Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Keeping a Game Alive For 13 Years: DCUO - Kinda Funny Gamescast

Episode Date: May 24, 2024

DC Universe Online devs Kenn White and Chad Brown join Greg to talk about 13 YEARS of the MMO that Greg once called "his heaven." Run of Show - - Start - Housekeeping - Topic of the Show:13 YEARS OF DC UNIVERSE ONLINE - Ads - New Brainiac Trailer - DCUO Roadmap - DCUO EXPERT TREXLIGHT QUESTIONS! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up everybody? Welcome to Kind of Funny Games Daily for Friday, May 24th, 2024. I'm one of your host, Greg Miller, alongside two very special guests. DC Universe online is still here. 13 years later, I have talked about it in my entire career and we're going to talk about it tonight with, it's, of course, Chad and Ken, but lead systems designer. Chad Brown and lead producer Ken White. Gentlemen, hello and how are you? Good, good, good. Thank you for having us.

Pleasure to be, have you. Ken, how are you? You were stuck on a bridge for a long time. I was stuck on a bridge for a long time. On the way end of the studio, there, there happened to be a big rig fire, and I just kind of hung out on the Bay Bridge for an hour. No big deal. No big deal.

It's not like anything going on. No pressure. No big deal. Like, oh, yeah, what time should I be there? It's fine. He came all the way from Austin. He was on time. Not to brag.

You guys are just drive here. It's still screwed it up somehow. that's just the way it is. Another day ending in why. Can you make up for it with a mustache? Because his mustache is incredible. Thank you. You're welcome.

It's its own character. Ladies and gentlemen, of course, if you didn't know, this is the Kind of Funny Gamescast each and every weekday on a variety of platforms live across YouTube, Twitch, and podcast services.

We come to you with reviews, previews, and the biggest topics in video games. If you like that, of course, support us with the Kind of Funny membership. With the Kind of Funny Membership, you give us $10 and we give you great content.

Ad free, of course, you can watch us record the afternoon podcast, lives we record them, and you get your daily exclusive vlog slash podcast, podcast known as Greg Way. Of course, if that's not up your alley right now, no big deal. Like, subscribe, share, follow, leave your subscription requests and say hello, and then use Amazon Prime on Twitch to do the thing over here and do all of that jazz. For this show, of course, while we're live and recording the games cast, if you want to be a part of it to ask

Ken and Chad questions. No big deal. Use your YouTube super chats to be part of the show. How's keeping for you. Of course, Kind of Funny Games is an 11-person small business all about live talk shows. You've already gotten rumors of a new Astrobot on Kind of Funny Games Daily on YouTube Twitch and podcast services.

You just saw the Kind of Funny Game Showdown. Didn't go my way, but no big deal. And of course, right after this, Ken and Chad are hanging out with me and Mike to play DC Universe online. We are incredibly stoked about that. And we're to be giving away the fallen God Cosmetic on stream.

Kevin, I know it's been hit after hit today. Do you have that asset prepped? There it is! We're giving this away, ladies and gentlemen. You can get a code by hanging out with us, watching us play some DC Universe online and having a good time. If you're kind of funny member, today's Greg Way is my Phil DeFrank connection. And of course, you can watch Furiosa in review this afternoon live with your

Kind of Funny membership. Get it later on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games and Podcast services. Thanks for making our dreams of reality. Patreon producers, Carl Jacobs, go Brady and Delaney Twining. Today we're brought to you by better help, but we'll talk about that later. For now, let's start with topic of the show.

Tots, tots, dots, dots, tats. That's what I was telling you before the show when I was like 90% of this document is just bullshit that I have to get through before I can get to talking to you guys. Ken, first off, congratulations. You've taken on the big role here, right? And when did you take this one on?

Beginning of December. Bring that microphone closer to you. Kevin's going to come on. No problem. I need the mic. Yeah. Shocking. on a podcast.

I'm not that loud. No, I started talking to the studio in September of last year and came on board beginning of December. And they were like, take your time, be leisurely, don't get into anything. But if you would, please take over this, this, this, and this. Yeah. Immediately. And you're like, no big deal.

Yeah. Just the name of the game. I think the question you have to start with when I'm talking to you guys about DC Universe online. And I want both of your perspectives on this is that. DC Universe Online first launched January 11th, 2011. That's more than 13 years ago.

How the fuck is the game still going? I say this as a fan and somebody who plays and likes it, but like we, kind of funny, games cast and games daily, day after day,

talk about studios, starting up a live service, trying to be this game that grows and expands and does all these things, and them failing six months in a year and 18 months in, not even because of the quality of the game,

just because it's a hard marketplace to do this in. You guys have been doing this for 13 years, Ken. How is that possible? I've been here six months and I get to tell you. So let me talk about the entire 13 year history. No, it's not easy. It's not easy. You put a group of people together who, one,

love what they're doing and get to do this all the time. Chad's an example, but he leads a great team. He's one of our two leads. designers. We have an incredible creative director. We have engineers. We have artists. We have QA. And they're all diligently working on this all the time. And then my production team is just here to direct the traffic and make sure that they're all able to do their best work. But ultimately, that's just how we build the thing. How you keep your audience is you just keep listening to them. You interface with them. You interact with them. If you're lucky you get

access to an incredible license like DC. And then you get to build something new and different. And if The stars align and the moon's in the right phase and everything works out. People really start enjoying it and you get to keep doing what you're doing. The nuts and bolts of it is you just keep releasing content. You see what works. You see what doesn't. And then you try to do more of the first column and less than the second. Chad, can six months use six years?

What's that journey been like? And what do you think is the key to the longevity of DC Universe online? Well, I think to look at it high level, you have to really look at the political economic and social fact. Oh, I don't know. Like, all I have is the inside perspective. We're about to get a dissertation. It's right.

Yeah, I wrote a paper. My thesis. No, no. But like, from the inside. Like, all I have is the point of view from the inside. And a lot of things he said are completely true. You just get people who love the product. Like, we're so fortunate to work on this great IP.

Yeah. Like, the teamful of people who just love it. And I just see them working very hard. You also, we're blessed with a community who loves to play it. And so all those things coming together, it sort of kept us, like, with our forward momentum, which is just, just fantastic. Have you seen, I guess, a community that just doesn't drift? Is that the thing? You know, I, of course, play, or played a lot, right? I put 900 hours in between when it was launched

and when we were doing up at noon and a few different things, but I've been gone a while. I'm excited to get back today. So when I come back, my first stop is always talking to Trexlight, where I'm like, what's happening? What do I need to do? I'm lucky to have him on speed dial, right? is that more common than I would think people who have just are with it the entire time I think so like I and I see I've met both like since I've started I've introduced a game to people like some of my family have started playing and they've only been playing for like six months now but they love it but then also I talk to people both in the forums and in real life like I go down to my local game store and talk to the people who work there and they're like you work on DCUO we play that game

and it's so great to get their perspective but people like that yeah they've been with it for the long haul yeah we just went out for dinner last night we had a couple of other people Chad's coming to the area and we were able to bring some team together and say, hey, let's, let's take chat out for dinner. The wait staff came up and he goes, wait, you guys are, what, are you with BCU? and he goes, I used to play that. And we're like, what, what did you play? Why'd you like it?

You know, why'd you stop? And we just, we got into a great conversation right there and there, right in the middle of San Francisco just at the dinner table. It's always awkward because I want to jump in to be like, give me all your feedback right now. And he's like, all right, well, let me drop off these mimoses. You know what I mean? But that's the thing. We never, I don't never get tired of talking about.

about the game. I don't get tired of talking about making games. I don't get tired of talking about this game. I don't get tired about games. It helps having the best job in the world, right? Like, that's a nice thing. I mean, I could, I could just be a billionaire, but it's short of that. This is pretty good. Can you turn the mic a little bit more towards you? I can. I'm coming over. I'm doing it. Someone in chat earlier said that we had to kiss the mic and I took that to heart. Yeah, yeah, that is really good. Me and this mic are good friends now. We always make the joke that, like, many people are used to sensitive mics and we have the opposite of that so you need to be on top of them.

Which makes the condenser better, but you know, whatever stuff. Is this better? So, it sure is. Okay. Again, like, I guess for you, Ken, coming on, right, and now taking lead on this, like, what is it like to accept that mantle? Because you're talking about a game, like, you're going to run into people who did play it five years ago, a decade ago that left came back or whatever.

Like, there's so much history and legacy to this, right? The weird thing for me is I don't actually think of pretty, we're leaders, but I don't think as leads in the same way that I would think of Chad or our creative director or our new EP. I like to think of it as we play support, right? I joke around the producers play clerics. We're a support class more than anything. I'm not there to necessarily tank the mob or I'm not putting up the big numbers. My job is to keep everyone else standing and being able to do the best work they can do. And so for my team that reports into me, the producers, I'm the producer for them. So I support them as much as I can and I support the rest of the team so they can do their

work. So I lead not from the front, but I lead from inside. I lead from within. And so it's really a constant struggle of, hey, Chad, how are you doing? What are we doing with process? What are we doing with days? How are we doing estimates? And then it's let's let's try this out and find a different way. And a lot of what I get to play around with is the least exciting stuff on the team. Let's, let's break open a spreadsheet together, Chad. I mean, sounds like fun to me. But a lot of what we do from a lead perspective is really finding out how people are able to do.

The designer, I don't need to give designers ideas or big vision. We have people on design and creative visionaries. Ideas are the easiest part on a game team to come up with. Sure. It's the execution part, figuring out what goes in, what doesn't go in.

That's the real hard. part. I have to say no a lot. Yeah. So that's the hard part. Well, I feel like what's even saying no, you have to also, is there a lot of, well, let's keep that for later? Like, again, I like to say yes, if. Okay. All right. I'm not a yes and guy. I'm not doing improv, but I don't like to straight up say we can't do that. But I do a lot of, sure, we can do that if we push this. We can do that if we trade this in. We can do that if this technology is in favor of this technology. So there's a lot of Yes, if. Okay.

Does that come down on your plate then a lot, Chad, in terms of being the systems guy, right, of what you can actually do and what, like, I'd be fascinated to talk to you. I mean, obviously, six years is nearly half as long as this game's been out. But, like, so you're dealing with systems, I imagine that are from way, way back, but then you change them, but you do this,

but how does that influence that? And, like, how does this change that? Oh, yeah, yeah, like my first week on the job, the systems lead who I started under it, I started as like just a regular game designer on systems. And he was like, okay, listen, you need to be careful in there. This is like already a... It's all duct tape together and this to that.

And he's like, we don't... Some of us don't even know what all of it does. So you need to be... Go in there gingerly, you know, be cautious, be respectful. But of course, we're going to make big changes. Yeah, of course. That's the biggest challenge. So much of it is just like research.

Like, anytime you want to do anything, you're like, okay, well, now you need to figure out not only how that works in the game, but also like how that thing is built in the game because you don't want to pull out something that's like it's jinga. You don't pull out something that's going to cause a lot of other stuff. And so that's my biggest anxiety. Yeah, right there.

The whole jingot tower coming down. So is it then just incremental changes to get to the, like, you want to do this big thing, but you need to make the small changes to then make the big thing not seem so big? It depends on what the thing is. If it's a brand new system, then there's a lot of new stuff that just has to happen all at once, you know, like because it has a lot of interlocking dependencies. But incremental changes, I mean, I feel like incremental changes are almost more like quality of life stuff.

Like there's things that like, oh, the treasure boxes should stack. Like, when I'm playing the game, I'm like, oh, I get all these treasure boxes for my daily stuff and, like, they're not stacking, but I don't want to go around to do other and I'll get to them later. So just minor stuff like that. Like you just sort of pick it off as you have time while you're trying to get your other responsibilities done. Right.

Well, I mean, again, you guys are always building to the next big thing, right? We just had a new episode drop, Brainiac Returns. Yes. I enjoy somebody who obviously loves the game and always will. Seeing the new episodes come out and then seeing the reactions from the mainstream, whoever.

Somebody had a great quote tweet of it. I will be dead and gone and this game will still be putting out new content. And I was like, yeah, probably. It's going to outlive us all. Yeah. Did you, Chad, think about that when you started six years ago of like, did you take the job thinking, in six years I'll still be making for this game, this game will still be around, I'll still be at the studio? I definitely had that feeling of like permanence when I started.

Like first off, I sort of joined it and it has like, immediately when I started, the whole team just sort of gave me the sense of excitement about it. Because last MMO I had worked on was like a new MMO. So we had like a lot of freedom. But here it's more of like a lot of responsibility to the to the IP, to the player base, to the to the game itself. And so I sort of absorbed all of those emotions of people who had like all of this excitement about moving the product forward and continuing to expand it. Sure. And with like our release frequency sort of supported that. And so yeah, I definitely felt like I was joining something bigger than myself.

Yeah. You know. Yeah. You end up being stewards for the player base. Yeah. Right. Sure. We're not, we don't, we don't own DCUO so much as we are caretaking it.

And I think that goes with the legacy of it, right? You know, as I've said, throughout my kind of funny career and IGN career at the time of how much the game meant to me and how much I've played it and all these things. You know, I always go back to the first time I ever reported on it was in 2008, 2008, 2008, 2008, 2008, right? I did a thing where it was news out of E3 about it, right, and the Sony conference about it. And then at SDCC got to sit down with Jim Lee. My favorite, Kevin, I put the link in there for you. you. And this is what started me and Jim's friendship as actually DC Universe Online. And I think I'd like to think the reason me and Jim are friends now, right, that I can talk to him whatever

I want to is that I made such an indelible impression on him. Because at Comic Con 2008, the idea was we got together. We all went to go preview DC Universe Online and you went to, I think it was the hard rock and you had your time with Jim Lee and while you interviewed him about the game, he would draw whatever you want. He would give you a headshot of whoever you wanted, right? And so I'll never, ever, ever forget. This is my first time being Jim Lee. It's 2008, so this is, you know, a year into me being at IGN, right? I have stars in my eyes to be with Jim Lee. This is, you know, you want to talk about things I never thought I would get to do in my life being a comic book fan growing up. It was sitting there with Jim Lee while he

draws me a Superman. And literally he put it, he's like, who do you want? I'm like, I love a Superman. He's like, all right. And he put pencil to paper to start sketching. And my first question still, and this is the question from IGN's article I'm reading right now, IGN, Jim, thank you for sitting down with us. Is this game going to suck? And the Jimly answer I write is laughing. No, definitely not. I've played it and I can verify.

It's awesome, right? And that was such a, I think, watershed moment for me and how I interview versus IGN versus being in the newspaper versus whatever and what would go on to become my interview style of like, I knew at the time and still do, but then new comic book video games cold. You know what I mean?

And I knew how many crappy ones we got it. in 2008, right? Where's the different life of licensing and what you're gonna get and da, blah, blah. And so to have this pitch of DC Universe online, right, which was, we hadn't even seen the game yet.

We had seen nothing from it. The presentation had been, I think a screenshot or whatever, to get there to talk to Jim Lee about it and have to take his word that it was good, was cool or whatever, but it still was like,

clearly this won't deliver. I was like, I'm so burned by DC games, right? I was like, there's no way this game will actually live up to the hype of what I thought it was going to be, right? And so you can imagine my shock of covering it, right, and like going to Austin and playing it at the studio

and getting behind the scenes and seeing the systems and seeing it at multiple E3s, right? I have a 2013 E3 interview on here of me and Yenz Anderson doing it from the DC Universe booth. I have on here a five-year anniversary stream I did from the Austin HQ, right? Of like all these things of getting to be a part of this and like having it be such a critical part of my thing, right?

Like the Jim Lee sketch of Superman that he did in that interview still hangs in. my entertainment room, right? Like, that is a definitive moment for me. I was like something I never would have expected to get. You know what I mean? I have that moment. But like when I see this, I don't just see Superman or a Jim Lee drawing of Superman.

I think of DC Universe online, right? It's the same way of like, again, how obsessed I was with the game 900, some out of hours back then. When I beat cancer in 2012, right? This is the, the most cherished, uh, gift I got, I guess. You know what I mean? when I beat cancer and announced that I beat cancer, they sent me. And if you're an audio listener, it's an image custom of the key art of the game with my character,

Taylor Swift in the center, right? And then it was Greg Miller, Beyond, because I scream beyond every time, right? Congrats on defeating the ultimate nemesis, fight on your friends at SOE and DC Universe Online. Like, this is like what, it's such an interesting one, right, where I used to say at IGN on a game scoop all the time that if I wasn't working in the industry, if I didn't have to review the next game and preview the next thing. I would just play DC Universe online. Like, that's how much I loved the game and how much I described the game.

And so it's one of those weird things of being gone from it for so long now. And I'll pop in and I'll do this and we'll talk about that and we'll stream it. You'll see where Taylor Swift's at these days. It's still home. You know what I mean? Like all these memories are still tied in. And I think Ken, that's what is a very long winded way of telling you, I think you're 100% right with the stewards, right? where you can run into a waiter and, oh, I've played that game.

I used played all the time. I saw people in the chat. Oh, I did all this all the time. And you can look at me and be like, these are touchstones that I see every day, right, that Ben, my son, who you met out there, sees every day. It does not understand yet. But, like, that's how much your game means to me.

So thank you for continuing to make it. And for continuing to always be there. I've come back here and there for a week and night or whatever it is. And like, I'm excited to stream today. But like, that's what you're working on, Ken. That's what you're working on, Chad. No pressure, okay. Yeah.

Yeah, it's been, this last month has been like 15 years since I, you know, started working in games. And in all that time and all the things I've shipped, I've gone on, had my own kids. My son's now nine, and I made a big deal of it in my producer letter, but also when I introduced myself to our community, that the first thing I did when I was, when I was talking to the studio about this job was I sat down and I started playing the game, and my son was interested. So I fired up a new character on the PC for me and I let him take my account on PS4 at the time and said, let's go. And he's played games I've worked on before. I've never played a game with him that I'm working on.

And so since getting here, we do regular weekly get-togethers. And it's a little more casual. He just really enjoys exploring it more. he's going to be way more hardcore than me. I can already tell. But for me, it's, it's hard to explain what that felt like.

And the team, I would play live streams with me and my son playing with the team. And it's just, he loves it because I don't think he understands what it's like having a dad in the industry because he's always had a dad in the industry. But that does that.

Getting to play with dad's co-workers was cool. Yeah. So, yeah, I'm excited to see Ben start to take to games. But then again, like, you know,

he was running through the show today and giving us crackers, right? And it's like, he doesn't understand. It never will. Like, you know what I mean? You grow up in it. It's like, me and my wife, who both work in video games, right, are so, like, gun shy of, like, oh, he's going to think games are so lame.

He's just going to want to play sports. Yeah, exactly. He's not going to want to be a part of this at all. But, Chad, like, talk to me then about your memories, your moments with this game, right? Again, this is such a legacy, stewards of it, my memories, bringing your kid into it for Ken. Like, what about you for six years now? Seeing it evolve on the inside, but also I assume playing.

like you're talking about it. Yeah, yeah. I guess the biggest thing for me, sort of mirroring off what you said, was this is the first game I've worked on that my family members have really got into, like my sister and I started playing and she got into it real big.

And that was like, all of a sudden, I'm making things. Because before this, I would work on games. And she would be like, oh, yeah, that's cool. And my family's like, yeah, that's nice. Yeah, yeah. But to actually have them be like, hey, what's that new release?

To, like, want to know more information about it. To join, like, join leagues. And, like, you know, they're building sort of social networks in the game. like that's inspiring to me because I'm like yes this is like I see a tangible thing because it's one thing to read about it of the forums it's one thing to like

to see like Twitch and YouTube it's another thing to actually talk to someone like in your life who was like I want to see what you're making next you know can you spill and I'm like no I'm sorry I'm sworn to see if Greg can't get out of me you certainly can't either I can get out of you don't worry about that I'm worried about it. I'm here chat Kenel shut it down

make sure nothing gets spoiled I think then this is a nice pivot point right to actually talk about what the game is. I've talked a lot about what the game means. We've talked a lot about what it is for you right now in the current roles or whatever. Can you take over? You're doing this thing. You're probably telling a whole bunch of people about this. For somebody who does not know DC Universe Online who's just watching this, how do you describe the game? Unlike most superhero games, we don't want you to play another hero. We want you to make your own. You become your own hero.

You interact with all the heroes of the DC Universe. But like a traditional MMO, you make your own character. It's based around power sets. It's based around admiring one of the big three heroes or villains. You emulate, but then you get into the game itself and you are running missions with some of those superheroes. Superman will say, hey, I need your help with this. The Joker says, no, we're going to do this. You know, Lex Luthor sends you over here. And it's really just, you get to first just start exploring the world of Gotham, of Metropolis, and then you start getting more into it. And you start getting the

styles and the gear and you decide well you know that was a cool look but now I want a better look and then you start a lot of the game becomes around the style and who you want to be as a hero and how you want to explore the world and save it and protect it so from an mMO standpoint now that's the that's the large yeah of course yeah getting down into the the details of it as far as an mmo goes uh it's a pretty traditional style mMO in a lot of ways there's there's quests there's missions there's there's uh npc's all over the place there's open worlds there's uh instances that are like most mmos where i think it's really separated out one the movement styles um is probably the first thing people are going to notice immediately you can you can fly you can be a speedster uh you can be

acrobatic and just climb right up the sides of walls or hang from ceilings and that alone is just i don't get to do that in other games for one thing sure um the first time i took my speed and ran across the bay outside of Metropolis. That's just cool. Yeah. Getting through the missions and getting leveled up, we don't focus so high on big levels. We've never increased the level cap.

It's still 30. And I think that's another thing that's interesting. A lot of games, you end up running into this inflation economy of levels where you've got to keep getting bigger, bigger, bigger, and people feel farther apart from the ones at the time. For the record, you say all this. I remember the combat rating days. All right, when I'm going through trying to get raid ready,

do this thing, grinding on gear and stuff. Combat rating's still there. Yeah, I know it is. I know. But I would say you guys have done a great job and we'll get into how you're doing episodes and all this stuff. You've done a great job of, hey, there's new content and you can go play it right away.

You can get into it. Where I used to be on the treadmill of, new updates come in. I haven't played in months. I got to get in there, grind, grind. Levels aren't going to gate you as much as they will in other games. that I've played. So the gear will, the gear can.

Yeah. But stick with us and once a year we'll help you out a little there. But, but yeah, every episode is free. Does that summarize how you tell people about this universe online? I mean, I think I, yeah, probably, but I also sort of view it from a more like systems designer view, which is where I break it down to like, what are the things that this game gives you, gives you like, what are the rewards? It gives you like progression rewards. You know, I like, as an MMO player, I like filling up bars and making numbers bigger. I want people to know, like, what work I put into the game.

It gives you creation rewards. Like, you get to create, like, not only your superhero and styles, which is a huge part of our game. Like, we have so many style options. It's overwhelming. But I go through, like, my hobby. Like, when I'm at work, I'll have the game open another window and I'll be just hanging out in the House of Legends, like, inspecting other characters. Yeah, yeah. And sending screenshots to, like, our team's chats.

I'm like, oh, look at this person who looks like Mario. It gives you social rewards. You know, you build your social ties. You can make friends or you can play, like, a lot of times. I'll just like random cue, like pugs. I love like teaming up with people to fight open world bosses. Like that's the best sort of, and then just doing an emo and leaving, you know? Like, yeah, we had a nice little interaction.

Yeah, yeah. And then, of course, it's got like narrative and discovery stuff. Like, learn about all these characters. Like, I think that one of the most exciting things to this as someone who knew a bit about DC but wasn't as entrenched in it. Well, all of a sudden, like, who are all these characters that I've never heard of? Like, I love that. Why is an ambush bug taking me to the vault?

Exactly. And then you're like, who is this guy? then you're on a Wikipedia page and then you're reading comics about them. So we just fall right in. Yeah, I think that was always what was powerful for me. Like, Ken, you know,

your son and I have a lot in common where it's like I was never the MMO guy, right? And this is my first and only MMO, right, that I ever fell in love with and put that many hours into, even though MMO, you know, has kind of infiltrated a whole bunch of other genres and games,

but that's a conversation for a different day. This was the one where, you know, you talk about, like, wanting to explore. You know, I was my first time meeting both of you, right and back in the day when I would be trying to describe to IGN listeners why I love DC universe online the long-winded Greg story I would always give is you know I went to Catholic school kindergarten until senior year high school and I distinctly remember six seventh grade

walking home with some other kid from school we're in our uniforms and we're having this conversation about heaven and it was this conversation of like well what do you think heaven is and the kid laid out his thing I wasn't listening I didn't care and I was like great and he's like what do you think it is? And I'm like, I think it's personal for every person. And he's like, okay, well, what would yours be? And I was like, I would live in Metropolis and I would have superpowers. And I'd always then dovetail this and be like, so IGN, listener, you have to understand

this game is literally my definition of heaven, right? And I was the guy who was like, cool, yeah, I'd go out and I'd fight bizarro with other people and the randoms and I'd jump in and, you know, the raids. Let's go to the fortress of solitude. Sure, of course, blah, blah, blah. But my favorite thing to do in the game was Taylor Swift, take off and fly. let's go find the little audio diaries. Let's go find all the districts.

Okay, you know, we're over in Otisburg. What do we do? You know what I mean? Like, oh, this is Crime Alley. Oh, this is right. This is a street name pulled from Batman the animated series. Like, I'm the DC dork. And what's always been so powerful for me is that you guys get the luxury, I guess, of being my DC universe.

And what I mean, of course, is that this DC universe is based on the post-crisis. this DC universe that then got blinked out by new 52, but then kind of came, but you know what I mean, it's all these little things of how continuity's changed and gone. But like, this is my, this was my DC that I grew up reading.

Then I got to live in it. And then as it changed, it was like, letting that go, but then also being like, well, it's cool because they're still here. You know what I mean?

This is the, there's Tim Drake and this is going on over there. And then, you know, of course, in one of the DLCs on the voice of Superboy, I know is out there. Like there's a whole,

I heard that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Well, I know it's still there. Yeah, no, no. It's like, so there's all this incredible stuff in there of just like, man, that's, you know, Connell, that's Connor Kent.

And whether it's me or not, that's my superboy, right? Like, like, I love that that is still there as a capsule for me again. Again, do stress the amount of pressure on you guys to do this right and not screw this up. No problem, no problem. Yeah, that's great. Never, never feel that any day ever. All these fans doing all this stuff leaning on you. And, of course, now more fans than ever, right?

You're on PC, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, Xbox, Xbox, of course. a switch. There was the piece three PS3 version still running? I would assume. I don't think so. No, we shut that down finally. I'm never sure where we're out with any of that or whatever. From a from a technical standpoint we managed seven platforms effectively five. Sure. Because you can still emulate PS4 on PS5.

You don't you don't have to download the PS5 version although we highly recommend it. More trophies. Yeah. And then same thing for Xbox one. You can play that version on the series XS. Sure. So it's a lot. It's a daunting amount of work. I don't think

there's another MMO. Someone correct me on this, but we've been trying to figure this out. Is there another MMO that's on as many

platforms? How much of a problem is that for you and your systems? It doesn't really affect me at all. Because our game is like the same across all the systems, right? We mostly have simultaneous launches.

It's really a pain for all, for you and all the people that work with you, all of our producers, they are always busy. They're juggling a lot of stuff. They're talking to a lot of people. It sounds like real important,

real hard work. You're like, that sucks you later. Five minutes before I walked on here, I was checking in with our, with our QA lead and our senior technical producer to see where we were with an upcoming fixed building. It's just, it's never ending. It's nonstop. There's an entire process behind the scenes just to get games onto consoles, the entire submission process, all of that. So, and again, that's just, we do that behind the scene. We're behind the curtain, right?

So that people. Top people are on this. Right. We want to let the actors on stage so we can sit behind and just make sure all the props are moving as they need to. Sure. No pressure. We appreciate it. And so then, you know, I think I'm seeing so many people pop in who are like, oh man, I didn't know this was still going. I'm a lapsed player.

I did all these different things. Talk to me about we're free to play, right? Yes. That's the way the game works. And obviously, we drop new episodes. Those are free, obviously, when you jump in and do it, right? Like, this is still the mantra can of get as many people in, have them play and have fun. Yes, absolutely.

Yeah, there we go. Mike drive. Yeah, you got it. No, that's it. That's the gist of it. It's free to play. Every new release is free. We don't, we don't keep on that.

We don't sell it. And where we can, I mean, there's crossplay between PC and PS PlayStation versions. Yeah. But other than that, yeah, we do what we can to make sure that every one of our players across our regions and across our platforms up until now has been able to bring and sit together. as best they can. But it's not, there's no holding you back to jump in. There's, there's, you just go download it.

Sure. Everybody can do that right now. Try it out, maybe come play with me and Mike a little bit. We're playing on PlayStation 5. Sorry, Chad, you were saying. I was going to say, and also I get to about a level, level 10 roughly is when you can start to, like this is one of my favorite things about when we release new episode is that like you guys were saying, everybody can sort of jump in and play the latest content,

which I love. I love not having to worry about, oh, how long until these players get to end game or when I introduce someone to the game, I want them to see the latest stuff we've done. No, you just, like, we have a diversion that scales you, low-level players. It doesn't give like end-game rewards, and you still want to chase that in-game CR so you can do elite mode and participate there. But you can see the storyline, the new stuff we've made. Yeah, and I thought that was such a brilliant move many years ago now to do that because it wasn't always that way. And I think that again is one of the, I would say, as an outsider completely, the keys to DC Universe Online's longevity is the fact that it pivots, right?

Like, it did launch as a game that you purchased. there was a disc there was all this other stuff right then the pivot to free to play and it was like okay cool but then it was what you're talking about Chad of I you know I'm lapsed so there's new content but I'd never be able to touch it what do blah blah blah blah and then when you move the episode structure to be like no no it drops and you can

you can I would say buff right they lower the CR I forget what it was but you can get into any episode I forget it just matches what you are is that how yeah it scales you up to its level if you're below it yeah so you can get in you can have the story content you can see what's happening and get your feedback wet in the game but I think like one of the questions that went through in the live chat again if you want to be part of the show super chats on YouTube that'd be great Dean 8149 does say shout out to my favorite cinematic game trailer ever come on it's a good one that blur

I was there I was there at that comic con when that debuted nothing still gives me chills and holds up to this day holds up to this day if you never seen the DC universe online opening cinematic but it's also now just available everywhere online obviously go get it Anyways, one of the questions that went by was like, who's funding this game, right? And I think that's always an interesting conversation because we're talking about it being free to play. You can just jump in, right? Obviously, there's a paid battle pass track or something like that, right, that you have these dedicated players who are doing it and keeping the universe going. Yes. So there's a lot of ways that people can spend if they want to to get ahead. I mean, I'll let Chad dig into the system as part of it.

But basically, there's items in the game. Nothing is critical. you can play without them but when people really like stuff they really like stuff some of the a lot of this is cosmetics and as Chad was saying earlier a big focus for a lot of players

is styles sure and being able to get access to the latest you know auras or chromas is a big deal getting materials is exciting you get memberships we do memberships as well none of these are required

but it's how we've been able to fund the game so far yeah it's basically play the game for free if you'd like it. If you'd like to look a little better while you're here, you know, you can purchase some stuff. Yeah. And it's worked, obviously, for 13 years. I think that's the, not even question, but like, because I know you won't, because you can't probably. But if you want to, how many people are playing these universe online? And I imagine you're not going to give me a real number, understandably. But like, are, is it just that you found

the number of people and supporters similar to us with Patreon and subscriptions and all that, that just this is what makes it work. This is what makes it work. This is what makes it. the game be able to continue on and be a financial success. Do you even know the number? I know the number. Okay, good. Can you say it? Nobody could just say. I'm not going to say the number. Yeah, this is a good way for me. Yeah, I'm going to have a great conversation Monday morning. If I give them a lot. No, look, it's obviously enough for us to do what we're doing. More players would be better always, right? I got one right there. Matt says, downloading it right now. So you're all saying. There you go. Well, there we go.

Never mind. There we go. Matt did it. We got Matt. We got Matt, everybody. We got Matt. And now we're going to be able to... Our work here's done. Well, there we go. Matt Grover is going to stay the day. That release work you wanted to get in. And I said, we just didn't have enough. Now we do.

Yeah, perfect. So we can get working on it right away. Love it. We should call it the Matt episode. Yeah, yeah. Give Matt Grover, Savior of DC Universe online. Oh, there you go. Now, see, now people, J.T. Besta says, yeah, I'm downloading it to.

Red Hudson, and I'm hopping back in two. Mac Grover says I'll hold the line. Yes, yes. Good. It's a movement now. Keep it. Oh, I'm loving this. I want to talk about the new episode.

I want to talk about what people are getting into today because it's obviously out this week brand new. But first, of course, ladies and gentlemen, I'll remind you about the Kind of Funny membership. Of course, either on YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny or Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny games. You can kick us $10, get good karma, help this independent organization of 11 people doing live talk shows

each and every day. Roll on. Of course, in return, you get each and every episode of our shows ad-free. The ability to watch us record the afternoon podcast, like in review today, ad-free. and of course you could get the daily Greg Way video vlog slash podcast experience. However, you're not using your kind of funny membership right now. So here's a word from our sponsor.

This episode's brought to by BetterHelp. We all carry around different stressors, big and small. I'm currently planning a wedding so I know all about that. But when we keep them bottled up, it can start to affect us negatively. Therapy helps you find your strengths so you can ditch the extreme resolutions and make changes that really stick. You can get out of your negative thought cycle. and find some mental and emotional peace and it can give you the tools to find more balance in your life

so you can keep supporting others without leaving yourself behind. Some of my best friends use BetterHelp and love how helpful it can be for learning positive coping skills and how to set boundaries. It empowers you to be the best version of yourself and it isn't just for those who've experienced major trauma. If you're thinking of starting therapy,

give BetterHelp a try. It's entirely online, designed to be convenient, flexible, and suited to your schedule. Just fill out a brief questionnaire to get matched with a licensed therapist and switch therapist at any time for no additional charge. Celebrate the progress you've already made.

Visit betterhelp.com slash kind of funny today to get 10% off your first month. That's BetterHelp, help.com slash kind of funny. And we're back. Gentlemen, as I said right before we went away, of course, Brainiac Returns is the newest episode. Just dropped this week.

Congratulations. It must be interesting to relaunch it feels like a game every quarter or whatever it is when you have a new episode coming out. For people who don't know, I thought we'd watch the trailer that debuted here and they'd talk a little bit about

what's happening in it and what people can get out of it. So, Kev, hit it. Idiac, the earth belongs to humankind. A grave threat moves over Washington, D.C. The earth belongs to the one who would remember it after everyone else is gone.

Dude, D.C. looks dope, destroy. United Force isn't the unlikeliest of it. And yet, you don't remember this. We always stop you. You cannot stop me when and where you do not exist. The next steps of my plan no longer involve you. Protect Earth against all odds. Just beating up on them.

You know what I mean? Come on. And prove yourself against Brady Expo. Future subjects, I will make myself unstoppable. I will restore the timeline. It's crazy. And you will witness it in its place. perfection to see how far the games come. You know what I mean? I was out there just

beaten up gorillas and robots. You know what I mean? And there's Starro floating around out there. This is happening. Is DC a new environment? Because I hadn't seen that. No, it's, it's, well, it's a return to an existing environment. Okay. Yeah, yeah. In fact, a lot of this has been a return to, uh, to content to form. When you said kind of resetting or relaunching, I think that's a good way of putting it for the team as well as just what we were building. It's kind of a nice jump in point for people who may or may not have played earlier in the last 13 years. We want to kind of jump that back in and and reintroduce Brainiac back to.

I was going to say right, because like he'd been defeated previously. Yeah, well, he was the big threat. That's the big bad. He's the whole reason future Lex came and dropped the exotypes on everybody and gave us all the ability to go out there and become superheroes, right? And so it's been interesting, you know, as the content comes. And again, are we still numbering episodes? Are we not numbering episodes?

Yeah, yeah, this is episode 47. 47. We'd like to, yeah, but we're moving more toward just the titles. That's cool. At this point, it's like, look, we don't need to, we don't need to keep track just to prove it to ourselves. We just want people to feel comfortable. I just wanted to prove it to them.

That is like, if you aren't paying attention across 13 years, there's been 14, episodes of D.L.C. that have come. And again, as a comic book nerd, there's the original content that involves the story. Sure, you do stuff that is Dark Night's, Dark Night Metal, right? Where you'd bring in all the people and have all these different suits and styles and all that jazz, let alone the characters in there, let alone all the Wonder Woman content you had for so long. That was so good, right? Shout to Susan Eisenberg. We love you. Like, it's a game that has evolved in gone so many places, but has really gone into unique places in the DC universe, right?

Where I think it would be easy to sit there and just be a Superman story, a Wonder Woman story, a Batman story. There's a lot of Batman content. But you know what I mean? But you've done Teen Titans. You've done this thing. You've gone that direction and really, I think, blown it up in such an interesting way. But to come out here and talk to us about Brainiac returning, that's the core story from 13 years ago, right, that we all did and had fun with.

Yeah, it's super excited. Yeah, that's what I do. Yeah, not much similar to add to that. That's exactly correct. I think that was a big push for us last year when we were talking about what we wanted to do for this episode. And I think we talked, we had a few different ideas. This one came out and we jumped on it and said, okay, let's do this for the next episode, set up a new future for the game and just get back into areas that we wanted to go back and retouch up.

That's a lot of it. A lot of it. There's this, we like to go back to areas that we could do a little bit more. with and we're like, let's give ourselves an excuse to go back. I remember being very excited when we started talking about the episode just because we were like, you know, there was a lot of brainstorming at the beginning and they were like, well, what's brain not going to do when he returns? And at some point, someone was like, well, he should be bottling something and be like, well, he's bottled cities already. What if he

invades a new city? I was pushing for Central City because I was like, oh, I want to see that. I want to see the Flash Museum. You guys. You guys have such a nice Flash museum. It's so great. Yeah. And someone was like, well, what about the Hall of Justice? Yeah. I was like, yes, actually, the Hall of Justice. And what he bottles the White House, about like, you know, the capital.

Took a piece out of the Washington monument there I saw. Yeah. I think, yeah, I think there's some narrative storytelling there

where the Hall of Doom has come through the air and flipped it and then crashed over in the one of my favorite comments yesterday after the release was you can climb the monument. 10 out of 10.

10 out of 10 can climb the monument. Yeah, that was the first thing I did when I got to make sure you can do it. I don't look around. I was excited about Hall of Justice when I realized we'd never actually

had a, interior of the Hall of Justice. Not for our dimension. We did one for fifth dimension. But not for the core prime dimension. Yeah, it's real exciting to go in there. How complicated is the lore right now when you go? Like, is there a giant Bible or is there one person who's paying attention to all of it?

Yeah, a lot of it's tribal knowledge, but also a lot of it is just documented in the game. But we have like, you know, we have a wiki on site where everything is sort of stored. And so, yeah, it's a lot of work to keep track of. There's two or three people on the team that that are. absolute nutters about the lore. You know who I'm thinking of right away. And we can't, you can't mention anything without him dropping two or three references to something we'd either forgotten about or never knew about. And then when you get into art assets or whatever, like, hey, why don't we introduce this? Oh, we did back, you know, in 2013. There's a few folks

that have been on the team for well before launch. They worked at the previous games at the studio, too. Sure. I've got at least one engineer that's been here a couple decades. Oh yeah. God damn. Yeah. That's insane. Oh yeah. He's been through three, four studio name changes.

That's true. It's got a lot of difference. That tends to happen. That says to happen. Yeah, yeah. So many different shirts. So again, walking through for Braiannecker turns, it's free like all the other episodes. Then you got two new raids, the Hall of Justice, the Brainiac Command Ship, a new

Alert, Hall of Doom, new duo, overrun Area 51, a new open world map, the bottle DC, new new feats, collections, and rewards, two new gear suits inspired by the episode. That's a lot. It does seem like a lot. Yeah, yeah. I mean, but that's what we like to do. We want this content. We want to play it.

We want to make it. So, like, everyone is very ambitious. This is one of the things that I think that we struggle with. It sounds like a humble brag. We struggle with wanting to do too much. But it is true. No, that is actually one of the main reasons I'm here. You're here to keep us from binding off too much.

Yeah, the constant push and pull between the levers of time and scope. You know, you get one, I get the other. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Design is yes and, and production is, yes if. We're like, yes, and we can do this too. And he's like, yes, if you cut this. I feel like that's always been the case.

You know, I mean, again, since I was there doing the previews, since I was there during the beta, you know, I mean, talking to J. Andersson, S.J. Mueller, MEPs, right? Like, you go through this and it's always, we have plans for all of this, but this is what we're trying to get out right now and make work. Yeah. I'm glad to see that tradition lives on. You guys what are you saying?

No, if you leave me an open mic, I'm going to start. nerding out about production. I want you to. No, absolutely. That is, that is, I will nerd out about it for days. Okay. So did you want to hear about agile processes? No, buddy. Oh, I'll start teaching a CSM course right here. Um, no, no. Was it agile? Tell me. No, I want to, I love hearing how games get made. Oh, Chad. Oh, you've, you've done it now. Oh, sorry. I'm sorry. No, there's, there's, lots of different ways that projects are done and the big difference, the, the big two are waterfall versus, say, agile types. And it's just a philosophy that changes away from, the idea of planning everything and steps up early to prioritizing work you want to work on

and then constantly being able to shift that work around throughout the process. So back when I first got into the industry, everything was done with huge 300-page game design documents. And then I remember after a third or fourth game I shipped, I sat down with my lead designer, my lead QA, a couple of other people. And I said with highlighters, let's go through this and identify everything that actually made it in the game, it was like 15%. Yeah. I was like, we worked so hard to plan this for months before we ever started doing any work. Now the idea is let's jump in right away, start prototyping immediately.

Let's start figuring out what works and doesn't work early on in the process so we don't spend a lot of extra effort going down the wrong path. And so that's one of the changes I've been bringing in pretty quickly. Chad's team has been pretty quick to it, but systems always adapt to new tools. We love process. I've seen a lot of people in chat who both some of them love Agile, love talking about this, and other ones are like, man, am I at work? What's happening here?

Yeah, might have. I can't get away now. That stuff's great. A lot of scrum, too. Yeah. I think there's just a lot of interesting opinions, even within the industry, about what is a producer, and there is no one answer. There's a musical about it, right?

That should explain everything. Yeah, that's exactly. So you'll all be here next week for my musical. It's going to be fantastic. we've been doing a lot of lapsed fan, new fan conversation, right? Because of course, lapsed, excited to go back in there, see it all today.

New fans asking questions there, talking about brainiac returns available now, of course, free to play, download it, so you can play with me and Mike. And of course, you can get the fallen god cosmetic on our stream today. We'll be giving away codes. Kevin, show the asset. I caught him off guard on that one. No, look at that. You can't get Kevin off guard. And he's quick.

Yeah. Again, very cool. Very nice. You know, I remember it was a big deal when Taylor got her Superman suit. All right. I had to play many, many, many, many, many hours to get that, though. All right. So you're all cheating it if you do it that way.

I'm just letting you know, no big deal. Because I remember, like, you talked about it, right? Like having a mentor from the big three, right? And legitimately, when I finally got the call, right, of, like, Oracle being like, Superman wants to see you in the holiday. Like, you know, I did it. That was a big moment for me to step into the watchtower, you know, Trinity room and go over and talk to Superman.

so many screenshots back in the day. I think, because yeah, PS3 didn't have a screenshot feature, right? So it was me literally taking photos of the screen. Oh, that's whenever they had,

like, the glass wall, you had to get inside. Yeah, you could always see them, but you couldn't get to them until you finish the story. I want to be in the room where it happens. Yeah, in the room where it happens. Yeah, exactly.

Like, that was such a huge thing. Getting the Superman symbol for Taylor was such a huge thing. When you finally added lantern powers, I switched over a lantern. You'll see that in a little bit. No big deal. We'll talk about that. However, though,

I don't want just lapsed questions. I don't want any of that stuff. Kevin, can we throw up the DC Universe Online roadmap? Of course, Ken, when you took over in March, you put up a great producer letter, introducing yourself talking about what's going on. And you then also threw up the, you put up, you know, throw up. You're not, you're not, G. Harris. But there was a lot of input, a lot of leadership on this, particularly from our new creative director.

Sure. Who helped really, this is where I want to go with this. And so you can see obviously where we're at and where we're going, right? and the fact that, again, you as a team, are doing so well about talking about what you want right there. So you see Q2, 2024, right there, Brainiac Returns. You nailed an episode. Fantastic. When you look at this, are we still on track for all of this?

I want to make sure I'm serving the hardcore fans. I have treks like questions in here for hardcore fans. Are we still on track for all this? Are you still happy with everything? I think we're on track for most of it. Okay. And we're always adjusting as we need to. And as we adjust when the next letter comes out,

we'll be talking about where we are again. Of course. The balance of this is I want to tell more of what we're doing and be more transparent, but at the same time, anything I say out loud is a blood promise that I have signed the team up to deliver. Sure. And so that's always going to be the problem. And I know a big part of my job is protecting my team.

Of course. Sometimes from themselves, but often from me or anyone else. Making a promise is like writing a check for an account I don't actually have money in. Yeah. And I just have to make sure that they can cover or it bounces. So I think we're on track for most of it. I think there's a couple of things on there that we're in the process of reassessing. But I think, yeah, generally speaking, that roadmap is still pretty good.

Have you found, you make the joke about Blood Promise, right? But you are 13 years into this. The game is 13 years into this. You're still new. Has the audience given the DCUO team daybreak any, like, benefit of the doubt of like, we know you're working on it. Thank you for the map. But if it changed, like, I feel like when we talk. We have very passionate players. Yeah. We have very passionate players. And that, that itself is great. Any feedback is good. Even the feedback that's coming back. I am okay

with them holding our feet to the fire. Sure. I really am. So no, they do give us a benefit of doubt when we earn it. And when we don't, they hold us to it. And I'm okay with that too. I, I'm a passionate player. Chad's a passionate player. This isn't our only game. And when we play other games, we get just as frustrated. We get frustrated with our own game. Sure. When things aren't, things aren't working the way we want them to. And I don't want to have to come in and be light about the feedback with the team and they don't want to be light with each other. So, no, I love it when the players come at us a little hard. Sometimes my job is taking those hits on the chin so that the team doesn't have to deal with it. Other times,

it's figuring out a way to moderate that feedback back to them. I think it's better when we get feedback that's actionable. Sure. Right. You know, it's, it's good to know you, you hate something in some ways. It's good to know you love things. I love it more when you tell me what bothers you or what you love, because that gives us something we can, we can hone in on. What Chad said earlier about, I really wanted to dig in on that waiter and find out, you know, what he loved and didn't like. That is, that is always, we live and breathe, what can we do better? What can we do different? Okay. Well, speaking of holding you to fire, I reached out to my boy, DC Universe online expert Trex Light. Trex has been with me a long time. We've called him on Games Daily before for questions.

I'm sure you are. I'm sure. Yeah, he's a good guy. He's very fair. He sent you six questions. All right. The Trex six, we'll call him. You can take him in lightning if you want, lightning fast, clear your mind, be ready. Okay, don't look ahead. Number one. Number one, are there plans for a better leveling experience? The introduction to the omnibus in the the on-duty menu has been great to streamline improvements, but can we expect the same for existing open-world content? I don't want to get into that publicly yet. Fair enough? I would say that we're always discussing leveling.

I think it's very fair to say that we're constantly having discussions within the team on better experience for players. Is that the leveling is one thing. The question, what stands out to me, knowing the on-duty menu, right, knowing what he's talking about here for jumping into stuff. is there a I don't know a struggle but is it that you think so much about

episodic content in what you're doing in raids and duos and alerts that the open world is something that's doing its own thing or is just what it is and there's still villains have gotten fight like is there is do you see them a separate things or do you think about them holistically? Are you asking about the the current open world or the leveling one to 30 metropolis Gotham open worlds?

I was talking about the current open world. No we sort of consider that to be part of the episode launch. Okay. as narratively it ties into it like all of its rewards tie into it so it's very intertwined into the crime and then for one to 30 you think of

that's the main campaign storyline yeah I do you know it's interesting like how we've kind of switched our formatting a little bit from like expanding on because we had episodes that expanded on like the south of Gotham right like if you're a new player and you wander into the south of Gotham you're like why am I dying

you guys what else happening over here launch content so that's one of the risks with that is that the new players will bump into that if they're not already bumping into like bizarreo or something some level 60 or 30 guy running around wrecking them. We've all been there. If we all gang up now, still kill this.

Still kill this all. A lot of MMOs have solved that problem with phasing, right? Where there are like some players will see this and some players will see that. And so because we all want to like, we want the world to change and evolve. We want DC to be like, you know, sunny and pristine whenever Lex is doing his thing and then covered in brainiac bottles whenever there's an invasion. And so one of the best ways to do that is just to branch off into different open worlds. Okay.

staying in this lane lane of questioning line of questioning uh treks the second one can we see improvements to open world content open world content currently doesn't feel quote unquote alive like other mimos is the in this again is somebody who's lapsed but understands are we looking to improve open worlds and make it feel better populated feel more uh intertwined i'd say we're always yes the short answer is yes the longer answer is when and i'm not giving that that's fair we're always discussing it. Yes, we always want to do better and improvement. That's an easy question. Am I out of line that

for me when you guys move to the episodic stuff, when you change the way episodes rolled out and it was just jump in, we'll buff you, right? I always took that as, oh, this is a great way to get the audience in one place. Like what you're talking about, right? Where there is an open world for this episode. So yeah, we all be there. Rather than, yeah, you know, for me

playing the game, but back then, even now, right? I'm not just running around Metropolis anymore. I was, obviously, when I was leveling, but that was years ago. Yeah, I think it does two things, right? One, we want players to see the new stories, see the new content, see the best stuff that we think we have to offer. And two, also focus people there so that, like,

when you're trying to take down a big open world boss, you have help. Yeah. Okay. Number three, you're halfway through after this one. Is there anything you can mention in terms of balancing for powers not tied to artifacts or allies? No. Just there's something to think about. No, he says it's just cut you out.

You're kidding. But I'm not. No. No, it is something we think about. It's, you know, we want to keep an eye on balance. We want to, like, you know, make sure that some, that everything falls in line. But it's a challenging problem because there are so many powers, right? There's like, you know, 50 classes.

Each one has got about 25 to 30 abilities. And so it's not, it's a daunting task, but it's something that we are constantly looking at and thinking. And feedback always helps. Like, thank goodness for the forms. Thank goodness for the players talking about it. Like, we need that. And we need to know, like, both that and our internal data and using that to sort of high-level assess what we need to, what steps we need to take. That's a great point.

There's what we hear and what people are asking for, and that's what they're actually doing in the game at a large level, and finding a balance between those two. Someone was saying on the team last night. Yeah, I know who it was. But look for the data first, and then when the data is not showing something we can immediately understand, start looking to where the feedback is differentiating that and show us. We need both. We need both. They're just, they're taken in different ways.

Okay. Number four. How can you improve the balance between time capsules and the marketplace? I don't even understand what, I don't remember what a time capsule is. What are we doing there? It's like a time capsule is. A booster gold has gathered up like random things throughout the multiverse and throw them into this time capsule and they need

they're unstable because of quantum tiny, whiny stuff. And you need stabilizers to focus on them. Stabilizers can be gained on the marketplace. My thought about this is that we generally need to have a mixture of these sort of like random boxes and direct purchases to sort of assess people's needs and make sure that everyone sort of give us a loan on. So you can go buy like a layer directly on the marketplace.

Yeah. So just having options, I think, is the best thing. Okay. This is another marketplace question. He did these very logically. Can you add corks to the marketplace to be purchased to allow players better accessibility to the time capsules catch up vendor, the great booster rule? This is a great example of a player asking for a specific thing,

which I think as game designers, one of the skills you have to learn is how to look at a question and be like, you know, what's the real problem? Like, what do you actually... What's the root of it? Yeah, what's the roots. So trying to get to the root of this one. What they want are often different.

This is the first time I've ever seen this question and immediately thinking things like maybe the real problem is that, because you obviously open time capsules to get corks. And if you don't want anything else in it, you just pull corks, that's how you get corks in the marketplace. There is a vector, but maybe it's too slow. Maybe you don't want to, like,

if you want enough corks to buy this, thing. Sure. Like, I don't know. I've just had an idea here on this set today. It may come to nothing. That's what ideas do half the time. Yeah.

Who knows? Maybe there's like a direct purchase for just getting a bunch of them. Okay. Because then we'll go back. We'll have this discussion. Arenas will open. Weapons will be drawn. And then the best idea will win.

And there'll be a lot of guess if. Yep. All right. And then your final question is, will we see new weapons or powers in the game? I mean, I just mentioned it. We're going to go back, open up arenas, draw weapons. I think new weapons. new weapons or powers.

We're, man, we were just having this discussion not that, not that long ago. We're always talking about bringing a new weapons or powers, but I think this goes back to, there's already a lot. Sure. There's already a lot. And so there's a balance between, yeah, we'd, you know, if it was up to us, we'd do everything, right? If it was easy, we'd just have everything in the game.

It'd just be great, right? Everything available. Part of it is, it's not so much technical. Sometimes it's balance. Like, is this a good idea to have another? Does it make sense? Does it fit the DC universe? Right?

Is this a power set that's even found within DC? But if there are power sets, which ones do we like and which ones are something that we want to invest the time in? Because everything we want to build requires us to do something. That is a finite resource. I only have so many chats. We only have so many people on the team. We only have so much time per. release per year. And so it's really just a prioritization. But if the question is, are we going to

see new? I think the answer is probably, but it's just a matter of what if and when. Sure. Sure. I think also, too, like there must be a, you want people who are invested with their characters to have something to do, I imagine, right? And most people are invested in their power set, right? Like, I remember way back in the day when I showed Taylor Swift a Yens, he was like, oh, you should have made her a speedster. I'm like, absolutely not. He's like, it would have a great turn a phrase though I'm like I don't care she's gonna fly because I like Superman right it's like it was a big deal when you guys introduced lantern powers

that I switched over to lantern powers because I felt like I was leaving a legacy behind or a new movement style or a new anything we're always wanting to do more it's just only so much we can do at any given time sure and what's gonna what's going to how is it going to interact with the things that are already in the game

okay well gentlemen thank you so much for your time today thank you so much for being stewards of DC Universe Online and keeping it going, hopefully for another 13 years. Thanks for being a champion, a minimum. Yeah, minimum, yeah. No, please, it's my pleasure. And again, like, you know, I feel like I'm,

I'm very excited for the stream we're about to do with Mike because Mike and me are both lapsed players. Like Mike put in a lot of time, not as much as me. But I had, you know, since my, God, it was during COVID where I had another one where I fell off the wagon and I was in it for like three weeks, like nonstop every night. I've been coming back to the game since launch.

Yeah. Yeah. You know, and those characters are still waiting for, me like old friends. Good way to put it. Ladies and gentlemen, thank you for being our old friends. Remember, of course, the Kind of Funny Games cast comes to you each and every weekday live on Twitch, YouTube and podcast services around the globe.

If you like what you saw today or like it in general, don't let my frame break. You can go over and get a Kind of Funny membership on patreon.com. On Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny games to get all of our shows ad free. Get your daily exclusive Greg WaveLog slash podcast. and of course get to watch us record the afternoon podcast lives. We record them. Like I said, in review, Furiosa is coming up this afternoon. And of course, right now we're going to pop off, switch it over for Mike to start streaming.

We'll probably have lunch and then get in there and see what's happening with Brainiac returning. Until next time, ladies gentlemen, remember DC Universe Online is free to play. You can get it and go download it like so many people did. We're playing on PlayStation 5 so you can go do that. Maybe we'll kickstart the old kind of funny Super Friends League once more and get you on there. But we'll see you on the stream. if you're watching later or listening later, it's been a pleasure to serve you.

Bye, everybody. Good job, guys.