Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - IGN's Vince Ingenito (Special Guest) - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 62

Episode Date: March 25, 2016

Special guest Vince Ingenito of IGN joins us to discuss PlayStation VR, video game reviews, fighting Games, and Nicole Tan stops by. (Released to Patreon Supporters on 03.04.16) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys, welcome to episode 62 of The Kind of Funny Gamescast. As always, I'm Tim Gettys. We're only seven away from the only episode that'll ever matter. 69. Join by the coolest dudes in video games, Colin Moriarty, and Greg Miller. Hello. Good to be here with you today. No clapping.

I just felt like clapping for you. You deserve it, Colin. You've been working hard. You deserve a little clap. Thank you. Colin Moriarty. And for the first time. For the first time in a long time.

IGN's own, Vincent Janito. Yay, Vince. Oh, you guys. Your Twitter threw me for a loop today. I was trying to find it to tweet about it. And I'm like, all right. So I remember it was Vincognito.

Right. But then I'm like, I wrote that in and like, wait a minute. No, it's your neat. Yes. There's the neat in there. Yes. You had like three things going on. There's the triple play on words.

Your name, the incognito and the neat all in one. Cool. Yep. You did it. I did it. So that's fun. I explained to, I explained to Sean Finnegan, who's a video producer. It's a punk-ass bitch.

is what he likes hiking. Yeah, Kevin, Kevin agrees. Right, Kevin? You guys remember Sean Fenningham? Of course. Good dude. And I was explaining to him the origin of that,

of that name. I originally had this horrible, horrible Twitter handle that was the, may as well have been a random amalgamation of letters and dashes and things. I vaguely remember that. Yeah, and when I came on, Andrew Goldfarb,

who's now our executive editor of news, it was like, Vince, you got to, you got to do something about that. So I, so I borrowed, from these people made a hate video about me when I wrote a, I did a Mugent's Souls review when I was a freelancer and they hated me.

Because I gave it a low score. So it is like half hour long hate video. And towards the end, I think unironically, I don't think it was meant to be funny. They were like serious and angry. They were like, Vincent Janito, you're not Nito at all. I thought it was maybe the funniest thing I'd ever heard anyone say about me. So I was like, okay, I'm going to take that. I'm running with it.

And I'm going to run with it. I'm going to run with it. So yeah. Take their bullshit. turn it into goals. Let me need it at first to say, thank God we live in the day and age now where you review a game low, you don't get any shit for it.

It's such a better internet. We will get to that. That's going to be topic two of the day. Okay. Ladies and gentlemen, for those that don't know, here is the rigmarole of the kind of funny games cast. Every week we sit around a table,

not this table. Usually it's a different table. Because right now we're in Patreon. Thank you, Patreon. The spaceship of Patreon. We're here. That was our life support system. Oh my God.

Every week we talk about video games and all the things that we love. It's broken up topic by topic Monday through Thursday over at YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. And then on Friday, you get the full episode for free on iTunes and podcast services, all that stuff. But if you want it early, you can go to Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games. Pay a dollar. And you get exclusive episodes. You pay $5.

You get this show early in audio form. You pay $10. You get it in video. And then there's a whole bunch of other stuff on top of that. So that's cool. That's the most detail we've ever. I know. You've got a lot of details. I like that. You're selling these Twitch kids. Oh, yeah. Get sold.

Topic one of the day is PlayStation VR. We've had a lot of false starts talking about this in the last couple days. We recorded a whole React's video. Then the audio was messed up so we couldn't put it up. Right. Then we talked about a little bit throughout the day. We opened up the day one stream here from Pachian on our GDC thing talking about it, but we were exhausted. And it felt weird.

It felt like we were just kind of like trying to not copy exactly what we said the last time, which I don't know. Maybe that's just me. I just think about weird things. I just say the same thing over and over again. We now have Vince and he is obviously the number one VR knowledge base. Obviously. Clearly. Yeah.

I'm the only person. So what do you guys think about this? We got some big news. PlayStation VR. $399 US dollars. Yes. October 2016. Yes.

Cinematic mode was announced. Yes. What's in the box was announced. Yes. A lot of stuff. Not a PlayStation move. No. Not a camera.

Not a camera. Things you need. The internet's mad about this. I'm sure we'll get to that and Colin will tell everyone while they're dumb. And yeah. That's what Colin does. Let's start off. The first thing I want to talk about about PlayStation VR is how surprising to me the reaction to it was.

So until they talked about the price and release date and all that, everyone has been mostly kind of cautiously optimistic about it, at least in my circles. It's always been like, oh, like, you know, maybe it's not going to be quite as powerful as the Oculus or the vibe. but, you know, like, hey, it'll probably be less expensive. It'll maybe be more consumer, you know, facing. And, like, yeah, it seems pretty cool. Everyone's like, you know, kind of low key about it. And then they announced the price and the date.

And everyone's like, it's ridiculous that Sony thinks this idea could possibly work. I'm like, wait a minute, guys. We just spent like the last two years being like, this seems pretty cool. This is interesting. It works pretty well. I hope they succeed with it. And then the moment, and they beat their nearest competitor by $200. And everyone, now everyone's like, this is.

ridiculous. Sony is committing suicide. And I'm like, it just seems like a very sudden shift in the conversation just over an announcement that, quite frankly, was pretty predictable. Now it's real. Now people have something to really talk about. It was kind of like Trump, where it was like, every long time, nobody cares, nobody

cares. And now it's real, and you have to address it and say something about it. It's interesting you say that, I didn't, granted, we talk to each other about it and then the audience, and I feel like our audience has been excited about it, you know what I mean? That's great to hear. And now I feel like it's almost unbridled excitement because now it's like it's not $800.

It is affordable. That's how I feel. And I can't believe there's so much, there's so much, so much of my Twitter feed and just so much of the articles that I'm seeing out there are just like these doom and gloom, what is Sony doing? Articles and I'm just like,

I'm, you saw those Amazon pre-orders though for the UK, right? That it's sold out in like 10 minutes for stock Amazon UK. This is when they, when they announced the price of the Oculus, I was like, interesting, good to know.

All Sony has to do is come in $100 under that. And consumer VR is theirs. Like that's that's that's it. Like the, they already have an installed base of machines that people will know will work with it. And they've got a price that's, once anyone sees VR anything, they're not going to care about the name or like which brand it is or whether it's more advanced than the other one. It's like people are like, oh, but the vibe is the clearly more, more advanced machine.

I'm like, what you're, by even trying to tell average Joe who doesn't know much about VR or who just thinks it's a cool experience when they see it at Jimmy's house or whatever, like you're trying to tell them. oh well this PlayStation VR looks pretty cool to you but let me tell you about this vibe and why it's so much more advanced. You're trying to tell someone who rides a motor scooter to work every day how much better your teleporter is than the next guy's teleporter. They have literally no no basis for comparison. They have no frame of reference to understand why like the vibe is supposedly so much better.

So it's like all that's going to matter once people, the first time someone goes to someone's house and sees it and experiences it, they're going to go how can I get that in my house for the least amount of money? And especially if they already have a PS4 in their living room, the answer is clearly going to be PlayStation VR. I want to go to Jimmy's house. He sounds like he has a lot of close. Jimmy's my dude. Jimmy's my dude. I was the neighborhood Jimmy and my, wow, that's that at all right. Yeah.

I was, I was, I was, I was, I was that guy. But anyway, let's move fast. Okay. Uh, price points great. Um, totally reasonable. People are being babies about move. People are being babies about the camera. Uh, because these are so-called hidden costs, but the hidden costs. as I've said, of running Oculus is a $2,000 computer. So like you are like the price point of a PS4, the camera and the VR unit,

which is all you actually need. You don't need move controllers. Is going to be around $800. And that's way more reasonable than its competitors, no matter how much their devices. No matter how much Vive could be free and PSVR is still more affordable because you still need a great computer to run it.

And so I don't really quite understand the complaints about it. I think the price points appropriate. Thank you, intern. And I find that the my personal take on it is that you know, we talked to Lauren landing about it this morning and he had a lot of interesting insight into the pipeline and to

like the reason that like Sony, because he predicted at E3 and I thought it was quite counterintuitive at the time that Sony would be the most likely to capitalize on VR. And I was like, that seems ridiculous to me because, you know, Facebook has so much more money and so much more loose capital to invest in Oculus. And there's going to be other competitors, but what his point was, and I think it's well taken, is that, well, Facebook doesn't have a retail structure.

Facebook doesn't have 20 years, 20-something years of relationships. Facebook doesn't have the PlayStation Network. Facebook doesn't have, like, all of these different things, so, you know, or their own device, like, or their own box. And that's the most important thing, yeah. Yeah. So, do I think VR is going to succeed wildly at market for anyone in the early years? No. I just think that, you know, Sony's well, you know, well positioned to be the most likely to reap the most rewards. and I will say, as people have pointed out,

that like they're selling it and they're making a profit at $400, which is fucking unbelievable. When I heard that, I was like, they are eating it so hard on this price. I assume they were eating like literally $150 a unit or something like that.

Because that's what somebody does. That's what somebody does. Yeah, they've done it with almost everything. Like PS4 is profitable now. But PS3, they wanted it to be profitable. It wasn't. So like,

the fact that they're selling PSV, at 399 with all of this advanced technology it might not be as powerful as vibe I don't really care like you said like it doesn't matter it's like the whole NES master system Genesis Super Nintendo argument no one cared you know like um so or even like the PS2 Xbox

GameCube argument like clearly no one cared no one cared and believe me as a GameStop employee oh well it was EB games back then but like as an employee like I even tried to tell people about the power difference I was like why would you ever buy Madden on the PS2 if you have an Xbox people like uh yeah

Like these things to the end user 99% of the end users I would even say They don't care So the fact that they're selling PSVR On a system that is proliferating More widely than PS2 When you overlay those charts Life to date

When they are marketing this thing At a price point $200 cheaper than their nearest Most Vocal competitor When they're selling it at a profit So they have a market reason Beyond just beyond just saturation, but they're actually going to make money when they sell them. So it's not one of those things where they're going to be like, well, like, we have this thing. It's a sunken cost for us,

and so we need to sell it. It's like, no, like, we actually, we have sunk costs and we can make them back quickly. We don't have to wait for the back end. We don't have to wait five years to get the software sales to make VR profitable. It's profitable right now. I think that that's pretty substantial stuff. And so, um, I think setting their bar at the appropriate level changes everything for them. You know what I mean? In terms of what's, we always talk about it. I don't want it to become the PlayStation move again, right? And I think that even if you have a weak launch lineup here, but you sell through these units the way that people are talking about buying them

and the way this Amazon thing went overnight, I think that you suddenly have it where, okay, I'm invested in this technology and I'm interested in this technology. I'm going to go. And I think the sunken cost that, you know, people want to argue about here or there, it works this way a little bit for the vibe and Oculus as well. But for PlayStation, right, I think the sunken cost already talks about, you're already almost there.

Well, I already own the system. Sure. And I'm such a hardcore gamer or hardcore PlayStation user, whatever you want to call me, core game or core PlayStation user, that I bought the camera because I wanted a Twitch stream. And I haven't used it for a lot of things. Like, you have these things maybe already in your house.

So suddenly it is like, well, yeah, I literally just need $400 for the unit instead of it being, yeah, my computer, I don't need the full 2,000. I have a rig, but I do need a better graphics card. I do need a better this. Well, I think it's even more streamlined and simpler than that. Let's say you have a computer that runs, that's great.

It's like our tower. We have a great tower that we run the show on. That can run Oculus pretty easily. Oculus, if so, you're like, I'm interested in VR, I have everything I need. I have a PS4 and I have a great rig, right? Even if I need a camera and two PlayStation Move controllers and PSVR, it is still

cheaper than buying an Oculus. And like that's why the arguments about like I just don't even think it's the same audience though. Well, no, it's not the same audience but it doesn't matter. Well, there is going to be like a Venn diagram crossover of those two audiences, but that doesn't matter. I was talking more

with the Vintz's argument about being like, what is Sony thinking with the price and blah blah on the camera bundle? And I'm like, it's not somewhat, I think that that's a separate argument than even bringing the Oculus and the Rift or the vibe into it because it's like the people that are upset about the price

are just, they're just upset about the price for the PlayStation. That's the one they're interested in because they have a PlayStation and they're trying to do this. They're not, they're not the people with the rigs and, you know, trying to do the computer thing.

They want the PlayStation experience. And that $400 is a lot of money for that. Oh, definitely. let's not let me not be misunderstood I'm not saying $400 if you don't have $4.000. You're a peasant. I don't have $4.00. I still don't.

I'm going to start saving now for my PlayStation VR. So like I'm not saying a 400 necessarily. I'm going to buy a thousand of them. Jesus. That Patreon. You thought you were getting an animated series. Fuck you. It's interesting for me because

so you, you're talking about how your circles are all like, my God. and like upset about it, whereas Greg's talking about our circles being way more like, yeah, it was weird for me. We were at the PSVR the press conference and when the price went up, like my first gut reaction was, mm,

and everyone around me standing up clapping. And I'm like, this is fucking weird. It's a weird thing for a journalist to do. We didn't stand up. No, there was one dude that stood up. That's fine. You said everybody. Whatever. His name was Shoehushita.

I don't know. I thought, I mean, the, I, I, I, the price is amazing. Like I stand by that 100%. Like the, the, when they started talking about Oculus and Vive prices,

Colin and I had to have that come to Jesus moment of like, do we not know anything? That's what we talked about on PSI Love You where we're like, could they do it for 249? Could they do it for 299? And then like,

Ox is like 599. And Vives like what, 800 or something like that? And it's like, and we've used them both and they're great. But like, I was like, we did have the thing where I'm like,

I don't think we have any what the fuck we're talking about. Like this PSVR might be $1,000 for all I know. like now, but they were more in line. We actually predicted it on the, on PSI Love You right before. The thing we were like, I was like, best case scenario, 299, probably 399. Worst case scenario, 499.

And, uh, they're right in that sweet spot. Optically, I think it's going to be good because this reminds me of the inverse of the Vita pricing. When, when, so follow me on this one for a minute. When Vita was revealed as NGP, we didn't know anything about it. Everyone was like, oh, what the fuck are they doing? And then like when the, when the Vita came out, so there was, there was not a lot of excitement, except for like with us. Right.

Everyone's like, what is NGP? Who cares? And but when Morpheus was revealed, everyone was like, this is cool. It's very interesting. So there was already an opposite relationship there. When Vita was revealed with its price and stuff, everyone was like, holy shit. And there's a lot of revisionist history out there that everyone forgets. But go back and look at the news from 2011 where I was like, oh my God, this is awesome.

Yeah, so cheap. It's so cheap. It's so awesome. And we finally played it and it's great. And I'll never forget that as long as I'll never forget that as long. as long as I live, it looked like the Vita was going to sell 100 million units the way everyone was talking about. And the end of the world. I did too. Everyone reminds me. Uh, and then, uh, so there was excitement. And then the Vita came out and it just thudded, right? Well, because at the very end, they're like, memory cards. Right. So at PSVR, they've gotten ahead of it. Right. They were like, okay, um, here's everything in the box. Notice there's no camera. You know, notice there's no PlayStation move controller, which you do not need. And then like all, all of these kinds of things. And so, and then everyone, was like lukewarm about it. So like with these with these like inverse relationships with each other. I'm wondering as when it comes out, everyone's going to be pleasantly surprised as opposed to the

the whole Vita thing where everyone had these expectations and then they were destroyed in October of 2011 and November of 2011 when everyone's like, oh, the memory cards suck and these games don't even run online and what the fuck is near and like the 3G doesn't work and all this kind of stuff. And I was like, all right, like so I guess what I'm saying is like I'm kind of trying to pay attention to the way people are doing this now because it is the exact opposite beat for beat of Vita, which has been a commercial failure. So this one feels like I, I feel like both from the press and the audience, the expectation seems to be

set at the appropriate level of like this is tip of the sword stuff and we went and played all these demos right and it's like there was two real games there and the rest were like cool things that maybe it'll be nice and da-da-da-da-da, you know what I mean? Which are the two real ones you played? I think, well I guess

from the event we're talking about Rush of Blood. Untled on, Russia Blood and Eve Valky. And then I think Riggs is in there too. I want to play more rigs but I'm saying like those all like are, you can play them and be like this is a full-fledged game What are you going to talk about? The hype, the super hype, the, the, the killer, to me, the true killer app that's going to sell the, that's going to sell it to like, you know, kind of like the mom and pop who like don't know that this is cool yet.

Yeah. Like the, I guess the Wii sports or the Wii bowling of PlayStation VR is going to be super hypercube. Oh, yeah? 100%. Okay. Is that the like the touch and 64 touch? Yeah. Take the 30s, take the five seconds of fun that is Tetris where you're like, here's a block.

Where do I put it? Yeah. And just, and just blow that. out into like an entire experience. I've played this one before. That's like super just atmospheric and absorbing. So the idea is this. You are, you are situated behind a block

that is traveling forward towards a wall. The wall has a shape in it. And the idea is that this block, you have to rotate it so that the shape that it is, you know, putting forth will fit through that hole. So you start out just a cube. So it's easy. Like, oh, cube, square. But then as, as you pack it.

through walls, they add more pieces onto it. It becomes this complex, ungainly, crazy shape. And you then have to start rotating and manipulating so that it will fit through the differently shaped holes that are being shown in the wall. And you can be looking at it from one to met, or one side, one dimension, one side, and it does still look like a cube.

And then you rotate and it turns out it's super long. Yeah. It's got these like tendrils you didn't know about it. Exactly. And the whole idea is that as the block gets bigger, it becomes harder and harder to see the wall. And it also becomes harder and harder since you're only looking at one side of it at a time

to know what it is in three dimensions. So what you start doing is you start looking around the block. You start looking past the, you rotate the block a little bit, then you look past it so you can see the shape of the wall, and then you have to duck back behind the block and start manipulating it again to try to line it up. And it's just take that fun of Tetris

where you're like, I've got to fit this peg into this hole. And then it just makes that this like rewarding, fast loop that's super atmospheric and like they every time you every time you put you get the peg in the hole the right way like it's just like there's this subtle magic you know it's like that Nintendo

old Nintendo design magic of making a simple thing like like breaking a block into like four pieces like that sound effect and the way it feels they just nail that so hard that every time you you figure it out and get past the next wall you feel like invigorated and kind of like pumped up it's a it's a mixture of sound design and the way it looks

and the way it feels in VR It's also super smart because they they modeled. It's played on the PlayStation controller, but they actually model the Dual Shock 4 in like a Tron neon like outlined version in the game and the PlayStation camera tracks it. You're not doing motion controls. It's all traditional controls.

But even if you happen to move it around, like the game tracks that. So when you're looking in to, when you're in this world, you're also seeing what you're holding in that world, which kind of like cements it. Like I am floating through space with this geological,

with these geometrical shapes, rather. It sounds hard to wrap your head around. But when you play it, it's awesome. When you play it, it's like you get it instantly and you just feel like you're out in space playing Tetris. And like Tetris, VR Tetris in space, I cannot imagine the gamer disengaged enough or casual enough. The person who dislikes games enough to not.

Because Tetris, I don't know what you guys remember, but like, my aunt played Tetris, my grandmother played Tetris. Kevin's mom. My mom plays that. Exactly. That's what I'm saying. So it's like when like my mom plays that for the first time, that's it. She's never come back to reality. Sure.

So we're going to put it on her for res. And I think that's the one, the biggest selling point that like all this, the price, if you have the money and you experience that clicking moment, the money almost doesn't even matter. It's just like this is cool and worth it. Then the question of how many of those clicking experiences are going to come. And it's cool that, you know, we're talking about the games that we see are real games. But then there's all these other things that are experiences. And I don't think that's bad.

I think that we need a lot of those experiences. I think that PlayStation, it's definitely the more mainstream and accessible way to access them. Because if you're going to get one of the PC ones, you're going to be able to find all the weird indie things that the kids at home are making these experiences and they're crazy. You can do that nowadays with just PC anything, right? PCs have everything available.

PlayStation's going to hone in on. Here are finely tuned, fully, you know, nicely like just polished experiences. And I think that that's cool. and even walking around the demo room we were yesterday. Was it yesterday? Two days ago. GDC's a blur.

There's a whole bunch of different things. And you look at one thing, you're a Siegel. You look at one thing, you're a Golem. There's all these different stuff that's just like, man, that's really crazy. I mean, these are cool, but like, I do disagree that, like, it's cool to have those as supplemental things. But for VR to, for VR to succeed in the game space, it is going to need E-Valky-Valky-type games. It is going to need lots of those. It's going to need a lot of ace combat.

type games. It might. It won't. Well, it might. I mean, it depends on, like, the one question I have with this is, what is the metric of success in terms of Sony really trying to subsidize big games and really trying to use its first

parties to get games? Because as we were talking about yesterday with Gareth from Gorilla Cambridge, Sony has one of their studios working on a VR game. So to me, it's like Sony, you know, Japan's studio is working on games too, but they're working on a shit ton of things. They're like the Sony Santa Monica over there where they have their hands in a lot of different

pies, a lot of different pies, a lot of different cookies jars. But like as far as like one studio working on one game, like, Gorilla Cambridge is the only one. And I'm like, so are you, do you guys have like a pot of money that you want to give to second parties or third parties? Because you are like, they must

know that the answer, the salvation of this is going to be getting those big games and they're going to have to pay for them. And since PSVR is profitable and since their studio, are certainly inclined not to make these games because I think they have the choice. I wonder if they're going to be stuck

in some sort of like kind of phantom zone where they're like well, the thing works and it's great, but it's the same thing with Vita, but it's going to be even more pronounced because this is such a, as Lauren was saying this morning, this is such a paradigm shifting, game-changing kind of way of playing games, but I will reiterate too, as the point I've made many times, is that like, like, who

I hope you get to a place in 10 years where it's like who gives a fuck about the games on VR? Like, look at all of the cool shit that it can do. I mean, that's kind of what I'm saying even now with the experiences and stuff. I think that is the selling point. The games are the extra. Like, oh, the game actually

works and the game's cool. There is real games on this. That's all extra. It's the experience stuff that is really going to sell it. It's going to keep you engaged. It's what Lauren was talking about today. There's going to be different experiences to bop around. I think, this is when I'm back to my mom, I'm talking about expectations. I don't

think you can be an informed consumer interested in PlayStation VR right now and be looking at it and expecting that you are going to get by the, there's 50 games coming by the end of the year, right? October to the end of the year for this game. You can't expect that of those 25 of them are going to be 15 hour experiences

that I put this on. No, it's going to be I'm going to play, rotate the cube for a while, then I'm going to go play a couple of E Valcary things. Then I'm going to go see this Gary the Gall, fuck around that, jump out. But the other thing that thing is really cool is that there was one game, I don't remember what it was called, but it was that social the social one that she was talking about. We went over there and you're like, it's like the chat room where you're talking and throwing snowballs and what's cool about that is you just get these like kind of just like me-esque avatars that are in this 3D world that you're just walking around and then you can talk to people from all around the world, but you're experiencing them in a 3D space.

So it feels like they're in the room with you. And it's like that's the level of VR ship. Is that a game? No. Who cares? It doesn't really. It doesn't really matter. It's just you can, it's like Ventrillo or any of those, the VOIP stuff.

But instead of talking to your friends on a phone or whatever or on the chat room, you can talk. talk to them and it's 3D audio so when they move around you, you get lost in the actual virtual reality. And I think it's, those experiences are what are really going to push this thing. And it's like, oh, I take that and that's lame to people like us. Like, we don't really care about that. But how do you apply that into what games can be? Sure.

Or what other experiences can be and just kind of go from there. Because it's, I'm in such a weird place where this is the move. This is not going to do anything that the move didn't. Like, it's going to have a couple games. And when it works, it works awesome. then there's everything else. But this is my whole thing. I think move in Vita,

we've been talking about a lot compared to PlayStation VR, but I feel like it's been shifted, right? If we're, I don't know, I'm putting my triangle, but it's been shifted in terms of,

there, which I appreciate. They're in front of the messaging. They're in front of the messaging this time. It is not the Vita is coming out and you're getting all these AAA console games on the go, and it's not move where this is going to,

this changes everything. Everything. You know, everything. Remember those? I don't think, I don't think, oh,

at E3 one year, they had all these Kevin Butler things and it was this changes everything but then the the T was like replaced with it. Reddit literally was just every hang. It's, I think they're in front of the messaging of I don't think you're buying it expecting those experience. You're not buying it expecting move games are going to be one for one sword fighting. You're not buying and expecting you're going to be playing uncharted and infamous and God

of War all in your Vita. You're buying this understanding that you are buying into the building block of what, as Shue always tells us when we talk to in the next 20 years of PlayStation. And this is wave one. And something that I also think that people are underestimating about VR in general. And like one of the reasons why I kind of disagree with you a little bit, Tim, is on this is because because the idea of VR has been this vaunted pie in the sky idea in like science fiction and our kind of subconscious desires of what technology can be for so long. It seems like it's so out there that we're like, yeah, this is a total game changer and it's going to shift everything. And so everything needs to be built from the ground up for it.

And what's that look like? Well, it looks like experiences, right? But what people are kind of forgetting, I think, is that for a very large and viable number of genres, VR can literally just be a third axis of control. Like anything where you're sitting in a cockpit of anything, that level of abstraction between what you're seeing and what you're doing already exists. So like, for instance, like I played a demo of Drive Club retrofitted to work with the PlayStation VR. I usually never play racing games in the cockpit mode. I lose too much situational awareness. I play Zoomed out because that's just what I do.

Here, in Drive Club on PlayStation VR, the demo that they showed me, I was in the cockpit mode and I felt like I was more aware. And did it change the way I played the game? No, it didn't. It's an existing, it's literally a game that exists already. And they just supported camera looking with the PlayStation VR. And now I'm driving. And then when I'm in the middle of a turn and I'm instinctively thinking,

thinking to myself, how much deeper or longer does this turn get? I can literally just do this while steering and no, and not only is that immersive, but that actually makes my gameplay experience better. And so,

and that's an existing model, right? Driving games are things that exist and that we make and that sell. And polyphony is doing the same thing. Exactly, with Grant Tourism of Sport. So I guess my point is, there's other things. Like Riggs is a great example of like a mech combat game. Again, that abstraction already exists. I'm a guy inside of a mech. So where I aim to shoot and where I, you know, how I move is a

different thing from where I look, except in Riggs, it's not. They actually do do aiming by sight, which I don't think is a good idea. But Hawkin, when they were over here talking about it, there's a mode they use and they think professional players are professional, you know what I mean, people who are super interior use where moving your head turns to everything. Oh, good. And I was like that, that was the most hard thing for me to wrap my head around playing it. I would have loved him. And this is the thing. These are these kinds of games, like a third person team based combat game that just so they make the concession you're

in the mech so that you can have the whole I'm looking I'm the pilot and I'm looking somewhere while I'm shooting like that's another thing that already exists you know flight games like Ace Combat or E. Valcary those are genres that already exists we already have like I guess the answer to the question

is how are we going to get Sony or any other company to want to pay for making a game for the PlayStation VR there's genres they're already making that will be demonstrably, demonstrably better to play in VR, and I think that's going to carry a lot of it. Well, there's

I think the bigger thing about, you know, because you're talking about like Move, move was not a failure for Sony commercially because they made money on it, but it is this thing that didn't proliferate, but what we're losing sight of and it's one of the things we talked about, I think this is the most important piece, is that when we talk about the Wii or the PlayStation move, and if you talk to Sony,

they might claim that PlayStation move was, you know, in development concurrent to the Wii, and they didn't really know them. I don't know if that's true or not, but... I bet it was. Richard Marks don't lie. The move was like a, a much better device than the Wii moat and it didn't matter because you know it did much more because the waggle or like that kind of motion control had only gaming applications and i want to reiterate that VR if we're keeping our mind is very small and very limited if we look at this as being nothing more than the test bed for what VR can really do which has nothing to do with games and it doesn't

happen very often or really almost ever where video games are the proof that something works you know i I mean, when the personal computer came out, it wasn't until really years later, Apple 1, Apple 2, when Apple 2 really started getting going. Games were one of the things that helped prove it, but it was really like more, you know, office things. Like spreadsheets were really big and all those kinds of things. The biggest selling software in the mid the late 70s and into the 80s, when IBM PC came out, was like, look what you can do in the office. It was like the games were like an ancillary kind of thing. You know, even something like the original video game tennis for two in 1959 on an oscilloscope. Well, oscilloscopes existed as radar devices and all these kinds of things.

But when we look at VR, it's like the first way we're going to get it. out there is with games. It's just the proof of concept. So Waggle has no use outside of video games, but VR has every use for everything you can possibly imagine. And I want people to think bigger about, not necessarily with PSVR, Oculus, but in 20 or 30 years, what can we do when I was talking to someone about

what if you had a 360 degree really complex camera at your parents' house? And your mom calls you up, right? And you put on the headset and you're catching up with the family, and you're there. And by the way, those 360. through-ge cameras are going to be cheaper, faster than you think. Yeah, of course, just like every other piece of technology. On everything that we know right now, like, those will be

affordable, those will be affordable, I think, for the average consumer in the next two or three years. I just think that, like, we have to look at things as bigger and more vast in games. I think the future, the 20 years of the next 20 years, PlayStation, might have little to do with games in the VR space compared to, like, all the practical applications of like Lauren was saying, like,

what if you can go to a concert? Right. What if you could, like, I've been saying, like, what if NASA when they go to Mars or SpaceX goes to Mars and they're like, we're bringing all this complicated shit with us, so you put on your VR headset and just be there. You know, like, that's way cooler than any video game because it's like, like that. Like, so like I'm excited about that.

And the other thing about like the AAA, there's going to be a dearth of AAA games available. There's no doubt about that. The solution, and I'm interested in this, and I'm interested in how this might work with the processing power of the PS4 and also the work full of the studios is, what if phone Far Cry 5 came out? They were like, here's the $60 game.

It runs on your PS4 and your Xbox one. It really only matters with PS4 for PSVR. And you can play it as is. and you can download this $20 or $40 attachment to it. And like this will let it run on VR. Like in other words, like, give the studios a way to like make a little bit of extra scratch by, because it's way more complicated. The game has to run it 120 frames a second.

It has to like be rendered twice. It has to be like things that are like really hard to do. Give them like a little bit of like financial incentive to be like, can we take the $60 game and make it a $100 game and run it on VR? And would that be worth it to people? I don't know. I just, I'm just trying to figure out. like in kind of brainstorm solutions to the AAA problem because there will be a

AAA problem if the game will only run on VR but what if like it could run on everything outside of this theater mode which I think is like not the answer like what if you could just download the next kill zone and it's like well it's $60 on PS4 and it's a hundred dollars on PSVR and it's and it seems like everybody who's talked to us about that I said it can't do that as it is because you'd have to you'd have to like yeah you do you have to do things in 3d yeah and the huds and all that kind of stuff like can exist and a flat plane and all that kind of stuff. That's what I'm saying.

It would basically be like developing the game twice. But like maybe the core of the game's already there. So it only cost them 25% as much. And they make their money back. I'm just trying to brainstorm solutions that would. I feel like we get in. That's where we get into like Bioshocks move integration though, right? Where it's like, all right, cool.

It's not the whole game. It's this gallery or whatever. Which could be cool as we talk. You know what I mean? As we're literally talking, we talked to Mike Bithla today who's putting out volume CODA, which is a free add on to it. And there you go. You know what I mean?

Like this is him taking an existing game, adding in a bonus to do it. I'm killing Vince. Vince is dying. Dude, VR is so exciting. It is so exciting. So is motion gaming. Oh my God.

It's not even on the same. I mean, I'm not saying that they're the same thing, but I'm saying the way people are talking about this is literally the exact same way people are talking about motion gaming. It's going to be so cool when this happens. It's going to be so cool when that happens. Yeah, it will.

It's not going to happen. Well, what was the, like, I mean, maybe I'm just not remembering. I was in college and it was a very fuzzy time for me. But when we came out, what was anyone talking about outside of game? that motion control can do. No, but I mean, I'm not even talking about outside gaming.

I'm even talking about just gaming. No, I know, but that's what I'm saying is like that's, that's the fundamental core is like, big minds and I'm and none of which are like at this table because you need like a Lauren landing type mind to really wrap your head around this or a cliffy B or like some of that like sees, you know, like an understand shit that we just don't understand a Steve Gainer. Yeah. Someone like that. But like when you see a fucking Wii mode, it's like this is what it does.

You do that and it didn't even live up to what's promise of like, you know, one-to-one sort of fighting or I think. like that, but when you see the VR unit, my mind leaves games almost immediately. And I think that that's the, that's the excite. That's, it's, I think there is always. Like, like, I keep talking about the clicking moment. I feel like with the motion control, when it worked, when it, the one out of five times it worked, it's like, oh shit. I'm actually doing this.

I can pull an arrow back and do this thing. That's crazy. And then you're like, oh, now I'm out of the field of how they want me to play, so it's fucked. And VR, I've had that exact same experience every single time. When it works, it's fucking magical. awesome. And that's why I'm in the weirdest place for this where it's like, I want this thing. Like I

do. I think I'm going to buy it. I'm still on the fence, but it's like I want to want it and I want it to be good. But it's like it's not this crazy thing that's like all this stuff you're talking about it's going to be it's cool when this happens and this happens. Like man, we're so far from that. It sucks that like the great minds. They need to be on it right now doing the shit because it's not worth the 400.

Some more. They're going to need the proof of concept and it's going to take boldness and it's going to take risk taking and all the things that market capitalism encourages and then you know, either ruins you or makes you. I just think that VR is permanent. It's not going anywhere. In 50 years, it's going to be ubiquitous.

I think that AR is another thing. I mean, augmented reality might even be more important depending on how people play with it and what they do with it in terms of like having your own heads up display and stuff like that. Like as you're walking around, a very Google glass kind of thing, whatever. So I don't know.

I just see this is like so exciting because this is, this is a technological branch that like as Vince was saying is finally being realized. And people have been talking about VR for decades and been messing around with it for decades and in sci-fi for almost 100 years. So it's it's amazing. Like it's just so funny. Like we live in an age where like we, you know, Isaac Asimov and all these guys

talking about, you know, or Ray Bradbury writing about, you know, or whoever writing about rogue AI. And now like Bill Gates and all, you know, all these great minds are being like, rogue AI is like probably gonna happen you know like and it's probably and now like and you know

Orson Scott Card and all these guys are writing about virtual reality basically and all these guys things and now it's like now it's here it's just an amazing thing no one was

Waggle is is just a gimmick this isn't a gimmick like this is but I mean it wasn't a gimmick until it was no but to me here's what I disagree with you on that though Tim is that to me

the second I saw the Wii mode it was a gimmick and as soon as I saw that you could not put a traditional designed game on that controller because it didn't have enough buttons and other functions. I was like, I don't care about this. I'm not interested. All this can ever be is, is this gimmicky thing. And if that gimmicky thing is strong enough to hinge an entire game on, then great, I guess that'll be one good game. And if it's not, well, then this whole thing is

going to fall apart. The thing, the strength to me that has been undersold in the way that VR is put forth to the public, because you're right, so much of it to convince the average, the average person out there who's not necessarily a huge gamer, you do need those experiences, right? So there's been a focus on that. So I think this next point that I'm about to make gets lost a little bit.

But it's kind of similar to the point I made before is that VR does not replace a controller. VR is, I hold a controller in my hand, a traditional real controller that is designed to adhere to the, to the currently running design paradigms of video games.

and on top of this, enhancing this, is an extra degree of freedom, control, and interaction. To me, it's less like introducing waggle and having waggle replace analog sticks or having waggle replace all these buttons, which is what Nintendo tried to do with the Wii mode. And it's more like the first time I used an analog stick and went, this changes, this adds a whole other act.

When I, the first time I messed around with the N64 controller, I was like, I can do things. I materially could not do before. Like I can run. I can have Mario move in little tiptoes. I can have a move at like a, a walk, a jaunt, a full run, and it's all with a subtlety of my thumb. Like to me, growing up, I was like, that blew my mind wide open in the Toys R Us the

first time that I experienced that. And that's what I had when I played Hawken, which now isn't really, you know, like on Oculus, you know, the mech combat game. when I played Hawken and I could have my guns trained on a guy on my left I could be strafing right and I could also be looking over my left shoulder

to see if there was anyone on my flank I was like I never want to play a game like this where I can't do that ever again just like I felt the first time I could move Mario with that fine degree of control I was like I never want to play a game where I can't move my character with that final level of control again

So I actually think for traditional gaming, for traditional gaming, as long as it's in a genre that, like I said before, works properly with it, or as long as they can find ways to adapt other genres like third person shooters and first person shooters properly to that concept, it doesn't have to replace it or become a gimmick. It literally just becomes another layer on top of it that makes it more nuanced in the same way that adding analog controls made video game design and the experience of playing video games more nuanced over digital ones. It's going to be very well put. Yeah. I mean, to me, I still go back to it. It's not just waggle. It's the pointing thing to the exact same thing and people just didn't like it. So I just think, you know, it's just going to take vision. And I think that I think it's already obvious where this is going. Like it's, it's going to be a slow burn because it is one of those things where you can't, you can't, we always talk about November and December 2006, we're so seminal for we because that's when everyone put it in their bags and brought it home. from college or brought it home to their parents and show it and like, hey, everyone look and grandma can play wee bowling and everyone can see. This is going to be even more complicated because you can put your PS4 and your VR on your bag and bring it home, but then only one person can see and you look like a doofist when you're

playing it. But so it's going to be the slow burn, but I'm telling you this is going to be a wildfire. Like, like, it might not be in five years. It might not even be in 10 years, but this isn't going anywhere. And like, but neither's, whatever. It doesn't matter. The motion's not going anywhere either. You need that to have that immersive experience or everything is Tron-like controllers in

front of you because they're playing in a controller in the VR world. I remember everyone's talking about I can't wait for a first person shooter when you can actually you move the analog and you're using the pointer to shoot and it is the motion controls for that and it's like then we got red steel. We sure did. It was almost cool. But we sure didn't get red steel didn't we? So I don't know.

We'll see how that all goes. Topic two. It's impossible to review video games. I'm glad it's not actually impossible because I literally not have a job. Yeah. So you review games. And recently, last week, as of the time this post, you posted a review for the division. Yes.

And you're getting a lot of opinions about your reviews of your review, if you will. Yes. How do you feel about that? I think it's great. You know, like, honestly, like, I, again, forgive me if I say things like yesterday or this morning when you guys are, you know, watching this, it'll be, or listening to it, it'll be, you know, last week. but you know I posted the final scored version of my review for the division last night and um was a six I gave it a six point seven

which is an entirely solid decent score oh my word why you're turning to a southern gentleman again sweet tea I would like to remind my southern my southern female friend here and of those of you at home that on the IGN review scale 6.7. 6 is the okay what we call the okay range so at 6.7 is okay

very closely approaching what I would call good and so that's the first thing but the second thing is like I just want to say I want to make it clear I don't want to come out and sound like oh woe is me

I have to deal with all this punishment you want to know what at least on Twitter the overwhelming majority of my admittedly very small following everybody followments has been I totally

disagree with your score, but you know what? That's cool, man. Like, you made your points. And like, to me, that just, that makes me happy. I want games to be a place and critique to be a place where different points of view can exist and where people passionately, you know, go. And there can be.

I was very proud last night. I, I like the division a lot. And so I'm on the subreddit. And I jumped into the subreddit last night and they had it up there. And I went in there. And a lot of people were like, man, I don't agree with it. but he makes a lot of good points. And he is calling out this issue.

Sounds more like, but it wasn't like, there was only one at the very bottom with like no upvotes that was like, typical idea. They did not get paid enough for this. And then some guys like, that's not cool.

And then they argued about that. Yeah, no, that was the talk this morning too. It was, you know, how a surprising number of people on that Reddit,

on that Reddit thread actually were willing to advocate, you know, kind of for us and say, hey, look, this looks like a legitimate take on the game. But like, whatever, I don't want to self-congratulate

about whatever the division. But you're great. you know, damn, ah, thank you. But yeah, to what you're asking to,

I'm like, yeah, it is, it is hard, um, because we get so attached, and I'm part of this, right?

Like, we get so attached to these pieces of art and these pieces of entertainment. And I've certainly been there and still there. I'm still attached to them. You know, when people,

when people talk shit on Evolve, I still get a little bit bristly because I love that game, you know, I gave it a nine and a lot of people, and a lot of people, and actually recently now because of this review, like, how could you give Evolve?

9 and the division of 6.7. And when they start talking shit about Evolve, like, I don't, I don't like, you know, want to fight a dude or anything, but like, I can feel it in my, I can feel it. Like, there's something personal about that to me because I really identified with and loved that game. I thought it was a well-designed,

awesome experience that really spoke to me. And like, so when people want to be like, it's, you know, when the people hate on it, I feel that in my heart. Like, I'm like, no, it's not that you're denying a part of who I am. So, like, it's not that I'm blind to it. I totally understand why when people read a review that is not in line with how they feel, we just

identify with the things that we love, even more so in games than other mediums. And maybe a little bit, I'll admit, even for myself, maybe a little bit too much. So when you know you're putting forth a critique about something that a lot of people are, they hold dear and they're going to care about, and they're probably already making great memories in the case of the division, they're already making great memories, you know, going on missions with their friends and having a a time, like, people are going to feel a little bit slighted, and people are going to feel like, the best people of those will not attack you, right? But even though they don't attack you, they will go, hey, it's too bad that, for instance, this is one thing I read a couple

times in my, in my Twitter comments. People go, hey, respectfully, disagree with your review, but, you know, good job. This is, and a few people said, this is why I really think that there should be committee reviews because you know having one person review a game means that there's other perspectives that aren't going to get seen and they didn't quite word it that way but I was like this is how much we want

to make sure that people with our tastes also have a voice like it is a point to to people who care about the division to some people who care about the division which by the way you shouldn't be worried about because the game is Ubisoft sold kind of well it's all right kind of well Ubisoft's most successful

new franchise I think ever in terms of sales. So don't worry. The division's not going anywhere regardless of what anyone has to say about it, let alone me. But there's this feeling where you're like, hey,

to make sure that this is commercially viable, to make sure this product that I care about and believe in gets the do that it's worth someone at a high, you know, with a big sounding board needs to say what all of us feel, which is that the game is a lot of fun and the game is great.

So I didn't say that, right? and they're willing to respect that but they still hold on to the idea of you're kind of wrong and someone who's right needs to say it and that's always hard to kind of you know to kind of dole out

because even just from a reviews process like how do you how do you do that that was always the thing when we read IG and people want it and it's like well no we can't do review and you can't dedicate three people to one game especially like something

with the division that's so huge but always cracks me about the committee argument is like oh that's a great idea and you live in that world literally every site in the world is reviewing this. If you need a number, if you don't need a number, yeah, there's that at IGN itself. They've started a division podcast you could listen to

and get all those voices out and see all that. And to double back to your Evolve comparison, I saw people talking about that in the red thread too, right? That's also one of those things that's so hard to separate the wheat from the shaft, right, of like, you reviewed Evolve as Evolve is or was at launch. And this is what it, you know what I mean? And you want to get down into the nitty gritty of mechanics and how team play would exist and this. And when you run with a squad and how everybody.

And like that's all well and good. And Evolve had awesome systems and all these great things. And then it came out and it didn't find an audience and it fell away. Right. That's not needs. That doesn't need to be reflected in your review. Your review wasn't reviewing the experience and reaction and, you know, the lifespan of evolve. You were reviewing the mechanics and what it was and what it stands for.

In the same way with the division. You can't sit there and be like, yeah, okay, missions are repetitive and da-da-da-da. But if you have a great thing with three friends going on. Sure, yeah. Because everything is better with three good friends, right? You know, at that point, you know, like a horrible, and I'm not saying the division is akin to a horrible movie. You know, but, you know, a bad movie is, it can be a lot of fun if you have three friends along for the ride. That, you know, that doesn't necessarily make it a, you know, a better movie.

A bump a few stars into the review. Right, right. You know, you can't really, you can't really look it that way. Even though it's arguable that there are some movies that are better as a, you know, a social experience. Just like there's some music that's better as a social experience, but like as a critic listening to it or experiencing it in a vacuum, you just

can't project what that experience might be like or how might be, you know, affected. I think the one thing, having reviewed, I guess, a couple hundred games, I would say, is that, is that you know, people don't, when people criticize criticism,

I don't think, or critics, they don't, they don't take into account how difficult it is to criticize something. And I don't mean like literally like it's so hard to say this sucks or so. But what I'm saying is like getting into the mind in the way of being a critic and being totally like and accepting the subjectivity of criticism. And there games have objective facts, but not many. And like it runs on this engine. It's on this console.

It costs this much. Like those are basically the facts. Everything else. I can think this game controls like fucking magic. And someone else can be like this game is trash. And no one's right. I don't think people take that into account about like. how difficult it is to put yourself out there and do those kinds of things.

And I remember that feeling, that's almost sinking feeling, I would get when I was about to publish any review. Your finger is hovering over the button. It's a unique feeling. It's a feeling that's all unique to publishing a video game review on a massive site. And I remember feeling it to a few good examples. I remember when I reviewed the last one. I gave the last one of us a 10.

And I thought it was so clearly a 10. And I stand by that. That game's a mastery. It's one of the great games of all time. But I remember, and I didn't know at the time, I had no idea because I always tried to, I know a lot of people in a lot of other places, and I don't have, I don't talk to them, like, about games when I'm reviewing them or when I was, because I didn't want to, like, have that seep in.

I didn't want to know what anyone else thought. And I really thought I was going to be the only one that gave this game of 10. That was not even remotely true, right? But I was like, here we go. And, like, published it and, you know, waited for the feedback, which was actually surprisingly positive. But I know I was going to get called a fanboy and all these kinds of things. And like, it's hard not to take it personally.

And it's like I, but the one thing with I bring the last of us up particularly is because I think the Last of Us was read by about 2 million unique people. My last of us review. Two million people. It didn't have two million hits. Almost certainly more since you've left. You know, since the last time you checked the metrics, I'm sure. And then I look at the comments, and I'm like, there's 10,000 comments.

Right. You assume three comments per person on average. Some people probably left 20. Some probably left one. I'm like, so 3,000 people think I suck, maybe. Two million people read the review. probably a lot of people bought it or was turned on to the last of us by and turned on by it

I was turned on by the last of us but then I think about the other end of the spectrum like when I reviewed Castlevania on 3DS by Mercury Steam which was not a good game even remotely they had no idea what they were doing with that game was terrible that wasn't terrible but it was bad and I remember getting that other feeling where the defenders of the game even though it's not even out yet

are going to come and and have something to say about that as well so it was such a unique feeling it was the only other mirrored feeling I had was when I was writing a controversial op-ed which I was well known for it at IGN. And it's like, one of those things where I'm, I'm like, I gotta put myself out there.

That's just who I am. It comes with a certain amount of repercussion, but I think that people don't often think about the personal nature of criticism and that like, I don't go into any game thinking or assuming or wanting to hate it. But sometimes you do hate it

or sometimes you just like it okay. Sometimes you love it. And my only job was to be honest. And that's what I tried to do with my reviews is just put the honest, the most honest sentiment of how I felt about it on the digital paper

and hope that it resonated with people, whatever, but I just felt like it, I felt like, just like with anything on the internet, it gets very personal, it doesn't really focus, it's a lot of straw man attacking.

Like the whole IGN getting paid off thing, like, you didn't fear me because I'm like, what are you talking about? Do you have any idea? Like we're like, basically living in poverty over here. And I mean,

like, I don't, I don't understand like, like, who's getting, who's getting paid to like, to like, you know, review this.

I always loved it when it was like, you gave an EA review a bad score and they like, well, clearly Activision paid them off. Right. It's like, thank you much.

Cold war shit going on. Where they're like, you know, oh, hey, who's reviewing? Hey, here's a check. I think it was Marty. It's so ridiculous.

It was Marty Sleva, I don't know if someone else said this before, but the first time I heard it said was Marty, was Marty said this in the office. Sometime last year, I think it was, he was like, seriously,

the next time someone accuses me of, of taking a check for, for a review, I'm just going to take a snapshot of my bank account, just silence everybody. Like, I'm literally living. Paycheck to paycheck.

It's funny because they get mad when it's like, oh, so they paid you to give us this good score. Or it's like, oh, IGN, you know, didn't pay or didn't, you know, get enough. Exactly. It's like, what? Like, how does that even make sense? God forbid we come to the most logical and basic conclusion, which is that this is the way the person felt about the video game. It's a fucking video game. That's like what I, that's like, that's the one thing I was like, I'm like, it's a video game.

There are games, but I guess I just think differently. And I think a lot of people actually think the way I do, but maybe of the, the, the silent majority feels this way. When everyone, you know, like, when I talk about, like, I love Mega Man or something like that. Or Castlevania, everyone's like, fucking, Castlevania sucks. I'm like, I could give a fuck less of you than Castlevania sucks.

I love it. You know? So, like, you're not enjoying Castlevania has literally zero effect on my life. And like, so people, like, it's the same thing. Like, we talk about 311. Like, I talk about my sisters. Like, I grew up. Like, my sisters would make fun of me all the time viciously for liking this band.

And I'm like, I don't care. Like, go listen to whatever the fuck. you want to listen to. I'm going to listen to what I want to listen to what I want to listen to you not liking this band literally means nothing to me. And so like you know, I don't understand why more people don't walk through their lives like that being like what does this guy think about that? Maybe I can take something

valuable away from it. Maybe I'm not but I'm not going to let it affect me to the point where I'm writing like an angry tweet or an angry message of them. I'm like, why do you like at the end of the day my whole thing is like why do you care if this person gives the division of 6.7? Are you, are you Eves Gilmalt? You know? Are you like

you have like millions of dollars riding on this game? Like Otherwise, I don't get it. It is that vocal minority. And I think a lot of times when they get bent out of shape about it is the concern. I always love the argument you'll get of just like, this can really injure sales. They're afraid there's going to be this chilling effect for the game they love that, oh, it reviewed poorly. So now everybody's going to step back and not buy it. And then there won't be as much DLC and there won't be this.

And there's not going to be any support or more people won't play. All these like end of the world scenarios. I think I think you might be right with some people. I think you might be giving most people that feel like that, do that shit way too much credit. I really do think it's a more. I think it's a way more visceral like... It's a validation thing. Yeah, it's like it's so weird.

Their exact feelings to be validated, which on a scale from one to ten is almost impossible. You know, it's like, if you would ask them, what would you give this game? You know, like this game that you love so much, would you give it a 10? And I feel like that's the thing is like it's the, it's hard to, like a 6.7, or what's 6.7?

That says a very specific thing, you know? That says it's not an 8.5 and it's not a 10 and it's not a 1. You know? And I feel like a lot of other people, can't wrap their heads around, all right, you either, it gets boiled down to, did you love it,

did you hate it, or is it okay, you know? And if someone doesn't nail exactly that sentiment that they're feeling, they're going to be upset about it because they just want to be validated.

I think also part of it is that what makes it a more extreme scale than it would seem like it would because you'd think with, that with a 100 point scale, there's a lot of nuance there, right? Like there's, as opposed to a five or a 10 point scale,

there's all these gray areas that you can, position your opinion in. And yet, there's this other problem of the 100 point scale, which is that invokes, at least here in, you know, for us, in our country, in the United States, maybe less so other places. But for us, it definitely invokes the school grading mentality,

which is an ingrained mentality of like a 65 or 60, depending on where you went to school, is a failure. There is nothing, like there are numbers. Like there are numbers below 65, but there is no grade you can get below a 65. Once you hit 65, it doesn't matter where you go below that. It's a failure. And so when I put out a 6.7, a lot of people, a lot of, you know, a lot of smart people, even,

they have been told since the beginning of their rational minds existing, that that is almost completely unacceptable. and on the verge of complete disaster. And it's just not. And I can, you know, and to be, to be fair to those people, I can point to the IGN review scale all I want. I can invoke that as much as I like and be like, look, this scale right here that we made up says that a 6.7 is actually almost good.

And I'm not saying that that's not true and that people shouldn't read the scale. Please read the scale. And please understand that that's the number system that we're using to rate it. I would love it if you would. That said, I'm not too surprised that a lot of people don't do that, and they look at it and they go, well, this game I'm enjoying to this site is a complete disaster. And it's like there should be more nuance there, but it's hard to when you have that preconceived notion about the way the numbers are supposed to work, as opposed to say a star system where, you know, like I was having this discussion with our reviews editor, Dan Stapleton this morning. He was like, you know, it's funny is that if we had a star system, if we gave the division three out of five stars, no one would be. No one would be upset with that

And that's mathematically a lower score It'd be a six You know Three out of five would be a six Exactly But no one would be upset about it Because they don't equate stars To grades

But like when you have a 100 point scale You equate it to grades And I think also then it's It becomes comparing it to everyone else's scale And as you're giving a 6.7 Someone else gave it an 8 And they're like well everyone else Is giving it an 8

But it's like they're grading On different scales You know you can't just compare all of them And they're also different people Yeah and it's There's so many many different factors. And that's where it gets hard because it's not just, there isn't an answer. And like what Colin saying earlier, like there is no rules. You know, it is just opinion.

And like, yeah, and also to say, well, I totally appreciate, you know, Colin is coming at it very much from the standpoint of how stressful and even a little bit ridiculous, it can seem for people to, to have a strong kind of emotional reaction to your, you know, to, to your critique. That said, while that can be overwhelming to handle and deal with at times, you know, that's definitely a part of the job and it's hard at times until you well, it's always hard.

You get better at managing it, but like, you know, there's no ways about it. Having your feed filled up with or your messages or email or whatever filled up with people directing anger and aggression at you is, you know, like, unless you have no feelings, it's not the best thing. But that said, we should

not use that as a reason to say, let's not be critical of how we critique because we absolutely need to. I don't think that video game critique as a whole and I'm not saying that I'm

exempt from this either. I'm not saying I'm some great paragon of critical acumen. But the way we critique video games as a whole across our industry, this is big sites, small sites, IGN, we're not nearly all the way there.

We have a lot of work to before video game critique has the level of nuance, understanding, and insightfulness that readers and viewers deserve. And so we should not, yes, we should defend ourselves from being attacked personally, but we should not defend ourselves

from having the way we do our work critiqued. Like, yes, there's no such thing as an objective review. You know, objective. I agree. You can't, the idea of it being objective is completely eliminated by the fact that I am a person.

And I have a different perspective. than you do. Exactly. But just because that you cannot make, just because an objective or fully objective view doesn't exist, doesn't mean that a balanced critique does not exist. And we're not all there yet. And that's where I think we should

listen to our, you know, to our viewers, listen to our readers and sift through some of the anger and aggression and see like the truth that's in there about how we can get better at it. Because video games deserve that and so do the people who play them. Well put. Amen. topic three Vince since we have you

you're known for one thing in particular and that thing is fighting games fighting games are really interesting to me because a couple weeks back we did a topic

that was what are the five games that kind of you know best describe what video games are sure and I was kind of coming at it from the the viewpoint that like you kind of got to think

of the genres and like what genres represent video games sure and I believe fighting games have to be represented like that is just there's something core about fighting games

that is video games include a fighting game. Every launch lineup for a console needs a fighting game. This is just a thing, right? Having said that, I don't particularly love fighting games. I don't, you know, I'm not great at them. I don't really look forward to them coming out. You love them. Yes, I do.

I want to talk to you about the history of fighting games and kind of the evolution. And what are the ones, the franchises that matter and how do they stay relevant? The franchises that matter over the course of history. It's funny because some of the games that matter the most, I think never became franchises. You know, like some of the... Justice League Task Force fighting game. Sega Genesis, you're telling me, brother.

Eternal champions. No, but like the formative... It's funny because the formative years of fighting games, really it's like, it's like karate champ and Yai R Kung Fu, and most people don't, you know, those games, haven't played them. They were not, those did not become franchises. You know, like, it's funny.

because people, it's always like the Doom Wolfenstein dichotomy where people are like, yeah, doom is responsible for first person shooters and it's like, eh, not really, you know? So when people are like, well, Street Fighter is responsible for fighting games, I'm like,

not strictly speaking, true. There were iterations of that before and I would even say that, I'll say this, the original street fighter and I'm a street fighter guy, that's kind of like my core, you know, my core fundamentals come from Street Fighter. The original Street Fighter,

I don't think, is any more seminal for the genre than Yai R Kung Fu is. You know, like, to me, where Street Fighter becomes a historically relevant

and important franchise is two. Because not only for fighting games, but for video games in general, Street Fighter 2 does or evolves idea, you know, it creates ideas

and evolves existing ones that have a reach beyond just fighting games. So, like, for instance, like, there weren't a whole lot of games in arcades in, like, 89, when Street Fighter 2 comes along. There just aren't a whole lot of video games in general where you can select a character. Like, for the most part, you know,

player two is using the same person as Player 1, you know, just with a different outfit or something. And a lot of games aren't even, you know, some games aren't even multiplayer at all, but like the, you know, the idea of here is an actual cast of characters, eight distinct tool sets.

You know, look at by comparison, like the easy comparison is something like Super Mario brothers, right? Like, player one uses Mario, player two uses Luigi. They're the same exact thing. They're the literal same exact thing. So to have, to this point,

games are about one tool set that you learn intimately, and the tool set's usually pretty basic, involving like two buttons at that point, maybe three, you know, and, and they're like, no, we're going to, we're going to take that, we're going to give you six buttons, and then we're going to say, along by taking those buttons and then having them do different things in different contexts, am I jumping forward, am I jumping straight up? Am I close to my opponent? Am I far from my opponent? My crouching when I press this button. And then also adding the complexity of if I press this button plus a direction or plus a series of directions, which was a concept that did exist in street fight, the original Street Fighter, but only in a very limited to a limited capacity. So this idea of these intricate

complex input systems, Street Fighter 2 is not just relevant to fighting games, it's relevant to video games. Like video games, I just don't do that very much. But at least not at that point there, that was like an unheard of thing. Like, you think about the difference

between, you know, Gunstar Heroes, I don't here play Gunstar Heroes. Okay, cool. So Gunstar Heroes, what's one of the main differences between Gunstar Heroes and Contra? And Contra, you can literally only move, jump, and shoot, right? Move jump and shoot. And Gunstar Heroes, you can do a half circle forward with an attack button to do a slide attack. You can press forward with attack when you're close to an opponent to throw them, to pick them up and throw them.

These are things that, these are mechanics, this idea of adding these nuanced kind of directional inputs along with buttons that work. differently in different contexts. That's that's Street Fighter. Like Street Fighter is the is the popularization of that concept. So yeah, I'm sorry, I kind of. No,

I mean, this is exactly what I wanted. No, this is what he wanted? Yeah. So what about health bars? What was the game that originated that kind of idea? Oh,

God. Well, health bars, health bars go back well prior to, you know, we're talking about in the fighting game genre or in, or in video games in general. Fighting games.

So, so Karate Champ doesn't have the, you know, which, I would call Karate Champ the original fighting game. People debate about that a little bit, maybe. But, you know, Karate Champ is where I kind of draw the line and say, okay, fighting games are born.

And if I remember correctly, I was very young when Crotty Champ came out, and I played it a little bit in arcades. But I don't think there was an actual health bar in there. It was more like a karate-style, karate tournament style where, like, you score points. But, yeah, I mean, health bar, that starts with Yai-R-Kun-Fu. Yair Kung Fu had health bars And Yaya Qung Fu predates The original street fighter

In arcades by I think a year I think street fighter The original street fighter is 85 And I believe Yai R Kung Fu is 84 I'm pulling out of that off the top of my head So yeah health bar has been around You know almost Almost from the beginning

But how does a franchise stay relevant You want to know what's funny The way a franchise stays relevant Ironically I think is something that I care about a lot less than a lot of other fighting game fans or a lot of other people who love fighting games is characters you know, it's characters like the

the, when you have a compelling design that's got a memorable silhouette and an easily identified like archetype you know, like Ryu is, he's karate man like that's all he is, he's karate man but like it's so prototypical karate man you know, with his headband and the white ghee, you know, and the black belt.

You know what I mean? It's so, it's so iconic. It's instantly iconic. And people, that becomes an anchor. I feel like Ken and Ryu are an anchor for, for that franchise that at every point in the game's history, people who had stopped playing since the last numbered entry, they see Kenan Ryu and instantly, they're like, oh, yeah, this is what I remember, this is what I know. And I think that's what keeps it relevant over a long period of time.

And the reason I say that that's something I care less about is like I don't get people think this is crazy like oh you don't love Street Fighter to that. I'm like I'm not attached to Ken and Ryu. I'm just I don't I'm not at the way they look like who they are, their story, what they do. You know, they are they are a toolbox to me. That's all they are. That's what they are. They're just the toolbox. And in terms of Street Fighter, they're the most basic elemental toolbox.

I haven't used them in in a, like regularly in a street fighter in maybe. not ever. Honestly, maybe in Street Fighter 2, I played Ryu. And since then, I've branched out, I play other characters, I don't really care about that anymore. Because it's about the toolbox to me, but the thing that I can't lie, I want to look at other fighting games still, like Mortal Kombat. You know, Mortal Kombat, it continues to be popular on the back of, besides obviously violence, which, you know,

people like. People like. But people are always like, what, word association. you can't say like blood or gore or whatever like word association what's a phrase you associate with with mortal combat fatality okay finish him sub-zero get over here

get over here get over here scorpion and sub-zero are you know they emerge as kind of these these polar opposite almost literally mascots in the same way that Canon Reju

are and people and so people every time they play any mortal combat every time they see new mortal combat as long as that's there they they grab onto it and that's the that's the reason why other franchises that i think are equally deserving having caught on as much because their their character designs are actually more nuanced and complex in some ways than ken and re you are like like our system like i said once in a review of i don't know if i said this in a yeah i said this in a review for for Guilty Gear plus R when it came out on Vita

a couple years ago. And I said in a review, if there had been any justice, the second family, the second duo after Ken and Ryu would have been Sol and Kai from Guilty Gear.

To me, they're just more interesting characters than Scorpion and Sub Zero. They're visually more evocative. They have more interesting tool sets to use. But I don't iconic easily identifiable character that people just understand

immediately once they see them what they do and what they're kind of what they represent in terms of story and character people really graft on to that and like that's why Street Fighter 3 for instance kind of had some problems because yeah it had Ken and Ryu didn't have Chun Li until third

strike and that was the third rendition of Street Fighter 3 and then they had a whole cast of as far as other people concerned just strangers they see guys like 12. He's like this weird alien who like morphs into like different shapes. They see Q. He's like a private

investigator, robot dude. They're like, nope. There's any Honda. It's not Dalsam. I don't care. You know? And so Street Fighter 3 was loved in the competitives in the competitive community, but like, I remember the day like Street Fighter died in my like arcade was when

like, you know, Street Fighter 2 was this game that was always surrounded by people and then Street Fighter 3 came out and I tried to get people to play it. And like everyone was like, no, where's Gile? Where's Blanca? I don't know who these people are. And they're not easily, instantly,

I can't easily and instantly put them in a box that I understand. So I'm just, I can't emotionally connect to it. Can I, we've talked about this in the past. I love picking your brain about fighting games. And that's one of the things I always respected about you is as a critic. And so you understand fighting games.

And I like fighting games. I like to play them, but I'm not very good at them. And I don't know them like you do. Why isn't arc system works bigger? Because it seems like on a technical level, like, Arc System works, games are, like, actually way better than, than even Capcom's games.

Nonetheless, you know, this, like, moral combat to me, like, was always, like, even, like, when I played Mortal Kombat back in the day, I'm like, this game kind of, like, sucks. Like, compared to, you know, Street Fighter. It's hard for me to hold my tongue when, when these things come up because, like, so if, to me, if there was justice in the world, you know, guilty gear, which is Arc System works, you know, Blais Blue, Persona 4 Arena, even.

I love Persona 4 Arena. These games would be the biggest, the biggest deal. So yeah, why haven't they taken off? I think kind of what I'm talking about is part of it is when you look at, when you look at even like the equivalent of Ken and Ryu or Scorpion and Sub-Zero for Arc Systems Works would be Sol and Kai. And like they're, when you look at them, they don't instantly, they're not mirrors of one another necessarily, visually.

In terms of their tool sets, they don't have as much of an analogous tool set as Kenan Ryu do. It doesn't immediately create that idea of a rivalry in people's heads. Like, Kenan Ryu and Scorpion and Sub-Zero, as much as I don't necessarily think they're interesting, as interesting to play as, as some other characters

in those, and either of those games, there's a built-in story. Like, for Ken and Ryu, it's the clash between discipline and self-expression. You know, like Ryu is this, is this on the path. I have a, I have a mission, I have a duty to make myself as strong as I can be. And Ken is just like, whatever, bro, I'm just going to throw a bunch of kicks and have a good time and be wild.

And like that dichotomy is very easy for people to graft onto emotionally and conceptually. So that stays with people. Sol and kind. And right. And then there's damn, right? The weird friend who tries too hard, you know, it never quite gets there, but you're rude for him. And, you know, Sol and Kai just don't,

they don't tell, they don't visually immediately tell that story. They're both way more interesting to look at. From a design standpoint, I don't feel like it's not even a discussion that they're way more interesting to look at and more interesting to try to master. Well, yeah, that's what I was going to ask is that these games just seem mechanically way deeper,

and that might be why they're not as, like, and I'm not saying that Street Fighters, is in deep. No, neither mind. I love, I love, I love, my heart's with

Capcom in terms of fighting games in terms of the games I play, but it just seems like these games are beautiful. Like,

their, and the animation art is through the roof. The music is awesome. The music is. And the moves sets seem to be really complex as well.

So I think, is that maybe something to do with it too? Like, it's just not friendly to play. So I think that was the case a little bit with Guilty Gear

in the sense that Guilty Gear is probably I might be hanging myself a little bit here but it's almost inarguable that it's probably the most mechanically complex and deep 2D fighter ever made I would say that

the franchise as a whole has a whole bunch of systems and things that no other fighting game was doing at the time and that a lot of people who played it even avidly didn't really understand or know about but I think persona 4 Arena has done a better job of communicating that depth to people. But I think the communication of depth is the problem

in that not so much in that like the Arc System Works games are overwhelming to play. Because I think if you pick up Persona4 Arena and you do the same kind of like mashing that you do in Street Fighter, if you don't know how to play, you probably have even a better time. You probably see more cool stuff actually

because that's the way the game is designed to try to let you get your feet wet a little bit more easily than some of the other games in the series or in the genre. But I think the bigger problem is this. I think fighting games suffer from the same, and our system works as a result of this, suffer from the same problem that mobas and MMOs have

in that people who want to play them have found the one they like. They've found the one they like, they know why they like it, it serves their purpose. Like in Dota, in Mobas, it's Dota or League. Like there have been other great mode, mobas that, you know, Heroes and New Worth

was a legitimately very good game. You know, like, Demi God was a legitimately very good game. Infinite Crisis. Infinite Crisis was not a bad game either, man. Like, absolutely not. Infinite Crisis wasn't bad. Smite is a very good game.

These are all good mobas. They're not anywhere close to Dota and League. And not because they're necessarily so much worse as games, but it's because people only need one of those. Once you find, a game with that much mechanical depth to it. Like, you're kind of like, I don't need

to learn, it's like learning a language. It's like, you know what? I want to learn another language. That will be rewarding and interesting and useful to me. So you choose one. You learn Japanese. Like, I have spent years studying Japanese. I know Japanese. Cool. Well, here's some other cool languages. Yeah, those languages look cool. But like, I just spent years learning, getting

and good at Japanese. Like, I don't really need. I got my language learning fix. My exotic language learning fix from from from from from Japanese on I don't need these other ones they're fine and I think fighting games have the same thing people who love uh fighting games and want to get into them mechanically in any kind of deep way I think the really top level people who are just they love learning systems they play everything because they just want to every new system of rules is a new puzzle to solve and I'm like that I love every like all kinds of different fighting games so I want to learn all those

puzzles but I think for anyone who's not thinking of it that way they think to themselves fighting games are a lot of work and I need to learn a lot of things and so once I've learned the core fundamentals to be decent at street fighter

I'm good I don't need to go and start from scratch in a new language and I think that's why people didn't latch on that's why Arc Systems Works games as spectacular as they are

have not caught on more because there are two languages that came first that kind of the mainstream got their hooks into and now people, when faced with something completely unfamiliar, or the language they kind of know already, and this is just a, you know,

MKX is just a new dialect of Mortal Kombat that people are already, you know, kind of familiar with, right? So you've got the choice between, you know, a different dialect and a language you know already, or having to start from scratch and learn a new language, people are going to pick something they have a base in it, right? Yeah, for sure. I think on a mainstream level, you know,

you saw Street Fighter 2 and everyone played that, and Street Fighter 4 came back, and everyone's playing that, But in the middle there was Street Fighter 3 that from an outsider's point of view is a little bit more akin to a guilty gear type game in the sense that it's different. You know, it's still the same language or whatever, but it's just it's a step away from what they expect that wasn't the characters and all that stuff. During that time, there was also the kind of 3D fighter, the rise of that with Tekken and Virtual Fighter and all that stuff. What do you feel about those games? So, you know, I have, I'm going to admit this here.

I don't have any... Exclusive. Kind of finding exclusive. No, I don't want to say that I have a bias against 3D fighters, because I would make it sound like I actively hate them and dislike them or I don't want to give them a shake. But I remember...

I remember the first time... So when 3D, when polygons were literally a newfangled thing, just like brand new, like Virtual Racing is in arcades and it's blowing people's brains to little itty-bitty pieces because they can't believe what they're seeing. One of the first times I saw no line

at a Street Fighter 2 cabinet was when my local arcade got a virtual fighter. And I took one look at it. And you have to understand, in the early days of Polygon of 3D visuals, everything just looked like shit. It was just like... I felt like it looked like shit even then.

It was impressive, but I remember looking at this being... I thought it, I looked at it, I said, what is the artistic merit? of... You put in your monocle. I'm like, what is visually interesting to you about a conglomeration of gray squares? Like, what is it visually about this that you find it?

I couldn't, I didn't get it. I didn't understand. I'm like, how could this be interesting to you? You're fighting in the same plane you know, with a little bit of lateral movement. Granted, that's a novel idea, right? There's lateral movement that exists. But I was like, visually,

this is the most boring thing I've ever seen. I remember as a young man being kind of angry about it. Like there wasn't any, no one wanted to play Street Fighter anymore. And I'm sitting over there like, you know, Mr. Lonely Pants at the Street Fighter cabinet. And there's all this line of like people. They got their friends, their family. They're all having a good time.

Grandma's there and a walker cheered hilly on. You know, they're, you know, their hamburgers. And they're like their pizza, their bad arcade pizza. This is great. You know, you know, and I'm like sad. you're playing 12 right exactly right so I remember

I remember that and so from that point on there was always this mindset in my head like those are a different people's those aren't my people

but now I know that's not true right except 3D fighters a completely different set of core competencies from 2D ones and I think

where 3D fighters started they first gained their foot hold on the novelty of look, you can move mostly to a limited degree on it. It's always funny to me that they call them 3D fighters because they are still mostly 80%

played like this. Side step to spin the world around. Yeah, yeah, yeah. The number there are few 3D fighters Power Stone. Yeah, Power Stone, right, exactly, where you're actually like moving all, you're using the entire plane. For the most part, it's like a quick side step that gets you out of the way of

something. You know, it's not you know, 3D in the sense that you're maneuvering a 3D space. It's still mostly 2D, so it's a funny abstraction. But the still, the core competencies are actually, despite the fact that they look structurally similar, are so different. Like what we would call footsies in 2D fighting games in like Street Fighter, you know, where you're using these different, you know, your best range pokes to kind of out-inch your opponent. That's like one facet of how 2D games are played. but that's almost literally what 3D fighters are. It's literally a dance.

If you watch Tekken, if you watch high-level Tekken players, and they've learned how to Korean backstep, it's kind of a weird mobility technique that you learn with a stick. You know, you'll see them jockeying and moving in these really, you know, in these really frantic kind of jarring-looking ways.

And you're like, what are they doing? And they're literally trying to occupy a space where they know they're, opponent has a move that they think will reach from there, because they want them to throw it out so that when they throw it out and they make a subtle move backwards and that misses, they can then counter

with their own move that does work at that range. There's literally millimeters of space being jockeyed for and judged visually to make these things happen. And that's kind of what typifies 3D fighters in a way that, you know,

to me that's the main difference between 3D and 2D is that 3D is very squarely about that game of inches, where 2D is about, it's, that's a foundation, that's a big part of what we call the neutral, like the neutral game, like when you're not on offense or defense,

it's the part in between, you know, like that's, that typifies some of the neutral of fighting games, of 2D fighting games, but then there's things like, you know, there's projectiles,

which are largely not a part of, you know, 3D fighting games. And then you've got things like, you know, so Okizemi, which is like the game that happens once you, the part of the game that happens once you knock someone down, you know,

3D fighters have always had a very, very rich Okazemi game like people standing up in Tekken or in Virtual Fighter have all these options they can roll this way, they can roll that way, they can get up with this kind of attack or that kind of attack in 2D fighting games there's still Okazemi but it's a little bit more constrained

Hey, does your character have a dragon punch or something like that to wake up with? If yes, then you can throw it randomly if no, well get up and block you know Whereas you're universally in Tekken or Soul Calibur or Virtual Fighter, there's just a universal set of like 10 things that someone can do when they stand up.

So then as the aggressor, I knock someone down. I have to think about all these different permutations and how to follow up effectively on that. So it's really 3D fighting games look similar, but they're a, I want to say they're a completely different language, but they're definitely occupying a totally different space in terms of the skill set and the mindset in order to play them, in my opinion.

So they kind of appeal naturally to, I think, a very different group of people. Yeah. Are we running later? We are. We are running later. Oh, sorry. Go for them. No, I want to just ask where SNK kind of sits with everything now with King of Fighters 14 and stuff.

Because I just feel like back when I was young at the ground around on Long Island, playing, Neo Geo Machines, playing World Heroes. And, you know, like, you know, Samar Showdown and whatever we were playing. Sam Show, too. I love Sam Show. I just felt like they waned so hard in, like they were so, like that seems so cutting edge even compared to Street Fighter.

And they were contemporaneous and even, you know, obviously beyond that and kind of in that space between that and like moral combat kind of coming out in my mind. I don't know if the dates actually match up. But like, what happened to them? I just,

like, they're around and they're making games, but I just don't know like why. So the, the quick version, because I know we're over time, and I'm sorry, the quick version is that,

you monster. Is that King of Fighters, in the modern sense, so King of Fighters has mostly a proud core in South America that is South America's game. Like they like,

South America will fuck America up in King of Fighters all day, every day. And we are in what was a few years ago the King of Fighters 13 capital of North America, San Francisco, Northern California.

Like this is where like we built the King of Fighters 13 scene, North American scene. And I'm very good friends. with a lot of those players, and they will tell you every time the South American players came up, it was free. That shit was free. So, but, um, 12, it's funny. KOF 12 was like the first big bid in the current modern time to get King and Fighters back on the map.

And it was terrible. It was so bad. And then King of Fighters 13 was kind of like apology edition. It was like, let's make up for all the bad things that happened. But, um, it's funny because when 12 comes along, the fighting game, like the fighting game, remember like the fighting game's second renaissance hasn't really kicked in yet they had a chance with 12 to get in around the same time when street fighter four comes out and revitalizes everything but by the time king of fighters 13 comes around capcom has its hooks back in the public again and there's too

many other horses in the race and i think that's why king of fighters kind of fell a little bit by the wayside but don't sleep on king of fighters 13 13 had some great showings at evo that really showed america and the world how good King of Fighters is and it's incredible. King of Fighter 13 was a beautiful game. Unfortunately, so far King of Fighters 14, it's like it looks like there's an even an even game curse now with King of Fighters where 14 is looking pretty rough. We're hoping it doesn't turn out like 12 did. But yeah, it's very sad to say.

King of Fighter 13 was a beautiful game. But I don't know if King of Fighters 14 is going to be the one that lets that franchise break through all the Capcom noise. Okay, before we move on on the next topic, we're talking Twitter, 140 character or less answers to these. Roberto Cordova wants to know, how do you know if a fighting game's good or great? How quickly it gets people playing one another instead of playing each other's characters? Like, if I could clarify even like, the sooner we get from Ryu versus Ken to Vince versus Tim, the better a fighting game is, in my opinion. Ooh, that's a great-ass answer.

Bass Patterson says what's your favorite fighting game of all time? Street Fighter Alpha 2. Scott Rabadu says thoughts on Street Fighter 5 is a platform versus incremental full releases. Super smart. It sure is no fragmentation of the player base and makes it so that theoretically if I'm grinding enough online I don't ever have to pay another dime for another version of Street Fighter. Final question. Paul.

Apology wants to know. Have you finally decided to main someone? one, Street Fighter 5. Yeah. Who? Yeah, it's, it's, it's, it's, it's Rashido. It's Rashid. Yeah, Rashid is my man.

Rashid's the dude. Rashido! I'm really just happy. That theme is too high. You can't pass with that theme. All right. Please write a book on fighting games. Wait, before we go, before we go.

Topic three, brought to you by Harry's. Guys, everybody knows good things coming sets of threes. That's why this is a sponsor of the third topic. What does that have to do with anything? Well, get this. March to the third month of the year. It also happens to be our friends over at Harry's three year anniversary as a business. And if you're new to Harry's, I got a special deal for you to try three of the expertly crafted five blade German razors.

I handle and shave cream for just $10 with the offer code kind of funny games. Or offer code KFG. Why pay $32 for an $8 pack of blades when you can get them for half the price at harries.com? I got the best shave I've had in a long time recently. I've been growing up the beard for a while. But just for this GDC, you see this? Is that nice clean Harry's goodness? Harry's blades are super sharp

and provide a close comfortable shave. The Harry's started blades and are great. Harry's, hold on, I'm lost to my thing. Harry's doesn't like to discount because their prices are already really low, but we worked out a special offer for you guys. Harriers will give you $5 off your first order with promo code KFG. So stop overpaying for a great shave. Go to harries.com right now.

That's H-A-R-R-Y-S dot com. And I don't code K-F-G at checkout for your $5 off. Topic four. As always, brought to you by the kind of funny forums go to kind of funny.com slash gamescast topic leave your topic and we'll get to it on the show but gregg yeah you have some special news for me yes Kevin please move we're about to have a moment yeah you know what to do Kevin I'll fucking idiot I'll get up for this one thank you Colin Moriarty since you know I was replaced anyway you'll understand what it means in a minute

yeah please leave I like that Vince is a little confused right now probably but it's a special Ladies and gentlemen, you're about to catch a moment on camera. A rare personal moment. I don't share a lot of my personal life. We're not many of my moments are captured on camera in my real life. Ladies and gentlemen, for the first time, I'm going to meet the one and only Nicole Tan. Nicole, please come here. How are you?

Please, come sit here. Hello. I'm Greg. I'm Tim. Nice to meet you. I'm Tim. Nice to meet you. I'm Vince.

Nice to meet you. Now, if you don't know Nicole Tan, ladies and gentlemen, you would know her from when I won the Game Award back in December. I thanked her in my speech and talked about developers and developing and stuff. And then as I said in the speech, I had never met you before. So now here we are. You're right here. You got to scoot up.

Make sure you talk really close. Kevin will yell at me if I don't make you yell into the microphone. It's true. You do that sometimes. So thank you for finally coming to meet me. Yes. Thank you for having me. No.

Thank you for allowing us to use your name on T-shirts, the one I am currently wearing. That was a T-shirt Tuesday one. has this been weird for you? Yes, quite weird. Way to make it weird, Greg. I mean, we gotta address the elephant in the room. It's definitely, I guess I've never been much in the public kind of light before. Yes, welcome to it.

They're bright, aren't they? So this is a very surreal experience, starting from the moment that I heard you mention my name. So were you watching the Game Awards? I was actually at work when it happened. So I personally wasn't watching it live, but my coworkers were. Okay. So as I was working, I just hear half the office erupt into laughter. Yeah.

And they just call me over and they're like, do you know Greg Miller? I'm like, not personally, though. Did you know of me beforehand? I've heard your name before, like, IGN. Sure, sure, sure. But like, I haven't, I didn't actually follow. No, no, no, I understood. I was just wondering how much of like, who is this jelly bean on the TV talking about me right now?

No, no, no, no. That makes sense. There was a little bit of that. Good. Okay, good. No, that's the way it should be. So did they... So, I mean, what was your reaction?

Did you... I mean, when you find out that this is happening? First reaction was there's got to be someone else named Nicole Tan that you're referring to. But then as you elaborate more, it's like, wow, he is referring to me. And it was just shocked. Well, thank you for allowing me to do that, even though I didn't ask your permission or give you any chance. Thanks for being cool about it, I guess. Because that was my concern is that if I...

I wanted it to be someone I didn't know. I wanted it to be just somebody out of the credits of a game I had just beaten. And so when I scrolled through and found you, I was like, okay, great. And then there was like as I'm getting ready to say it, I'm like, I wonder if she's going to be mad that I'm blowing up or spot like this. My main concern was like, what if you had left Crystal Dynamics at that point? Because I didn't want it to be like, she just did Tomb Raider. And then like you turned out on your LinkedIn, you left a while ago.

And this was that and the other thing. Yeah. Well, I'm curious. Why my name of that list? I mean, it was one of those, it was, you know, it was random to an extent, right? It was that I looked up and I knew that I wanted to find somebody off the list that wasn't like ahead. I didn't want it to be somebody I would have interviewed her PR person before and I didn't want it to be somebody who's like in charge of their department. I wanted it to be somebody that when I go, when we do these studio tours, we go, you know, get to see a game early.

We walk through right and you get the tour and it's always like, and this is the art pod and this is this pod. And there's all these people working that you never get a chance to say thank you to. so I wanted to be somebody that I'd never said thank you to before or that I because like full disclosure this is a funny story I don't I only tell people off camera this is exclusive exclusive is that originally I'd also I'd beaten Tomb Raider and I just platinumed Batman Arkham Knight and so I went through Arkham Night and pick somebody and I was like oh great did the same thing kind of let the credits roll and I looked up and picked somebody and I went and checked her Twitter and she

had just won a BAFTA and I was like I can't say that development is a thankless job and literally the random name I picked just won a BAFTA. So I was like, oh, I just beat rise as a Tomb Raider, so I went through and watched credits there and found you and did it that way. And I wanted to be a game that meant something to me, a game that I thought was important for the year and that, you know, that was awesome. Especially, I lucked out that when I was the, you know, art that

is what I looked up at, seeing as how, like, I think that game is so beautiful and so breathtaking. So thank you for being a part of my moment and letting me thank you. Has it been weird since? Was it just that one day and it was kind of normal in? My co-workers have to tease me for a while after I'm sorry Don't worry

We tease him about being the trending gamer So he gets his due No I mean I celebrate it Yeah Colin's still upset That Colin's still upset that he just wasn't thanked prominently enough It's fine It's no big deal

It's no big deal You made it on the shirt though Colin It's okay Yeah So yeah Thank you for everything you've done for me Thanks for everything you've done for games Thanks for making games

Yeah thank you for calling us out I mean it was definitely appreciated from game developers Good. And how old are you two? 27. God, when did you graduate high school? What year? How old were you? How old were you? When I was nine.

When you were nine, you graduated high school. Yes. How old were you when you graduated college? The first time, 15. The first time. What is he? And that's the thing. I pick somebody at random. And then they're like, okay, cool. And here's her PACs panel about how she's brilliant and all these things. I'm like, awesome.

Are all video game developers like you? The Ganges Lips are definitely a very special group. They have all kinds of quirks and specializations and everyone's unique. Awesome. Well, Nicole, thank you so much. Give me another handshake. Thank you for everything. And thanks again for the T-shirt.

Thank you. Thank you so much. Thank you. It's Colin coming back? You can be off. I've been literally left the room right as that happened. We got eight minutes left. I don't they got eight minutes to say it away.

If there's another thing I know about you, Vince, it's that you like JRPGs. I do. So what's your favorite JRP? Anthony Anguiloh wants to know. Oh, God. Which one's your like? I don't want to put you on the spot of exactly what is your favorite.

But what comes to mind? What I say are your favorite JRP's? See, persona for Golden is this tough thing. Okay. Because it almost works against it that it's so relatively young. because there's this encrusted entrenched golden age that people don't want to walk away from and even me like

as soon as someone asks me this question my lips just want to be like Corona Chirochigger you know like or you know Final Fantasy 6 you know Correct But

Well I'd say Wild Arms over Final Fantasy 6 but I agree with you there Wow Wild Arms Yeah Wild Arms I love I mean I like With the exception of Mega Man 3 made me my favorite game of Waltz I love I didn't

I never knew that about you. Now, I love Wild Arms. I think it's a little, I think the reason that Wild Arms isn't in the necessarily the upper, upper Pantheon for me is because it's like an, it's excessively brown, you know,

like it's during that time of like just super brown art design. It's also like Wild West and desert. Yeah, I guess that was kind of part of the intention to. Not that it's all desert, but yeah, no, no,

I mean, I agree with you though. It's one of those things. It's hard to let go. Yeah. Of those games. Because I played persona for Golden for maybe 10 hours or something like that. And it's a special game.

I just, I actually got distracted and I stopped playing it's definitely a special unique, uh, resonant game that had me intrigued. But I could tell you just in playing 10 hours of that game, no matter how good it is that it doesn't have the same, like, it just doesn't have the same impact of playing those games at that time because of what they meant. Um, and like the evolution of say Dragon Quest 4 in 1991 or 1992 to Final Fantasy 3 slash 6 in 1994 is a fucking massive leap. Like persona 4 could have existed at that time. Yeah. And, and, and, And also the key thing, similarly to what you're saying there too, is that, and this is a problem that MMOs have had as well.

And more recently, I think open world games of all kinds are running into it is that the inherent advantage that RPGs had over other genres at the time is that they were several orders of magnitude, larger, deeper, and more complex than everything else you could play on a console. There was nothing else you could play on a console that had a world that big. big, pardon me. It's choking up. Yeah, it's getting me emotional. No, they had a world that big that had that many stats, skills, mechanics to track and

and think about. Nothing was as sophisticated as, like when Fantasy Star 2 came out on the Genesis, there was like no video game on because I didn't play PC games at the time. So there was no video game available that was even close

to the size depth. or breadth of fantasy star two. Now, in the day and age of like, say, Persona 4, you know, golden, or when Persona 5 comes out, you know, this year, you know, Persona 5, I'm sure will love it my whole heart, but it's missed the opportunity. The no, that we are past the point in time, in video game development,

where a JRP, what comes with that territory is that it's just way bigger and more complex and richer than any other kind of game out there. Like now we have action games that exist in an open world. We have shooters that exist in an open world. We have other RPGs that exist in a totally open world. There's no way in which a traditional, by the numbers, JRP, can dwarf other genres in terms of size and sophistication anymore. Not because they've gotten less sophisticated, but because all the other genres have become more so. And so that inherent edge doesn't exist.

So I guess what I'm saying is I agree with you. like persona 4 is a masterful masterful JRP easily in my opinion in the top 10 of all time but it's very hard for me to allow it to eclipse games like Fantasy Star 2 or Final Fantasy 4 or Final Fantasy 6 or Chrono Trigger because those games

in terms in in in very material ways stood head and shoulders technically and artistically above the rank and file of their time and when persona five comes out this year and even when persona four came out in the time when it originally came out they weren't they couldn't have been

because the rest of the world had caught up so much yeah and I also think that RPGs just bled in everything and I think that that was the major thing like when you really think about the DNA the genetics of games the way they are today like the most important thing that happened to Madden for instance was like D&D yeah yep you know like like

the most important thing that happened a lot of these games is in fact like these pencil and paper role playing games from the 70s yeah now it's like if your game doesn't have... I have to go win another award South by Southwest. Good luck, right?

Do I have to... Am I out of here? Good luck, right? No, we're gonna wrap up. We wish you the best. Okay, cool. Yeah, final question for you. Shoot.

Stephen Austin wants to know what game are you most excited for this year. That hasn't already come out? Mm-hmm. Of what's left? There's a lot left. You're saying it like... Oh, no, no, no.

That's what I'm saying is it's not that there's nothing big coming out. It's that... Oh, that makes sense. Okay. This year, similar to last year, actually, Like was front loaded with games that I was looking forward to. So like last year it was evolve and hell divers that I was like frothing at the mouth to have in my life.

You know what I mean? Like this year it was it was Street Fighter 5 XCOM and Darkest Dungeon were probably like the games that I was like, I can't wait. I would say of what's left, no man sky is very high on my list of most anticipated games. persona 5 is very high on my list of most anticipated games. And I think that's... I was going to say scale-bound, but it moved to 2017. So not anymore. Yeah, I would say no man sky and persona 5 are probably like the two...

Big ones. Big, big, big, big, big ones for me. And this isn't in question, but Yusuf Maguid says, tell Vince that he has a beautiful command of the written word. And I agree. Yeah, and I've said, I've said this before. I'll reiterate, like, Vince. Can I hide? No, you can't.

Vince, like, I think I'm a good writer, but Vince is way better than I am. And the, like, it's not to diminish anyone else that writes there when I was there because there was a lot of great writers and I sat, but you clear, like, you are like so, like you were at the top of that, that pyramid to me. So, you know, many props for that. You do have an amazing command of the written word. Thank you so much. You were very well spoken.

I told you to give you even more compliments. I told you this when it happened, but go look at IGN's Game of the Year video when we gave or when they, when you gave Last of Us, the game of the year video. I remember I shot you doing your whole spiel and like the way that you spoke about that game was just, it was an art to itself. And I was so impressed by just the emotion that you had talking about it. And it was, it was awesome. So definitely check that out. Thank you so much. Thank you for joining us on the show.

You're always welcome back anytime. Thank all of you for watching live and not live. Until next time, I love you.