the

magic shooter shit didn't work studio essentially is gone now right we're terrified for a rock steady right now because the suicide squad right in the way that that happened so then when you see a microsoft do this and again i cannot stress enough tango freaking arcane who has given us some of the best games we've ever had in the 40 plus year history of video games. Dishonored, pray. Okay, Redfall didn't freaking work. We get it. They're gone. That's crazy to me. Absolutely crazy to me that this is where we are in this industry right now. And as much as I love it and much as I like talking about it and playing the games and doing all that, it's just not fun right now. It is not fun because you and I, Greg, were just KFGD last week talking about layoffs. And here we are

talking about them again. Yeah. And there's there's there's no end in sight to this. So it's very disappointing. Like I said, my thoughts are all over to place on this. But at what point is leadership going to be accountable for this? That's the question that we have to start asking across the industry because why are the people that are actually putting their passion, their blood, their sweat and tears into making these games and to try new things? They're the ones that are paying the price for this. These are the questions we have to start asking. asking with this. Of course, I have a weighty document here. Fill the questions, links, and all sorts of stuff. Barrett, I'd like to jump if you go down to my industry reaction section. I'm going to read

from Harrison Pink and then Emma Kidwell. Harrison Pink, friend of the show, lead game designer at Cyan World, formerly at Blizzard on Diablo 4 before that telltale with Walking Dead. Of course, yeah, you know Harrison well. And he also was at 2K for Mafia 3. But his tweet today that I thought resonated was, bro, I'm so tired. I'm so tired of this. What's the point of working your ass off, succeeding at creating a game that everyone loves and is financially successful, only to get fucking vaporized to juice some stocks? Like, why even bother, man? Emma Kidwell is over at Faraxis.

She also worked on Hindsight Game. Her tweet, quote tweeting the news, said, extremely cool and not devastating at all, how even studios and devs who make award-winning or best-selling games aren't safe from structuring and divesting resources elsewhere. I think, Paris, you said so much in there, Gary. as well, but obviously Paris jumping off of what you did. When you talk about consolidation and we talk about it being bad and we talk about

Embracer Group, who has been the butt of so many of my jokes and the source of so much of my anger as they've done what they've done and laid off in Close Studios and yada, yada, to jump back to when Xbox, Microsoft goes and buys Bethesda, right? It was exciting like you're talking about Paris because Xbox was saying the right things about the acquisition and you hope that this would be, hey, here's the exception to the rule. Hey, here's how to do this in a sustainable manner, right? You brought it up already right here. This is one of my notes from later on, right, or in here, right, of where I have it out here, which one of my points this year? You're getting ahead of me on this one, Barrett.

Sorry, I just pulled this up because I found it. I have not been able to look at those. Oh, yeah. Please don't. I have so many links in here, so don't pull stuff up because there's stuff I want to get out there. It's a very big doc, so I've not had the chance. Oh, I hear you, brother. I'm just saying I'll call for what I want on this one since there is so much going on. Fuck, but I can't even find it where I was right now. It doesn't matter. The idea that they'd be the exception to the rule, that they would come in and know what they're doing and buying. And I think Tim said something else that was salient, I think, on Games Daily, right? And the fact that it's easy to be mad, especially today, at Xbox for buying

Bethesda. But the fact of the matter was, Bethesda was for sale. Someone was going to buy them, right? So it's not so much like, you can't buy something that's not for sale, Gary. If somebody doesn't want to sell their business, you can't do it. This was going to happen. You can do a hostile takeover. You can come in and you can force it. Don't get in here with your actual business stuff, okay? You watch fucking Wall Street once with Michael Douglas.

You think you're going to come in. I'll build ships, Gary. It is that idea right that we thought this would be different. And so to get here today, the question I have for you guys and for the chat, the super chats out there is, can you trust Xbox? Do you trust Xbox? Where are you at with that right now? Gary, what about you?

Where are you at with trust? Did you ever even have trust in Xbox? especially, because I feel like Paris and aren't on the same page of what the, hey, they got Bethesda, that's cool, they got Activision, that's cool. They have all this IP yesterday on Games Daily. We were talking about Tony Hawk's pro skater three and four being shit canned by Activision back when they were not Xbox. Now that they were like, of course they're going to do that. That makes so much sense. Then you see a decision like this today. Where are you with that question? I mean, I'm still, you know, I woke up, just in the Slack this morning. I was like,

What happened? I saw that I was tagged on something like, you wanted him to come in. I'm like, I just woke up what happened and you wake up to this. And like I said, it feels like increasingly waking up in the morning, grabbing my phone and going,

ah, fuck, you know, just more bullshit. So I'm still processing, like, in terms of like, does this mean a loss of, I guess what's surprising is like,

I am a fan of Xbox and I'm a fan of Phil. I like Phil a lot. I think he is genuinely one of the good guys. And I think whether it's in my mind, it's, or in the minds of others, whether it's true, how widely held this notion is. I think Xbox had done a good job over the years of cultivating a reputation as being kind of quote-unquote like the good guys, right? That they weren't just another faceless corporation.

It feels a genuine gamer and like he feels it. And there was this sense that like they were kind of one of us. But at the end of the day, like you said, part of a $3 trillion dollar corporation. And when you're talking about those kind of numbers, there are no good guys anymore, right? It's just, there are only shareholders. And they don't give a fuck. Absolutely do not care. They could not care less about how rich are they.

How much more rich can they get? And that's why we're in the situation show that we're in right now. Yeah. I'll tell you that one of the big, beyond, you know, the horror that so many people must be going through right now. Like, again, try and put a human face on it. There are so many people right now who are. are at home or, you know, talking to their husbands and wives and, you know, about what they're going to do next.

Like how much severance are you getting? What happens to our health insurance? Like there are people in real agony right now. Like serious fucking stress over this who did not see this coming. And your whole life is just upended in a single moment. And the job market is terrible, right? Like sometimes when you see these layoffs, you see other developers coming in and saying, hey, we're hiring.

You see less and less of that because it's like, where do you, where do you go next? Yeah. You know, and it's, and it's heartbreaking. Beyond that, my next,

whether or not I trust, that to me is like less interesting. The thing that worries me the most, because this is the thing that bugs me the most about the business that I'm in, and we're all into. When you think about entertainment as games, film, television,

it's all one thing, that business of entertainment. This already, this already exists, at the corporate level. My worry is that this is now going to filter down to like the trenches, the people actually make the stuff that make the people in the C-suits rich. Yeah.

Is that this is going to lead, especially look at today, right, high-fi rush, great game, didn't work commercially, so you're fired. Redfall. They tried something original, didn't work, you're fired. Is the Call of Duty guys aren't losing any jobs, right? You notice that. So here's the thing. It's going to lead to a, I think it's going to lead to a culture where the people that

make things are going to be increasingly afraid of failure and increasingly less willing to take risks. Sure. Creatively. You shouldn't, you, you should not be afraid of failure. Nobody wants to fail, but you shouldn't be afraid of it. Because the only way you're, the only way you ever have a chance of making anything great is if you're willing to accept that you might fail.

The more you try to hedge against failure, the more you try to kind of take the safe option, the more mediocre your work will become. And this is why we see so much mediocre output, because most of what gets put out into the world of film, television, video games, you name it, is ultimately dictated by the people at the top who only care about money, who are risk-averse and simply understand,

because it's true that, you know, the more creative risk you take, you know, the more, the bigger, the win-loss, you know, risk-reward equation, you spend a lot of money on a big original swing, you can make a lot of money, lose a lot of money. And people are increasingly trying to insulate themselves from risk.

I don't want to see that filter down into the creative world. Well, maybe we should just copy what everyone else is doing because that seems to work. Where's the innovation going to come from if everyone's afraid to fail? Well, I think that's the big takeaway today. And I think, you know,

everyone's feeling emotions here today. Most importantly, the people who have lost their jobs and are seeing their jobs hanging in the balance right now. But it's also the audience, and it's also a lot of people demanding, I think, more from their executive and more from those C-sweets, right? Where, you know, you look over to the super chat, and one of the first one that comes through is Bat Tech,

who says, stop rewarding those at the top. Phil needs to go. Then another super chat writer of coming through here and talking about Sunny Knowles, right? All these games firing are becoming the thoughts and prayers of the video games industry. All the while, Microsoft posts a 20% plus quarterly earnings. When will the leadership be held accountable for these poor decisions? I think that filters into the question in the headline here of can we trust Xbox.

And Paris, I want you to sound off on that in one second. I'd like to present some of the stuff we have. I think Imran put it very poignantly on Twitter today. And Barrett, I'm just going down the bullet points now, where he tweeted out and said, I feel like we should stop taking gaming executives at their word. I can't believe how often we just accept what they say and they act completely counterintuitively to it, right? this then leads into a very interesting narrative that's not, I'm saying, being spread or spun on the internet,

but the fact of Xbox's old comments coming back to haunt them. Barrett here, if you could put it up, because you're just ahead of me because you're so good at your job. From Power on, the story of Xbox is episode 6. At the 2653 second mark, they have this. Can we listen in? Is that possible, Barrett? Give me a sec. Sure, you're doing great.

I know the lots coming at you and fly. Shout out to the kind of funny team today, dealing with a lot, obviously, at 7 a.m. when I'm like, you know what? Throw everything out the window we were going to do. And then Barrett's running games daily while I'm building a document with 9,000 links in it. Let me know when we can listen in Barrett. From this, you know, giant story of Xbox power on documentary they did that has McCaffrey and Vic Lucas and Phil and Seraubon.

Sure. Who's coming out of Microsoft? Perfect. Okay, that sounds good. That sounds great. All right. Going over to it. Thank you.

So they're shutting down Fable developer Lionhead Studios. We acquired Lionhead in 2006. Shut it down in 2016. A couple years later, we reflected back on that experience. What do we learn? How do we not repeat our same mistakes? Nothing. You acquire a studio for what they're great at now. And your job is to help them accelerate how they do what they do,

not them accelerate what you do. I wish. And you can cut their, Brad. We're still a viable studio. Literally, you know what I mean? You want to talk about painting yourself into a corner and not future-proofing comments. I want to throw up a Janet Garcia tweet, if you can, for me right now, Barrett, who, again, summizes.

everything we're about to get into, because I have more quotes from this in the KMi trust them. Janet has this quote from the kind of funny interview you guys did with Bill Spencer that I will read in a second, but her quote, and you could even apply it to the video you just watched, right? Yeah, so many of Xbox's comments are aging like milk right now. This is the danger of selling the good guy narrative. It only works when you do good things. That said, this is also why PlayStation Nintendo don't talk to anyone anymore. They're like, nah, I'm not going to play myself. Janet, I don't. I knew you were in the chat earlier. I think you still are.

You know how much I love you and how much I respect you. Fucking nailing it. On why we're talking right now, can you trust Xbox? Because they have presented themselves time and time again, as I'm about to go through with comments from different articles, it's comments from our own podcast, as the people who are, we are making these decisions and acquisitions to have art, to go forward with it, right?

Let's go over to Games Hub April 2023. So one year ago, this is Leah J. Williams in an article talking about Hi-Fi Rush. Other publications shared similar praise, and across social media, Hi-Fi Rush was a near instant sensation. Despite this, it was recently reported by industry insider Jeff Grubb that the game had failed to meet sales expectations and, quote, didn't make the money it needed to make, and quote, this is one year ago, again, ladies and gentlemen.

While it's rare that large companies comment on rumors and hearsay, Grub's report garnered some traction and was picked up by several news outlets. Eventually, Aaron Greenberg from Xbox responded to definitively quash the allegations via Twitter. Quote, Hi-Fi Rush was a breakout hit for us and our players in all key measurements and expectations.

We couldn't be happier with what the team at Tango GameWorks delivered with this surprise release, Greenberg said. Xbox boss, Phil Spencer, retweeted the statement affirming his support. I will now jump to the X-Cast interview, a couple of breakouts from there when Phil came on after those Redfall reviews.

Some of the stuff he had in there, what can we learn? What can we get better? One thing I'll fight is what went wrong. There's clearly quality and execution things we can do, but one thing I won't do is push against creative aspirations of our teams. Then a lot of people will say, hey, you've got teams. Teams know how to do one kind of game.

Just force them to go do the one kind of game they have a proven track record for. I'm just not a believer in that. Maybe that means I'll under deliver for some of our fans out there. But when a team like Rare wants to do C of Thieves, when a team like Obsidian wants to go do grounded, when Tango wants to go do hi-fi and everybody probably thought they were, we're doing the evil within three. I want to give these teams their creative platform to go

and push their ability and push their aspirations. But I also need to have a great selection of games that continue to come that surprise and delight our fans. We under deliver on that and for that I want to apologize. It's not what I expect, not what I want, but it's ours to deliver. Later on in your same interview, guys, you did a great interview. Quote, we're going to continue to work, and he's talking about Redfall. We're going to continue to work on Redfall.

We've shown a commitment to games like Sea of Thieves and grounded to continue to go and build games. Final bullet point for this conversation I want to pull in is fresh off the press today from Zach over at Kataku. Zach Zakiwian, who we love over there does great work. It's required reading, I think, as all of this goes on, right? It's time to stop giving Xbox boss Phil Spencer a pass. He talks about all the above stuff and throughout this article,

but then these are three graphs, two graphs. I'm going to pull out for you. In October 2020, shortly after Xbox announced its plans to consume Bethesda, Spencer told Kataku, quote, this deal was not done to take games away from another player base, end quote, and added that Xbox wants, quote, more people to be able to play games, not fewer people to be able to play games. Yet, in March 20203, Redfall Director Harvey Smith said that Microsoft stepped in after buying

Bethesda and canceled the PS5 port of the vampire hunting co-op game. Starfield shipped only on Xbox and PC. And despite a few Xbox games like grounded and Sea of These jumping ship to PlayStation and Switch, future big titles like Indiana Jones won't be multi-platform. but while Spencer was something of an industry darling for over a decade, I think I'm actually, there might have been more context I cut out there. This is jumping later to graph. But while Spencer was something of an indie darling for over a decade,

it's become clear in the last two years or so that he isn't infallible and perhaps deserving of some scrutiny. Under his leadership at Xbox, thousands of people were laid off not long after the company spent billions of dollars to acquire Bethesden and Activision Studios, I'm sorry, an Activision period. Studios have been closed. Games have been canned. DLC has been canceled.

And Xbox's first-party output has continued to be feaster famine. In 2022, the company practically had nothing. In 2023, it had some stuff to show. This year, it's quiet. It's basically so far as he then talks a little bit about there, right? Paris, where are your trust levels at right now with Xbox and Xbox leadership? Here's how I'm going to answer that. After everything that you just said that you just quoted, number one, you did a fantastic job with that.

listening to that how could I as the the guy who loves banjo Cazui wants a banjo kazooey game how could I want Xbox to green light a studio to make Banjo Cazooey at this point because if that game does not sell well enough then you're just telling me that that studio is going to go away so to answer your question there can't be trust right now how could there be. Actions are going to speak a lot louder than words at this point because I think part of the problem has been, from everything that you just quoted, we've heard a lot of words about what their intentions would be, but then this is the end result of those words. So how can I believe the words that you've been telling me over the past few years when you're saying you want to give

these studios this creative freedom? You want them to, again, make a high-fi rush. But then And I-Fi Rush, the best game that you had out last year, critically acclaimed, has won awards, and the studio's gone. 14, 15 months later, whatever the math is on that, that, that's disheartening to see that, that studio is not being protected. Not to mention, they've repeatedly talked about having a presence in Japan, how important Japan is to them. This was your Japan studio. you own the studio and you got rid of them. So it's, yeah, it's very disheartening. So from a trust level, I cannot blame anyone right now that looks at Xbox, that looks at Microsoft and goes,

I can't trust what you're telling me until you actually deliver it and prove it at this point. Does that hold water for you, Gary? I mean, the more I think about it, the more that whole like good guys vibe that they had worked so hard to cultivate is in absolute. absolute ruins just more. You just can't do it anymore. I don't if we can get it back up, but that Aaron Greenberg tweet is so fucking damning now.

I'm amazed that's still up. I mean, the thing is that, but then taking it down becomes the story. Exactly, exactly. I mean, that's, that's now, that is now just revealed as a fucking lie. That's a lie. High-Fi rush was a breakout hit for us

and our players in all key measurements and experts, presumably that includes financial commercial expectations. And now today they said, well, it did not meet those. So were you lying then or are you lying now? Here's the thing, and I'm not at all carrying water from anybody on this team or whatever. Matt Booty, I think, does a lot of gymnastics in his letter to never make it about underperforming. These changes are not a reflection of the creativity and skill, these talented individuals in the risks or the risks they took to try new things, right?

like they're very much trying to talk about doubling down on these franchises, high impact titles I'm not, don't get me wrong, I think it's a damning tweet it's why I brought it up, it's why I put in my case here of like, can you trust anything anybody says? I don't know, you know what I mean? That's the discussion topic here

and I also think it's so crazy. Like I think you, we had a great discussion so far congratulise everybody pat on your back. But Gary, at the very front, right, you were like, Phil's a good guy. Like I know Phil, blah, blah, blah. I know Phil too, right? Like I talk to Phil so often.

I'm not texting him. But you know what I mean? Like a DM in his exchange or this, that the other. Bill's a great guy. He seems like a cool dude. Yada, yada, yada. But to your point that you made, Gary, right? Like, he is also a sweet seat executive, right? Like, that is the deal. And there are many people above him. Yeah, exactly. And so, like, this is one of those deals of, like,

no matter how nice anybody is if your job is to make the business profitable. And this is that, you know, so many people have talked about this, that the line has to go up and it has to go up dramatically, right? this is what we talk about with all these layoffs and all this corporate bullshit of when you get into this level of stock prices and boards of directors and this thing to your point Gary nobody gives a real

flying fuck about the people. You want it to be the best but at no point is anybody going in there and I shouldn't say I don't fucking know what's happening there I doubt at any point when you get to the people who are completely protected and have their golden parachutes and are going to be there until whatever nobody are they having a meeting

and talking about lowering their salaries their bonuses their benefits so that they can just trickle down? And keep the fucking people who made a great game, like, employed. Let them do that again. What about when Epic laid off all of those people? And that was all on the top people. That was all on Tim Sweeney and those guys. They made some shitty decisions, led the company down a road that cost them billions of dollars. Do they suffer? No, they're all still billionaires. Yeah. But it's the working man and woman who actually make the games that suffer. I don't know if you've ever seen the movie. One of my favorite movies is broadcast news.

Oh, yeah. I'm mad as telling him I can take anymore. No, that's network. Fuck, sorry. You were close. They're both about news networks. So they have massive layoffs in that movie. And Jack Nicholson in the movie plays like the big, he's like the nightly news anchor. He's like the big celebrity of the news network, right?

William Hurt, Albert Brooks, Holly Hunter? It's one of the best movies. How am I never heard of this fucking movie? It's incredibly, incredibly good. Anyway, Jack Nicholson has a small role in it as the nightly news anchor. and of course because he's the on air out and talent, the big guy, they pay him a fortune, right? He gets paid millions of dollars.

And he happens to be in the office that day that they're laying everyone off. And he says to like the director of the network, oh man, this is a brutal layoff. And this stuck with me for decades, this quote. And the director of the news network says to Jack Nicholson's character, well, you know, we could make it less brutal by taking a million or two off your salary.

Yeah. And Jack Nicholson just looked at him like, what the fuck did you just say to me? Oh, sorry, that was a bad joke. That was a bad joke. Because you would never actually consider doing that, right? Yeah. And so, it, it, I want to talk about the double fine thing.

Because it's, it's, you know, it's, that's the, can I, can, do you want to get to that? I'd like to hold it to you. I have, I know you're not, you don't have in front of you. I have bullet points of what I want to do or where I want to go. The question I want to ask everybody at the page here, and I know it's a tough one, not because of, well, I guess maybe it could be because of personal reasons, but more of the fact that we're not there. The question I, I would. want you to stew on before I go to ad break is does Phil need to go

because that is something we're seeing the chat. Don't answer yet instead I'll remind everybody of course that we are an 11 person independent operation. We could not make content without your support. That is one of those things about being independent. So not only do you need to support us, you need to support the independent developers you love the people who are out there making it.

So they don't feel they need to sell their gaming company to some giant conglomerate. They get the fuck out. Then they go make those all we're always working call of duty. now we're making this studio, and then they put out one game and it doesn't,

and the whole fucking thing closes. But importantly, support us too, because we're independent, we're doing this for you. The 10 buck is all we're asking for. Just one 10 spot, Alexander Hamilton himself.

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and our own super chat here of does Phil Spencer need to go. But before then again, what you talked about at the very top, Gary, saliently and pointedly are right that this is about the people who've lost their jobs today and that. I want to call up two tweets of that way then. We'll start with the high-fi rush creator from Tango GameWorks, John Johannes, I think I'm pronouncing that last name correctly, who tweeted, well, quote tweets Tango GameWorks, who of course had a very simple statement. Today it was announced that. that Tango GameWorks will close. The dreaded black card with text on it.

Thank you to everyone that explored the worlds we created. Hi-Fi Rush, along with Tango's previous titles, will remain available and playable everywhere they are today. John, again, Hi-Fi Rush creator, quote tweeted that and says, so this is how it ends, dot, dot, dot. Unfortunately, I don't quite have the words, dot, dot, dot, dot. But at least thank you to everyone who supported us. That makes me tear up.

I have been so privileged in my 17 years to talk to game developers. I know how much their creations mean to them to ride what I assume this high was for him of this game surprise drops. Nobody saw it coming. People fucking love it. It is critical darling. It has an audience.

It is going to getting nominated. We were having Game of the Year conversations about it, right? It jumps to PlayStation this year weeks ago, a month ago, two months ago. And then to wake up and find out this is. And maybe he knew ahead of time that it really doesn't fucking matter for the conversation, right? To have this ripped away from you when I assume you're thinking about it's, it's absolutely gutting. The fucking fact that Xbox and Microsoft has all this money of why not let your little game go when you're being told that like Xbox needs little games on Game Pass to keep

people around. The other one, I'll tell you why, because shareholders won't stand for it. The other one to call up is Harvey Smith. He was the Austin, I'm sorry, Arcane Austin studio director. His tweet also short and simple. I just want to say that I love all the people at Arcane Austin so much. Great times, hard times. We went through so much together. Of course, today's news is terrible for all of us. Your talent will lift you up and I will do anything I can to help you. Harvey, they're leading till the very end, obviously, still trying to be out there for his team. But back to the question that is being asked around the internet. Does Phil Spencer need to go? Paris a Lilly. First off, I select you something that Mike Yubbar said. You may want to

check me out. I was going to select me. Do not let me start this conversation. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But to answer your question, because I've been thinking about it this whole time through the break. And I'm going to say, no, Phil Spencer should stay as a CEO of Xbox of Microsoft Gaming. I personally think if he was not there, it could be worse. I really do think that because I think the little that we do know of Phil, he seems to genuinely care about gaming. And I think what we're seeing right now is the ugly, nasty business side of it. And clearly tough decisions are being made.

And I do not agree with them at all. So I would be clear about that. But I think of the previous leadership before he started. I think of if this was non-Matic right now, oh, Xbox probably wouldn't even have a console. They probably would be completely third party at this point. And you probably would see more of a cutthroat mentality. I think again, if a Bobby Codick was running Xbox right now compared to Phil Spencer,

it would be drastically different and even worse than what we're seeing today. So I'm going to lean towards no. I would want him to stay as the leader of Xbox. But I hope and I'm sure they're listening to this feedback. They're hearing what we're saying and what other people are saying. And they can be more. It's the word I'm looking for. They can show more grace towards these studios.

Because again, and I'll just say this and be quiet. This brings it back to high-fi rush. I think this is just the big thing that highlights all of this. Hi-fi rush is supposed to be the point of what of doing all of this. What's the phrase? And I'm probably going to butcher it. Rising tides. Lifts all boats.

All boats, right? High-fi rush should be that little, that little boat that rises because you have a call of duty that brings you in all this money. Right? So that's how I see it to where we're going. to lose innovation in this industry. We're going to lose our top talent in this industry because of things like this. And we're going to get these cookie cutter, play it safe games that doesn't do anything to push this industry forward if we keep down this path. So I hope

that answers it. It does. It inspires the conversation. I do want to bring up, this is a great tweet you just slacked over that has happened right as I guess we were getting ready or in the middle of our show here. This is from, like you said, Mikey Barra. This is the former president of Blizzard Entertainment, VP of Microsoft, right? It's a long one, stick with me. I see a lot of shots at Phil over today's Xbox announcements.

I get it. But knowing him as a human, I know this hurts him as much as anyone else. I can't speak for all the leadership there, but I do know him and I do know what he is likely going through. I'm not trying to defend the decisions. I think we all get ourselves

into situations that are tough and unexpected, parentheses I certainly have. It's part of the job, as is the accountability for the outcomes. But he's a good human, and he cares deeply for the creative process and developers. That's my firsthand experience in working closely with him for eight plus years and knowing him for 24-plus. I 100% understand the anger and confusion, and I feel deeply sorry for those teams impacted today and over the last few months. I didn't agree with every decision he made at Xbox, and I think that was pretty clear.

But I do believe in his product, I'm sorry, his product leadership, and I know how hard these decisions can be. Xbox could have a very bright future. I hope they are able to realize it and all of the teams have an incredible experience together. It's certainly a tough time that needs great clarity into that needs great clarity into what the plan ahead is

and how gamers everywhere can be excited for it. Gary, what's your take on? Does Phil need to go as the chat continues to say that? Just to address that part first, I don't think Phil is having a good day today. I think we know that.

We don't need to think that, especially for the film we know. He's not having nearly as bad a day as the, you know, countless people who have lost their jobs. Sure. But he's not happy today, right? I'm sure he's gussed that it's come to this. To answer you a question, does he need to go? I had a minute because of the commercial to, like, really think about my answer. And the best answer I can give you right now is I have no fucking idea.

Because I try to be conscious of the things that I know and don't know. where I have areas of expertise where I feel like I have standing to comment on something. When it comes to like the corporate responsibility structure within Microsoft, I have no fucking idea how it works. You have to remember Xbox is not a company. It's a division, a relatively small division. Microsoft's core businesses are Windows, Web Services, increasingly AI, stuff like that. Xbox is a tiny piece of it, relatively, right?

And they say, oh, we're going to keep support. in gaming, but they could shut it down tomorrow, Microsoft would be fine. They could just shut it all down tomorrow, and Microsoft would still be a trillion dollar, multi-trillion dollar company. Sure. I don't even know who Phil reports to. Does he report directly to Satcha? Is there someone between them? How much autonomy does he have a CEO? I'll give you. I'm sorry, this is going to annoy you. I'm going to give you, I'm going to, I'm going to give you, I'm going to, you can never annoy me. So I'm going to use it, but I'm going to use a sports analogy. Ah, fuck. As long as it's not soccer.

It is soccer. Fuck. So, Manchester United, even you've heard of them. Of course. Historically, one of the great teams in world football. There's Barcelona, Real Madrid, Bayern Munich. Manchester United is one of those. Liverpool is among that elite group. Everyone on the planet knows who Manchester United is.

And they've achieved incredible things. The last 10 years or so, they've been shit. It's embarrassing what has happened to that club, right? And right now, the current manager, a man named, named Eric Ten Haag is having a terrible run. They're losing games. If I didn't find it so hilarious, I'd feel sorry for Manchester United fans right now.

Because what they're going through is terrible, and that club deserves a lot better. There's a lot of conversation about should the manager be sacked. But around that is a bigger conversation of, well, is it his fault? Manchester United is a club that is so mismanaged at the corporate level where you have these voracious asset-stripping American owners that have saddled the company with all this debt and made all these terrible decisions

and made it almost impossible for, it made the job of the manager almost impossible basis because the structure around him is in such poor shape. Sure. So when things like this happen, you ask the question, whose fault is it? Like, is changing the manager even going to do anything

because they're still going to be working under the same shitty corporate structure that the previous failed managers? have had. So when you look, when you think of like, so the manager is the face, the public face of the club, right? And they take the blame. The managers are off, you know, in the background. You never see. So the owners, you never see them. Right. So the manager of a football club takes the, uh, the, uh, the heat. When things are bad, they take the glory when things are good. But when things are bad, they take all the heat. Phil is the manager of the football club, right? He's the public face of it. But he's not,

but he's not necessarily the person responsible. for the vast corporate structure around and above him. So I simply don't know who's responsible for the decisions that have brought Xbox to this point. I'm sure I'm sure Phil has some autonomy and bears at least some responsibility, perhaps a great deal of responsibility. Does he bear all of it? No, because he's not the top man at Microsoft. So the answer is I just don't know.

I don't have enough information to know whose fault this is. I only know that Phil is the public face of it. And so that's what I think is so difficult for us as commentators and talking heads on the internet and chuckleheads who really just play video games and tell you if it would like him or not, right? Is exactly what you nailed it, Gary. That's a salient point. You could have just said, you know, Jerry Krause, Phil, and of course the 90s

Bulls, but you did some weird soccer thing. That's fine. I would argue that Manchester United is a much more well-known brand than the Chicago Bulls. Michael Jordan, don't worry about him. The idea, though, I think you nail it is, right? Like, you asked a great point earlier, have we ever been part of a layoff, right? Layoffs. And I have not been laid off, but I was at IGN layoffs, right?

And as a great example of IGN layoffs didn't come because my editor-in-chief said, we need to get rid of people. It came because his boss's boss's boss at the top of Zip-Davis was like, we need to eliminate X percent of employees across the entire Zift-Davis structure. So this is where the domino falls and you guys have to do it because you're not delivering on this thing. So you bring up a great point of, hey, somebody there is saying, we need to make this more profitable.

We need to do the thing. We're back to the line. This is where it gets interesting to can you trust Xbox? Can you trust Phil? Should Phil go? Blah, blah, blah, blah. We're lucky enough to have talked to Phil in person on camera, off camera, whatever, right?

I believe when Phil Spencer talks about creativity and games and the art of video games, I believe that's in his heart. I believe he, same thing Mike's saying. right of like that's a real trait of this man. But then you're back to the corporate exec part of it. Do I think when him and Sarah Bond were in that video talking about, hey, we had to close down the fable developer and we learned from that?

Do I think when Phil was on our shows saying, hey, we're going to give Redfall time to develop? Hey, we're going to, do I think he was lying? Do I think he was twirling his mustache when he turned off the camera? Absolutely not. I think what happened is that time went on, things changed. They bought Activision for a whole bunch of fucking money, right? in Blizzard for a whole bunch of fucking money and got caught in a giant thing.

And now they need to make money on that. And I'm sure Microsoft is looking at Xbox going, you got to turn a profit, you got to do this thing. Make cuts, do these things. And back to the point of like, what can Phil do with that? I don't know.

Could he have taken less money, blah, blah, who knows what the actual options were, if that's actually something that can happen or if it only happens in movies and for people like us that are barely making it to begin with that we would say we would do that for our employees, right? But I believe in his heart,

he feels that way. I believe there's a corporate structure on top of him making it impossible to do that as we're seeing today, right? But then it is that idea of like, it is a joke on kind of funny content that Xbox is lining up the dominoes and at some point they're going to kick over the dominoes and it'll be this huge fucking thing. That hasn't happened. And again, back to the article from Kataku with Zach, right? He talks about like, you know, basically Phil having the wheel since 2014. And so it is that thing of like, in terms of as the Xbox audience out here is arguing, saying this and should

we do this or whatever, like Phil Spencer has not. not led Xbox to success. They are not the number one console. You know what I mean? They are not even close. Exactly. And he said that publicly, right? They are taking, I think, they have made educated bets and educated guesses and done all these different things, but it hasn't paid off. And I don't know, because I'm again a moron who just plays video games, how long as a

board you give someone to turn that around and make that vision of reality and da-da-da-da. And I don't know if the board in Microsoft shareholders look at this and go, this is the cost of doing business. Yeah, you closed it and you blinked away these jobs, but now the number goes up a little bit and the stock does whatever. And like I don't, you and me are on the same page. Well, YouTube Paris, but like you said, Gary, right? Like, who the fuck knows? It just seems like one of those of like, I understand and totally get the people who are in

the chat right now going, Phil needs to be fired. I think, I start really quick, Gary. Yeah. Just a, I am no fan of, you know, most CEOs. Hey. Keyword being most. Being most. I think it's impossible.

And, you know, I am not a. fan of corporate structure. I'm not a fan of capitalism and capitalist tendencies that lead to decisions like this. I think it's impossible to pin this on one person. I think systemically, this is a very tough situation for Xbox to be put in from Microsoft, from the leadership, but also at the same time, I feel like strategies that leadership has taken to counteract whatever they have to deal with with their overlords in Microsoft proper. Have you, haven't been the right step. So I think it's a weird, it's both. You know, it's, and I, I don't know what the answer is. I don't think it's just Phil needs to go. I think there needs to be an assessment of

the entire C-suite Xbox team. I want to personally, but the one thing I want to pull from the chat, which wasn't a super chat, but I'm making an exception was Phil is selling snake oil. And here's what I, I don't buy that argument for sure. I think Phil is taking chances in taking creative risks and doing the, he, hi-fi rush happened, right, under his leadership. Xbox game pass and the cloud happened under the, and none of them have paid off. So it's even a different argument of like,

is he evil? No, we don't know, right? Probably not. But it's more the fact of like, are his decisions leading to the success of the company? Back to you, Paris. Yeah. So the part that I wanted to jump in on is when we talk about,

about Phil and just the messaging that we've seen over the past few years, even just the interview we did last year, he talked about he can see it. It's not there. Don't listen to him. Basically action speak louder than words when it comes to that. I think when you see the chat and you see the frustration with a lot of people and I've seen this around the community as well, it's you made these acquisitions.

You said like Phil when they acquired Bethesda famously said that, hey, these Bethesda games are going to live wherever game passes or something to that effect. and some of the things he said more recently about creativity and all that. It seems like, okay, you've dotted the eyes, crossed the T's, you own these companies now. You never gave it enough time for the quote unquote plan to work. And I think that goes back to what Gary's talking about, is that pressure that's coming from above him?

Where is it that clearly he had an idea on how they were going to use these acquisitions, but then we're not seeing that come to fruition. Right. So who is responsible for that? Who's making that decision that we are pivoting now? We obviously know just the way the just tech in general is happening. Everything's having a downturn. So you got to do whatever you need to do to survive, I guess, as a company.

But then at the same time, we're talking about Microsoft. And why is Microsoft making these drastic of a decision? And I keep going back to it and I apologize. it is so disheartening to see a studio like Tango go away when they made a game that we all loved. I don't care how much is sold or not. That's supposed to be the point of game pass, right? Yes, 100%, right?

What is, I don't know what Microsoft's market capitalization is right now, but I know it's, Microsoft is not a company that is struggling. Microsoft is printing money at the moment, right? Microsoft could, if they chose to, instead of having laid all these people off today and closed all these studios, doubled the salaries of everyone that they just laid off. And Microsoft would not,

they barely even notice it. It's fucking money behind, the money you find between the couch cushions for Microsoft. I'm jumping into the earnings report for fiscal year 24 Q3. That's what came up. Yeah, April 25th, 2024. Microsoft Corp announced today the following results for the quarter end in March, blah, blah.

Revenue was $61.9 billion and increased 17%. operating income was $27.6 billion and increased 23%. Net income was $22.9 billion and increased 20%. Deluded earnings per share was $2.94 increased by 20%. Yeah, like I said, Microsoft has probably made enough money. Microsoft, as the entire corporate entity, has probably made enough money since we've been on air

to pay everyone that they laid off for another year. Right? Yeah, probably. The numbers are insane when you get to this level. Now, of course, I'm not naive. They're not going to do that. Of course they're not going to do that. The shareholders would never, ever allow it.

They're not going to stand for that kind of efficiency. The shareholders are obsessed with growth. All they want to do is see the numbers go up. I've said it a million times. Companies like Microsoft, Sony, PlayStation, the big movie studios, Warner Brothers are all publicly held companies who are responsible to shareholders. These people are not patrons of the arts. Their job is not to foster creativity and bring joy and entertainment into the world.

their job is to increase shareholder value. That is all they do. And if they can do that by making great things, they will. If they can do it more efficiently or make more money by shutting things down, they'll do that. They don't, it's such a, it's just an algorithm. I really believe there's studies that point to this. I read the thing in Scientific Americans several years ago, the richer you get, the less able you are to feel empathy, right?

And so I honestly think that the higher you go up to scale, I think being a CEO or the chairman of a company of this size, at some point becomes fundamentally incompatible with being a decent person who cares about other people. Because you have to make decisions like this. You have to ruin hundreds of people's lives, right? And you've got to find a way to be okay with it. I couldn't do it.

I'd flatter myself by saying, I like to think, if you'd be would you want to be the head of Warner, like, would you want to run Warner Brothers? I would say, no, I could never do it. You come to say, well, we've got to lay 500 people off. my first instincts I like to think would like to think would be for me to say well how much are you paying me

me like what how much money are we trying to save here or this is going to save us six million dollars oh okay well how much are you paying me this year in salary and stock options 12 million right yeah cut that in half I'll still be extremely fucking rich and these people won't have to be miserable I'm worried about you know their children's health care but again it's even as I'm saying

I know how ridiculously naive that sounds but those people exist those people exist that's the thing you know, and I mean, I'm digging up skeletons from a long, long, long, long, long time ago, right? But if you want to talk about like the two most influential bosses I've had in the video game side of it, right? I would go to Jeremy Dunham and I would go to Hillary Goldstein, right?

Both people who, Jeremy hired me at IGN and then eventually ran IGN editorial. When he left, Hillary came in and ran IGN editorial, right? Both of them ended up leaving the job because they were getting so much top-down pressure and bullshit to do different things and make us do it that they were like, they were like Michael Clark Duncan in the Green Mile. they were the sin eater taking it on

and they got to a point where I'm just like I can't do this anymore and they go right and then you get somebody else in there and I'm not talking shit about those next few bosses or anything. I'm just saying like that's how it goes and what it is and the break and this goes back to the conversation specifically about film. We'll jump off of it

because there's a million other things to talk about right but the idea of like what is he getting from top down that he is making, that were he saying this one thing a year ago what has shifted in the past year and all the money they've fucking spent on these things to then be like well now you got to do this and you got to do that and you can blah blah blah.

I mean, the Xbox vision. I believe that they had a vision. I believe it hasn't worked. And I believe Microsoft's like, you got to make it fucking work. There have been examples of CEOs and people at the top of companies who have said, I'm not going to take any salary. You know, I'll take $1 salary or whatever so that we can do this. A lot of.

A lot of did it. But like, I mean, here's the most degree. And you know, I don't like him. So this all, some people won't like this. But look at what's happening at Tesla right now. Tens of thousands of people being laid off. And meanwhile, Elon Musk is asking for $56 billion in additional compensation. In what kind of just world is that in any way morally defensible?

It's fucking, it's so deeply offensive and it's so against the way that human civilization should be structured. I don't even know where to start with it. It's making me angry as I'm talking about it right now. Yeah. It's all so deeply fucked up, Greg. Well, I want to move on and have a conversation about what this means for other Xbox studios. There's a whole bunch obviously that are out there, and I think a whole bunch of people that are worried about them, right? I want to read a few different tweets here before we get into the conversation.

KFBF, a kind of funny best friend named Michael tweeted in response to me putting up my tweet. I'm absolutely terrified for Double Fine, my favorite studio. As good as Psychonauts 2 was, it was a few years ago now. High Fire Rush was last year. Of course, an 87 for Psychonauts 2, more than 1,000. 1.7, I'm sorry, 1.4 million copies were sold in 2022. I couldn't find an updated number on that. I'm sorry, I've got to, I've got to respond to P. Sposy in the chat. You just said, that's why you write games like For Spoken, Gary. Go fuck yourself. You have no fucking idea what

you're talking about. If you just did 10 seconds of research before you started spamming the keyboard, you wouldn't need to embarrass yourself. I didn't write a single fucking word in that game, And that has been said publicly to Alana Pierce on her podcast. And many others, I'm trying to distance myself from the game. I'm not played it. I don't know if it's good or bad. But please, honestly, not just peace-sway, but other people, take a minute to educate yourself before you embarrass yourself.

Because you look like a fucking idiot now. You're an idiot. I didn't write a single fucking, but all after earth. If you actually knew how these things are made behind the scenes, all you do when you say things like this is show the world what a fucking idiot you are who won't even take the... This is why so much of the chat today is. shit. Because these fucking armchair warriors

who don't bear any responsibility, who don't actually create things for a living, who don't know how the world or the industry works, and feel like they can shrink the world down to like a quick drive by but you worked on something that wasn't good. You're an idiot. Back to you, Greg. I'm sorry. Also, PC gaming sucks.

We're going to go to Jeff Garnier. He's a founder and CEO of Some Wicked Game. He's also the ex-project leader at Bethesda Studios. He had a tweet that went up and says, definitely puts all other remaining studios on serious notice. I thought that was interesting from somebody who used to work at Bethesda. And then, of course, friend of the show, Jessica Cogswell over at GameSpot tweeted, Ninja Theory, Obsidian, Double Fine, Id, and Machine Games all seem unsafe now,

and we should be absolutely furious about it. Video games are more than live service, annual release titles, and open world behemoths that come out every six years. Innovation and creativity are dying. There is so much to dissect here. but I think I'd go back to Michael and I'd go back to Double Fine because since the purchase of Double Fine,

I was like, oh, that's a really interesting pick. A studio that doesn't make that many games and with all due respect to Double Fine, who we love, games that usually don't blow up. They're not like the biggest thing, right? You're picking this up. We've talked about this. You're going to feed them to make art,

to make a Game Pass game. That's really cool. Barrett Courtney, you are the biggest Double Fine fan in the office. How terrified are you right now? Severely, and I think this goes back to just my entire thought process of this. I understand the realities of running a business, right? Yeah. And sometimes you swing as a business, as an entity, and it doesn't work out,

and you have to shut yourselves down. And I think as an independent studio, that is the harsh reality, but you get to end things on your own terms. And this is like my anger and frustration at capitalization. as a whole of corporate structures is that you can do very well. Let's look at like a high-fi rush last year and their metrics and what they said, you know, Xbox metrics of what high-fi rush did. And you can still get shut down because of other aspects of a corporation.

Like you said, Greg, of the example of, you know, Zip Davis had to make cuts across the board. No matter what like IGN was doing at the time, they just had to make sweeping cuts across the board. and that's the thing that I just abhor is that, you know, you don't get to be in control of, in control of your own destiny and fate when, you know, you're sold to a big corporate structure. Right, you lose that autonomy. You lose that autonomy and it's just,

I, it fucking hurts to say, but I would not be surprised to see double fine, not here in a couple years. I would not be surprised. That's ridiculous. But do you disagree? Do you disagree, Paris? Paris do you disagree no you're you're not but I just I just don't like hearing that I don't like

saying like yeah yeah so that's just and it breaks my fucking heart because again again people are yelling at me because they don't know what the fuck I am because they're coming into this uh with the headline and not really knowing who we are as people like again this is my distrust and distaste for capitalism is that it is capital over workers it is capital over art and just fundamentally as a person that just it's evil and it can just fuck itself. I've said it many times and this is why the entertainment

business is such a difficult business because it tries to do it tries to marry art and commerce and those two things are fundamentally incompatible with one another. You don't create art to make money you create art to create art but as soon as you try to monetize art then it's again you've got two things

that just don't belong together and whenever they come into conflict commerce wins every time. That's what happened today. I want to talk about double fine, though, because that has been the elephant in the room. Yeah, you hate Tim Schaefer. Here's the thing. That's a joke. I don't know why Double Fine wasn't included

in this today, because again, I don't know how much double find costs. What? You're hurting our feelings. You're speaking truth. You're speaking truth. I'm going somewhere. I'm not saying like, oh, they deserve to get the sack as well. No, no, no, no. No one read it like that. It was just a reaction. Oh, God, we were that

close. I've got, obviously, I can understand why people at Double Fine might be very nervous today, right? But I don't know what this again i don't i don't know what i one thing i do know is what i don't know what i what i don't know is i don't know how much double fine costs Microsoft does not does double fine make Microsoft money does it lose the money does it break even i have no idea right i have no idea what basis there would be to keep double fine on or to release them or whatever my suspicion is they're not terribly expensive but they don't make very much money and it's probably

an edge case and they could maybe shut them up but Microsoft knew right that this was not going to go down well. They were going to have a bad day today, that people like you and me would be here today shitting all over them. And rightly so. It's awful what's happening right now. I think they recognize, even if they were considering letting double fine go, I think they recognized that if the face of this story, as it would have been, was Tim Schaefer,

one of the most talented, creative and most beloved people in the gaming industry, getting a pink slip, this would be ten times worse. And I think that's probably... That may be why they dodged that bullet. I think you wait until that's like a last ditch effort if we have to cut. I mean, I think double fine is, you know, has a position with the industry, which is well earned as one of, you know, it's like there's a handful of companies where like, you're so, you're just so happy they exist, right? Because like, who else would do that? Who else would make psychon noise?

Stacking. Who's going to make stacking or cost him? Like, if Tim Schaefer disappeared tomorrow, who would replace him? There isn't anyone. Like, he's in a class of you. He's one of a kind. Yeah. Right.

Genuinely one of the smartest people in games. And one of the nicest. And one of the nicest guys too. And it's rare to find those two things together. I think that double fine would have to be bleeding money for them to be willing to take the hit that would come with that. Because like, you see how pissed off people are today. Add Tim Schaefer to the mix. And like it's put it's, you know, it's pitchforks outside the castle time.

Yeah. I think that that makes sense in terms of being a last ditch ever. But you talk about like hemorrhaging money or whatever. I don't know any of that right, but it's like, what is what is Double Fine working on in their San Francisco office? That's the other, you know what I mean? Like, when I moved here, when you moved here, Gary,

it was San Francisco was a hub for video game development. It sure shit ain't anymore. Nope. Very few people here, right? Well, we got Double Fine, you got Super Giant. You have PlayStation's corporate offices. You have Sanzaru. And like,

Sega, Ubisoft? They're gone. Yeah, Ubisoft. here, but like I guess they do have a San Francisco studio. Still around. Yeah, two cases up in Nevada. Yeah. So it's, but I mean, like, we're like talking about like, I can't imagine what the line

item is for double fine. And again, what line item is for double fine and Tim Schaefer, right? Of like what salary Tim's getting from Xbox or whatever. But I digress. Double fine. Yeah. The one that Jess brings up and obviously we've all talked about thought about and I've seen the chat, Ninja Theory.

Gary, when does Hellblade 2 come out? Very soon. Two fucking weeks from today. What the fuck? Does that sound like a major? Paris, does it feel like a major Xbox first party game is about to drop? It absolutely does not.

And that's part of the problem in that that game, like you said, is two weeks away. And this should be dominating the news. We should be seeing it during the NBA playoffs and WWE and everywhere right now, right? And we're just simply not. I don't know.

It's like, I'm so flabbergasted. On the one hand, I keep thinking, okay, well, it wouldn't surprise me if they did the, you know, PNG of like,

hey, we need a little bit more time. It's going to cook a little bit longer. We're pushing the date. On the other, I just don't understand it. On the heels of this, like you're not marketing this.

I mean, you want to talk about a studio that feels so much like Tango of, hey, we are this, Barry, you brought this up on games daily.

Hey, we are this small studio that found success with this game Hellblade, right? It was on everything. It caught people off guard. It was brilliant. It was beautiful. Yada yada. Now we get acquired by Xbox to make the next one.

And in the lead up to it, what have the headlines been? Tempering expectations. Hey, this is about as long as the last one was. Like, don't expect you're going to get the. And it goes back to my conversation I was just having of like if you're independent and if you're a small studio like the team that made Hellblade was, you would have a more realistic expectation on what the return is of a Hell Blade 2 because you made the first one and you have the control of like, what do we need to limit ourselves at and all that? Microsoft and Xbox kind of marketing Hellblade 2,

at least a few years ago as like a big tent bowl title, what are their expectations? And are they way overestimating what the return actually is? And I feel like we see that time and time again, not just at Xbox at a bunch of different places, square annex being a big one of them, of like, oh yeah, like this didn't succeed, like, how we were thinking. It's like, where is your fucking headspace at then?

Sorry. It's worth calling out that the last headline I saw about Hellblade 2, a game two weeks from release, was that, hey, the Hellblade marketing is going to start soon. That is based on a tweet from Aaron Greenberg that went up on May 3rd, had a great review with the team leading up to our big global and regional marketing plans to support Senua Saga Hellblade 2. It all starts next week as we optimize leading up to launch and beyond. So many fun creative plans to name a few.

Global paid media campaigns, cinema launch program, out-of-home advertising, brand partnerships, special activation from Iceland, and so much more. Excited to share more and celebrates this immersive and visually stunning masterpiece with the team, Ninja Theory. In the meantime, you can wish list, blah, blah, blah, it's like, okay, like we're there. It's now. To be fair, they generally don't start marketing these things until it's very close to release, right? Sure. If the big push hasn't come yet. I agree.

and to not baby with the bathwater out, like, it is not unheard of that two weeks is really when you get going. It's more the fact that I said that in the chat went, what? Like, I don't even, I think there is just like, it is fucking all quiet on the Western front for hype about an awesome looking game.

When you asked me when it's coming out and I was able to say very soon, I only know that because, and again, I'm someone that, you know, I'm, again, we live in a bubble, right? We pay special attention to gaming news more than probably the average. Oh, 100%, right?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. The average casual gamer or whatever. But like, even I found out the other day and said two weeks, Even I went, oh, really? Oh shit. I didn't know that. There's a difference between the, I was sorry,

there's a difference between the giant marketing campaign and just general awareness that the next Ninja Theory game, the game they basically used as like, hey, here's the next gen Xbox. This is what it could look like that we saw it the fucking game. I'm sorry, Paris going. No, no, no. You're nailing it, but I actually want to go back to Tim Schaefer for just a second.

Let's get him. Yeah, if you remember, he was on Xcast and the lead up to Cyclonauts 2, and we got to talk to him. And I even asked him then about being acquired by Xbox and how that's helped double find. And to hear him talk at that moment in time about how it was a good thing because it allows him to just focus on making great games. And it allowed it gave them financial security that they were able to add more bosses into Cyclonauts to, things like that. But in other words, the business corporate side of it, he doesn't have to worry about that as much anymore. He can worry about just making games.

but then here we are now in 2024, and I'll circle this back in Ninja Theory. Gary's about to give me a heart attack. Like, yeah, they could have been on the chopping, chopping wood block or whatever the hell I'm trying to say, because they're a game that isn't going to be super profitable. But the whole point is they shouldn't have to be super profitable because you want to have games like this in your portfolio.

You need a Cyclonauts too in your portfolio. That's going to be highly a. claim that's going to be unique and creative and all of that versus it's got to make X amount of dollars or your studio goes away. So to bring this back into Hellblade too, to your point, Greg, this is the literal first game that we saw for the next generation of Xbox. And here we are now in 2024. It's about to come out within two weeks. We can go to the back and forth of the marketing, but even the fact that they had to temper, you shouldn't have to temper expectations because of the size of the game or the frames per second and all that. A great game should just be a great game.

Again, Hellbleed 2 should be a game that you want in your portfolio. It should not have to be this huge massive success. It should just push the boundaries of immersive audio and the visuals that you're going to see from Unreal 5. That's what we should be talking about when it comes in the, you know, the mental health aspect of what Hellblade's going to bring to the table versus we're spending all our time going, well, it's not going to be able to do this. It's not this long. And where's the marketing for this and that? Not to mention, we're talking about this today.

The timing of this is absolutely horrible. Because, again, Xbox has not had a major release in 2024. So right before your major release, we got to talk about studios going away in consolidation and what does that mean and layout and all these things versus, man, I'm super excited. out about Hell Blake 2. I can't wait for Hellblade 2. Did you see Sun 1 in Unreal 5? She looks amazing. We're not talking about that. Yeah. We're talking about the bad stuff of the industry.

And then when like when is it going to stop? That's the frustrating thing about all of this. Yeah, I mean, it's crazy all over the place on this, right? I think there's a lot of super chats. Obviously, I want to start mixing in and getting to a little bit more, right? But we're having such a great time. But, you know, Daniel writes in with a super chat and goes, Sony was holding the spotlight for Villain of the Week.

and the Xbox is like, nah, bro, hold my beer. But then the other question I like about it, right, is like Sunny Noel says

Superchat, will all this pain and this days be there when Microsoft has a showcase next month or will it be, oh, cool new games? And somebody else was like, oh, man, can we, you know,

are we able to be excited? Like, you're talking about Hellblade on the horizon, sure, but then it is the SGF showcase, right? Which is pretty much a month from today for them, like a little bit in a day?

Like, how do you come out and address that? And that's not even a question to answer. It's more rhetorical. Just like, this is still going to be there in terms of what you did in these games in the chat there will be okay we'll see this one laid off in a couple of blah okay it's a tricky situation for that showcase because I feel like they must be having conversations about should we acknowledge this how do we like is this what what do we do um I was thinking about like does

I don't know like you when Phil's again we all gave Phil a lot of credit when he came on after Redfall and took it on the chair he did the same thing when Halo infinite got delayed this is so egregious that I don't think like that kind of apology tour is, you know, or trying to put a human face on it is going to help whether or not. But like how do you, so if they don't acknowledge it at all in the showcase, they're going to get shit for it, right? It's like, oh, you know, you're just sweeping this on on the carpet. So they, I think they kind of have to address it.

But like, how they do that, I, I'm glad I don't have that job, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. That's really, really tricky. And just a, just a quick note on Hellblade, that's a, that's a trick. tricky one as well. Because that, again, I don't know for sure, but like that does not look like a cheap game to me. That looks like a game that costs a lot of money to make. Sure. Right? It's been in development for what, five years. So you've got all that burn plus, you know,

AAA assets and everything else. But it's, but Hellblade is not, you know, the kind of game that is necessarily going to, going to do, you know, Gears of War, you know, Last of Us type numbers, right? It's just, it's just not that. It's like, it's like an, it's, it's, it's, it's an minus franchise, but potentially with like a AAA budget. And I agree with Paris, but at the end of the day, there is a more diffuse value to having these games in your portfolio, right? And saying, look at this amazing lineup way. We may have lost a little bit of money on this game, but this is what we have to offer

you, you know, if you're coming to the market, looking what console to buy. It's much harder. But that gets very fuzzy, right? The math on that is much more kind of like, oh, but it adds value to the brand. Well, how much value? Give me the numbers. That's what shareholders want to know. Yeah, exactly.

They can tell you how much this game made or lost, because that is all on a spreadsheet. How much that game brings to your value as a brand is impossible to quantify. So that's not going to help you. You said the way Paris brings it up, right? I say the way Phil brings it up, quote, but I also need to have a great selection of games that continue to come that surprise and delight our fans. Wasn't a direct quote from him, right? You can then jump into our own super chats, right? Where Onomis Prime talking about Helblay 2 says, all respect to the Ninja Theory team, I don't think Helblade 2 has mass appeal.

It's a beautiful showcase of tech, but I can't help but feel we'll be back here in a year. Exactly. If you are a team right now not making fucking call of duty, gears of war, Indiana Jones, you got to sit there. And one thing I want for the conversation is just a fact throwing back to you. Bander S and Superchatted to point out, Double Fine was safe today because the cuts were just Bethesda. Zeni probably was given the order to cut labor, no one else. Yes, exactly. You are correct and we blew through that.

But again, what about when the next top-down directive from Microsoft comes to Xbox of, you need to shore up this thing and make these smaller and do the thing? Sorry, Gary, to you. I was going to say, I don't know how safe I'd feel even working on Indiana Jones. You know how much money that last movie lost? Lost a fucking fortune. Yeah. Right?

And it demonstrated that kids don't really give a fuck about Indiana Jones anymore. One of the great heroes in movie history, we all grew up with him. But kids don't care. Not today. Fair enough. And so, and this speaks to a bigger problem. This is what kills me as a creator who, like, is, who tries to do original work rather than just like franchise, franchise,

easy job, go do this for the money, because it has a brand behind it or whatever. You saw, you saw after the, this big Hollywood contraction that happened when all the streamers realized that they weren't making money and, you know, we went through the strike and everything else and we're still, you know, under a cloud, you know, months after that ended. Sure. Is you see every, you see every big studio. And we saw it here today.

When they talk about high-impact titles, they mean franchises. They mean IP, right? They mean recognizable names. Let's do Gears of War 6. Let's do, let's just keep iterating on what people already know. Because when people already know what it is,

there's less risk. You have to educate them less. You have to work. You don't have to work as hard to explain to them. Put a two on it. It sounds better than original. But the problem is it's bought. This is now built on a faulty premise.

Just look at my business. The five big. money losers in Hollywood last year, the five movies that lost their most money, four of them were on major IP. So just being IP, it was, you know, it was DC, it was Marvel, it was Indiana Jones, those movies lost a fucking fortune. So the idea that IP is some kind of safe harbor where you go when you don't want to take risks, that's over.

I don't know, Hollywood and the end-same industry continues, continues to take the wrong lessons from failure and from success every fucking time. Fair enough. I think the one thing we haven't addressed, Paris Lili, is what does this do for Game Pass? Where are you at with Game Pass? Yeah, perfect segue into what I wanted to talk about and pivot off from what it Gary was just talking about, because let's talk about the Game Pass of things. I've obviously famously, Game Pass, the best value in gaming. I've been saying that for years, and I stand by everything that I've said, but I'll even take it back to 2020 when they did. acquired bethesa part of that was your thinking this is how xbox is going to add more value

into that subscription service and you think of that obviously when they just did it with activision call the duty and all that but again it's about the cyclot two cyclot twos the the pentamets the grounded hand tell blades of the word the the smaller games that are taking more of a risk this was supposed to be the delivery service and the platform for the those games and those studios to be able to experiment, to be able to do cool things. It's funny you brought up gear six. Remember at one point, the coalition was allegedly working on some kind of smaller project that they were going to put out and then allegedly that's gone away and we're probably

going to get gear six at this point. It would allow obsidian, obviously, again, to bringing up ground and impeniment. You were going to still have your big studios that make the big AAA games, but then you're going to be able to have a Josh Sawyer branch out and do something. that was very passionate and unique to him. You're going to have Tango again be able to do something like Hi-Fi Rush. You would think of these other studios being able to do something smaller and unique that weren't going to be required to be these big sellers because that was the whole point

of Game Pass. Game Pass allows me as a consumer to subscribe to it. I know I'm going to get the big games from it. But now I can actually go try some of these smaller games, be the first party day and date or even some of the third party things. For sure. And allegedly. Supposedly, we're seeing that Game Pass is not doing that.

And this is why we are where we are. So are we at a point that they need to continue to invest in the Game Pass? Or should they, since they're obviously pivoting and making these business decisions, start to move away from it? Because what I think we're going to see, if they're only going to focus on the quote unquote money making big IPs within Game Pass, then what's the point of Game Pass? We're not getting the variety and the unique titles that you were hoping a subscription. service like that was going to bring us.

So we'll see. A question I think is interesting, unless you want to jump off anymore. No, no, no. Because this is GamePass related. Just came in from Fakit, who, of course, super chat on YouTube and says, is this a PlayStation slash Helldivers 2 situation?

The only thing these companies respond to is impacts on their wallets. Would a mass cancellation, a cancellation, I'm sure, sorry, of GamePass send the right message? I mean, no, because the genie is out of the bottle. All right, we hear you, we hear you. We're reinstating Tango GameWorks, right? We're bringing back, like, that's not what it's going to do. No, this is not like the Helldivers thing where there's a decision, a choice.

Right. Yeah. I mean, this was a decision. This was a choice, right? But they're not going to walk this back. I don't think we've seen lots of walkbacks in recent years, right? One of them being, the most recent one being just this week with Hall Divers, which was his own like 72 hour.

The apology. Here's the JPEG here. You know what? We hear you. We made a decision. We hear you. We're PlayStation. We got you.

And, you know, that was, that was great to see. It was a bad, it was a bad decision and it was the right thing for Sony to reverse it. But I don't think I've ever seen one of these. We're like, okay, we'll hire all these people back. Yeah, no. No. And I don't, and I don't think, like, canceling it. I mean, you don't get wrong.

Boycott and make your voice heard however you want to, protest, peacefully protest however you want to. But like, even then, yeah, like, what is that going to do to them when they get to the next? we can't lay people off. We already lost this many game pat. And like, again, I know this sounds crazy or whatever. Remember, we are such a small group that you listening to this. And I don't even mean like literally kind of funny. Obviously, we're a small group.

But I mean, the amount of video game fans that care this much about their games and creativity, there are so many people in the Xbox who have no fucking idea about this. We always lose, so often lose sight of the fact that people like you, me, Paris, everyone in this office and many of the

I think the great majority of the people that that are watching us and listening to us right now, live in a very small, rarefied bubble of serious enthusiasts who live games, who read the news every day, who stay connected. I guarantee you,

I mean, I'm going to throw out a number, probably 95% of people out there who have an Xbox and play Xbox games have no idea that this happened today. No idea. And we'll never know. Because they don't,

they're not plugged into the news and they're not enthusiast and they haven't built their hobby around. it. And this is why you can then take it back to the top of the food chain at Microsoft where they don't care. And I'm not saying Phil is a person to Mike Sweet to the person we know. Phil cares. Phil's reading this. Phil's bummed out today. But I'm talking about the people at the top of the chain at Microsoft, they want to see the stock go up. They want to see the profit loss and the percentages and all that just. They don't care about the Twitter impressions today and what people are making YouTube videos about or whatever. Like that's the whole problem with all of this. And again, it's going to be fascinating where we are one month. from now. Not only the Xbox

presentation and showcase and how they package it. Is it going to be people in front of the camera or is it going to be a step back like the developer directs are where it's just like there's going to be a cloud over it no matter and then you know Phil Spencer usually on the giant bomb couch at SGF right? Usually making those stops. Is that happening?

Are they doing a media tour on that? Or they trying to keep everybody away? He actually saw he's going to sit down with Ryan McAfree on MadIgian Live. With a live with a live audience by the way. Yeah. Yeah. I mean Again, that has been his MO, right? I talked before about when he came on animal talking.

I thought he was going to cancel. He didn't. He came on, did a live in if you took it on the chin. He did the same thing with Redfall. I do suspect you are going to hear from Phil personally at some point in the near future, answering questions, looking and seeming, and I'm quite sure being, feeling very contrite and unhappy about what has happened. But it's going to be much tougher than navigate because this is a lot.

This is not just, oh, you shipped a bag. bad game or you delayed a game. This is people's lives. Many, many people's lives, livelihoods. And I think that's a great way to pivot to the end of our show here. I wanted the last word to be somebody who makes games and does stuff. So, of course, we're going to go over to Dinga Bacaba. This is a studio and co-creative director at Arcane Leon. Of course, Arcane Leon is still going, working on Blade, had done, dishonor, had done Death Loop. It's Arcade, Austin that it closed. Dinga put up a giant thread that is fucking on point

and awesome and incredibly insightful and it was read entirely on Games Daily and I was just going to do part of it but I'm going to read the whole thing too because again you want to talk about somebody who's summarizing this from a level that we can't obviously not being the people who make games

Gary you make games I shouldn't take a shit I shouldn't occasionally exactly you know what I mean I don't want to offend you or you know look past your career here or whatever right anyways Dinga has a multi-thread that goes like this. This is absolutely terrible. Permission to be a human. To any executive reading this, friendly reminder that video games are an entertainment slash cultural industry. And your business as a corporation is to take care of your artists slash entertainers and help them create value for you.

This is the one that I fucking love. Don't throw us into gold fever gambits. Don't use us as straw men for miscalculations slash blind spots. Don't make our work environments Darwinist jungles. You say, we make you proud when we make a good game. Make us proud when times are tough. We know you can. We've seen it before. For now, great teams are sunsetsing before our eyes again, and it's a fucking gut stab.

Leon is safe, but please be tactful and discerning about all of this and respect affected folks' voice and leave it room to be heard. It's their story to tell, their feelings to express. Inside baseball, but if I read, quote, immersive sim curse, end quote, from the community, especially from a fellow dev, I swear to God, please, let's talk about the real challenges instead of rehashing

or rational anxieties from the past. Even more inside baseball, but with a very, very wide range as a wise and sorely missed man said, quote, please stop. I think that's the best way to put it in terms of everything. I love Diga. I love everything that he said there

because that is spot on and that is coming from someone that is on the developer side of the fence that gets it. He's obviously feeling for his colleagues. As he said, let me be human for a moment. The one thing that I take from everything that he said, which rings true. Yeah.

And Gary, you've already talked about this before with the shareholders and everything. It's like, when are we going to get the announcement instead of record profit, record retention of your people? When are we going to humanize this more and think about the people that are in these positions versus putting them on the street? And now you have all this talent that scrambling, looking for jobs. And it's just, it's, it's all horrible. And that will never happen as long as you're dealing with publicly traded companies that are answerable to shareholders. I know. I know.

I know. I know. It's the reality of it all. And that's what sucks about all this. And then I look at Dingo and I look at Arcane Lion and, you know, clearly they're going to be fine because they're making a Marvel game. So that protects them. But if, let's say. Ask Crystal Dynamics.

That works. I asked the people that made Avengers at Square, if that's true. Like, Marvel stopped being a license to print money a long time ago. No, you just led me into my point. That's what I was going to say. But, you know, until the game comes out, and if the game's not successful, then they're thrown back in the bend with the ruin everybody else. So it's, I just say, and I'm sorry, I'm ranting here,

but I just, the part about all of this that I just hate is we're at a point in this industry where because these games will call them cost so much to make, and they got to get a return of investment and have profits and all this stuff. You can't have a failure anymore. That's what sucks. You can't make a mistake. You can't put out a game that isn't successful,

have lessons learned from it, and bounce back. Because we've seen that so many times, you know, in the past. What's crazy is you can't have a middle of the road success anymore. Yeah. High-Fy rush was not a failure, period. Right. And Paris, that brings me back to the thing that I said at the top.

And if I could pick one thing out of everything I've said today and say, like, please listen to this one thing, it would be what I said at the beginning, which is beyond the initial shock to the system and that gut punch of everyone, all those people losing their jobs, is that this helps create a culture where people, creative people are terrified of failure. Yeah. And you cannot do great work when you are terrified of failure. No. Yes. Ladies and gentlemen, this has been another episode of the Kind of Funny Gamescast each and every day. we talk to you about the biggest topics in games, and sometimes we pivot from our own plans

to make sure we can cover them. If you love that, if you enjoyed this conversation, if you've never been here before, please like, subscribe, share again. Gamescast is daily, Kind of Funny Games, daily, and the stream you're about to get is daily. We are Kind of Funny Games, and we are all about live talk shows.

If you think we did a great job, we would love $10 from you. It's a Kind of Funny membership, either on Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games or YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. You can say, hey, you did a great job and give us the money, In return, you would get all of our shows ad-free.

You'd get the ability to watch us record our afternoon podcast lives and record them. And of course, you would get the daily exclusive show known as Greg Way, both as an MP3 and video. Gary, Paris, I can't thank you enough for making time. Again, this was a 7.30 in the morning slack to both of you. It would be great if you could come and you both dropped everything to be a part of it. It was great.

I just want to say, just as a final parting word from me, to anyone who may be watching today who was directly affected by this who got that notification and they lost their job. I'm so sorry. I've been where you are. It's the worst feeling in the world.

This was not your fault. You got fucked over and I'm genuinely, genuinely heartbroken for you. 100%. Of course, we're all feeling for you. We will continue to cover the video game industry as we go forward.

Right now, if you need something to cleanse your palate, Nick Scarpino is continuing his Nuslock Pokemon Run on Twitch and YouTube. Of course you can get later on YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Until next time, it's been our pleasure to serve you.