Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - PlayStation Meeting Predictions and No Man's Sky - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 81

Episode Date: August 19, 2016

Predicting PlayStation's next conference, try to review No Man's Sky, talk about video game inside sources, and discuss playing games on easy. (Released to Patreon Supporters 08.12.16) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys, welcome to the first ever episode 81 of the Kind of Funny Games cast. As always, I'm Tim Geddes, joined by the coolest dudes in video games, Colin Moriarty, and Greg Miller. How do they get away with this, too? I don't understand. How are you feeling with this Galgun? I still need to play more of it to get a real opinion of it on you for you. It's exactly what Galgan was. I knew what Galgan was going to be.

I played the Xbox 360 import version with one Tina Sanchez at one up with Jeremy Parrish on my side. I knew what it was going to be, shooting these girls. making them get all weak in the knees, flush in the face, make orgasm noises and fall down. That's what it is. That's what I got. I haven't played a lot of it. I haven't played enough to tell you if I'm going to platinum it or not going to platinum it.

I still like the idea of it, but then I get on the planes and I fall asleep. I saw it throw out on the kind of funny Facebook group. Yeah. It was like, is Greg Miller serious about this Galica stuff? I don't know anymore. I don't know. I've gone around the bend on it. But this book, man.

Good Lord. Can you describe it? Pornographic. Pornographic. Describe what you're seeing. Right now. Right now I'm looking at a girl in her school uniform and then on the other one of just her and her brawn panties. Yeah.

And the panties are not covering everything. It's one of those like, but I mean like she's young. Too young. That's what I was telling calling it. I'm all down for this anime stuff, but this too far. That's way too far. Now that's an angel though. She's like probably a million years old.

She's like a million years old probably. Our angels old. Now this one, this is concept art. Mm-hmm. And I'll tell you what, man. That's a lot, something. That is something going on there. That is something.

It's how I see the world. This is kind of pretty games cast every week. We join together to talk about video games. And all the stuff around video games and surrounding video games. And why we like them? Why we don't like them sometimes? A whole bunch of stuff. What's up?

Do you want to talk about why we're using the old microphones and Kevin's using the old board? We're using using old microphones and Kevin is using this tiny little board that is kind of embarrassing, really. Because we're geared up. Nick Scarpine is to sit right here and use that thing. For the kind of funny studio launch that is upcoming. You'll hear more about. that soon. Imminately. Imminent.

Her about this. All that's terrible. It's very exciting stuff. So please bear with us for the audio that is, I'm sure, unbearable. I'm sure it's fine. It's fine, but it'll be worse than usual. So Lou Turbo somewhere is pounding his head against the wall. He's super upset. Anyways, you can get this show

early on patreon.com slash kind of funny games alongside a whole multitude of goodies. Or you can be like, you know what, I don't want the goodies. And go to YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. We are once again really close to hitting 200 thousand subscribers over there. Maybe we won't get lost a lot.

In the great... Thousands unsubscribe again so we can just play this game constantly. It's like Groundhogs then. I want to stay at 190,000. We're constantly rolling the boulder up the hill. So we're getting there. Thank you for that. Really, really do appreciate that. And of course, thank you all the patrons, including Stephen Inzler.

The boy. For being the Patreon producer of the show once again. Now... Spoilers. He did it for the next month, too. Oh, yeah. I got to... Can I just say something about Stephen Insler? I appreciate it, and I respect it? You don't have to do this forever. Don't listen to. You have to.

He makes the show happen, man. We appreciate your respect. He does, but I'm just saying, I feel bad. Has anybody heard from Stephen Insler? Is my question. I worry, he died. I think he's never, like, hit me up on Twitter. I feel like he should. We're boys now. I feel like I have heard from Stephen Insler, but I'm probably making that up. You just hear his name every week.

There's the other dude from San Diego, Stephen Oostler, or something like that. I think I met him, actually. You have. At Polite. Yes. Like when I was just there, incidentally. Oh, it makes sense. Makes sense.

Anyway, he's a good dude. So, I want to talk about No Man Sky. Neiman Sky. No man sky. If you want to glimpse into what it's like to be, Colin and Greg living at this house, everybody left yesterday. And we just laid in our different beds from the other room. You're like, no, man's in different voices. And we were cracking up.

Like, it was the funny. I wasn't even playing it. But brutal. So you guys, you guys did a little kind of a breakdown of your early impression. Super early impressions. On PS I Love You, XOXO. You can find that over on this beautiful YouTube channel. YouTube.com slash cravany games.

But now you guys put a little bit more time into it. What's the status update from you guys? I have. I finally got to dive more. You haven't played any, right? I played a little over an hour of the game so far. Last night I played brutal instead. Gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

The last two nights I played that game. No, I've been doing it, you know, when we lead up to Nimitzke. What we've been saying a lot is, and when I say we em in me, is that I saw this maybe being a game, I put 30 minutes into before bed every night, did something like that. And usually I say stuff like that and then just gorge on a game

and totally ignore that I ever said that. This has actually been what's happening. He's like, I'll get in there. I'll actually chip away for 15, 30 minutes, come back to it, go out there to do that. It's a horrible way to play this game. It is a horrible way to play this game. I feel like I am making no progress.

And this is a game that makes you feel like you're making no progress, period, right? Like you don't play no man Scott. No man sky. I can't say normal though. No man sky and like, you know, check off all these boxes, do all these things, complete all these quests,

you're going from planet to planet trying to figure all this stuff. So my update is, yeah, I'm probably another hour, hour and a half from where I was on PSL of UX OXO. I just got my hyperdrive up and running. I just used it for the first time

to jump out of the system I was in into this other place, go over there, see what's happening there. I'm learning the ins and outs now of selling material or buying new things, how to communicate with, I walked in to the first space station.

There's some goddamn alien back there. Looks totally made up. Probably was. I don't think he's a real alien. And he's, he's there and they're like you know he he you know you don't understand their languages right you're just you're as you learn you get words from them you start deciphering more and more and more which is a cool cool thing I think but out there and he's like he's yeah he you know you get little

description have you seen this where you get like you'll talk to somebody or as something will happen and you get the the text from your character up here like a journal entry of like how he's feeling or how he's reading the situation like you know this alien that he can't understand is acting angry and da da da da and he points at your gun or whatever and so pops up and it's like you know give the guy your gun refuse your gun and I'm like I'm like I'm a guest on the space station. I just got here. I give him the gun.

He then gives me a better gun. And he was like, oh, it wasn't the way we expected it to go, was it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. He's like, how are you traveling? Yeah, yeah. How are you doing this with that? Andy, you got a bad gun. I give you better gun before I come home.

See, I mean, do you see him actually animate angrily? Like, did you get that sense? No, they kind of, no, they kind of look around. There's not like any facial animation, anything like that. But that was cool and that was, you know, I was finally feeling like, okay, something's happening. But then it, I went, you know, I got that. I got the hyperdrive.

new plan on land it's different it looks really beautiful you know that's the one thing about the game it's gorgeous there's you know i really like the style of it uh see new animals do all this different stuff but then it's just back to collecting and stuff and it was that first thing of like i'm in this weird spot right now where i feel like tonight'll be the first time i unless i go to trivue with con where i get a few hours to actually sit down and play it consecutively before i pass out and that'll be the real test to see how into it i am because i have this thing where i play it for the 15 30 minutes i'm going to give it and i'm like all right this is okay i'm feel like I'm finally getting, oh, I can only held 12 things, that sucks.

And I got to, what am I going to go? Do I break this down? Is that more important? I go in, I'm still, at a glance, I still don't know, like, what I need of, like, wait, does this help my life support, which is always dropping so crazily? Or is it going to help me, help the ship or the fuel or whatever? I always have it, but I feel like I'm always in comfort. You still learning the rules.

Exactly. Of the world. But the thing about it is, now that I do this first, you know, I think two or three runs now where it's like, all right, cool, I got some stuff. And I'll go back to the space station. I got some stuff. back and forth, back and forth. It's just like, I need now another carrot at the end of the stick.

I need to know what I do with all this. Because if this is all it's going to be, you know, doing this, getting a better weapon, all right, cool, I'm improving this. I can travel further. I don't know if I'm going to stick around much longer. And not that I'm saying the game's bad, just because I think, I don't know if that's what I'm looking for right now. Yeah, so what's interesting about that, I see a common thread with a lot of people's thoughts on this game are the people that just want to be in a world seem to be super happy about it. but the people that like the Ubisoft style games,

the checklists, and you're just like collecting things with a sense of completion. This is not that. This is a game you're not going to 100% because it's not possible. You know, it's just more about collecting things, not to collect them all,

just to collect the things. Yeah, well, it's that and it's like incremental upgrades, right? If it is, okay, cool, now I have a better gun. Okay, now if I keep doing this and get a better ship and now I can get a better hyperdrive. And, you know, okay, cool, I can craft this thing that allows me to run longer. And, like, that's all cool,

and allows me my gun not to overheat it's fast. and I'm interested in all that in making my explore the best explorer possible but it's also you know the servers are totally fucked as a recording so you get on there there's no connectivity so I haven't named anything I haven't had that experience where I'm like oh cool I'm

you know did you see Anthony Carboni's video Anthony Carboney put up this video everyone should go watch it Kevin if you can put it in the description that'd be great over on his channel which I hope is Anthony Carbone but who hell knows find him on Twitter he put up a video that's a PSA like with the sad music behind it or whatever where he talks about how he you know

got to do a whole much of content beforehand working with Hello games or whatever and he named all the animals Anthony like oh it's a sea Anthony and this is this and then so he started the hashtag save the anthony and he's asking everybody who finds a creature to name it some version of Anthony and so now he's retweeting all these people doing that I'm like I want to do that I want to get in there to be part of this but I can't right now I'm just like oh cool it's a name I have no idea how to pronounce and whatever that's awesome though I saw a bunch of tweets of just T-Rexes there's just straight up a T-Rex they put there well and it's like you know I in that that is the thing I'm

like you already have those wisps of the the game. Like right now, even where I'm like, I don't know if this, I still want to go play it. I still, I keep,

today, you know, I woke up super early for some reason, answered a bunch of emails, got through some other stuff, great. And it was like, I had time before you guys came over. I was like,

I want to play. So I jumped in and played for, you know, the 15 minutes. But again, it's just, I don't feel like I'm making real progress in that time. And I don't know if it'll be

that once I sit down and have a one marathon a session of like, oh, this is how this works and I should, these are just to be traded in, and da-ta-da-da. If once that all clicks and it can become this thing that I'm popping back and forth into,

it won't be as big a deal. I like what I've seen. I'm just worried about how long it'll keep me. But then again, you know, to the T-Rex thing, you know, I landed on this planet, got out of the thing and then like all these spiders started attacking me. And I was like, oh, Jesus. And I ran over to do what I needed. Did whatever I did.

You know, put the stuff back in my life support, talk to the guy, got the thing I needed to get my warp drive working, jump back out. Started trying to shoot the spiders. That scared him off. But then the sentinels were coming over. Jesus, fucking ran over, got into my ship. And just as that happened, literally a dinosaur ran up to the window of the ship was like chilling outside. I'm like, uh-huh, fuck you.

And I go to hit the thrusters and it's like, you're out of thruster gas. I'm like, God damn it. Fuck, what am I going to do? And I went through and I find that I had some and did it and got the hell out of there. But it's like, that's a cool experience. And I do want that. And it's like, I will come back for that. But I'm worried if it is just land, gather, go, land, gather, go.

And it's, but it is that thing. I say that. And at the same time, I finally got the hyperdrive, right? Got to the new place. got into the new space station and went to their thing and they have all the different prices for all that stuff and I was like fuck why didn't I write down what was selling at a higher price

at the other space station so then I could go harvest whatever I need to there or buy whatever here and go flip it and just sit here and I'm like why didn't I just sit here for 30 minutes doing this over and over and over again in this loop so I had unlimited money I'm like I want to do that I want to spend a night just sitting there

getting millions of space bucks or whatever the hell it's called you're great on the black market of no man's guy yeah but I mean like that's the fun of that game is going in and that's the thing is like yeah it doesn't necessarily have the ubysoft checkboxes right there is you jump over like you know where it tells you i keep doing things it's like new accomplishment and it's like you know you've met this many aliens or this has happened or you've taken you know gone this far very cool you can go track all that in there there is the thing of like when it is get your hyper drive running it is get this thing get the

fuel do this you know go into space and there are checkboxes there that pop up but right now for me it's not super accessible for that right because it was like it's and i i i like this and don't right there is no handholding in the game which is interesting which in i and you know it's definitely not what the modus operandi is for games at this day and age so to get in there and have it be like i was like all right cool oh crap i got to do this i'm a sell all this stuff i don't think it's important and i'd sell that i have enough i bought the the hyperdrive and then it was like now you got to get you got to get a warp cell and i was like i like looked around the thing could i buy a warp cell It's like, you know, it's one of the red with the white lightning bolts.

I'm like, I see those down there when I'm getting. So I left. And then it was, you know, the beacon from somebody or distress signal. I went over to him that pushed the story forward that way. But it was that thing of like, am I going to know how to get this? When am I going to fit? And now I've done that, right? And I've jumped for the first time.

And now it's like, all right, cool. Now you have to get the recipe to make your own warp cells. And it's like, okay, but where do I get that? And it's all there. I'm going to find it clearly because I was able to get this far without anything. But it's just this interesting thing of it's not. All right, here's your white line. Go straight to this.

This is exactly what you need to do. And you need to exactly talk to this person. You'll be able to buy this. I got a big question for you, Greg. Sure. Is it fun? What's your definition of fun? No.

It's your answer. I mean, it is, it is, but it's definitely not fun for everyone, right? You know what I mean? Like, I, I, I enjoy Minecraft. I really, really like Minecraft, and that's not for everybody. And this isn't obviously not building like that. But it is the, as much as I'm like, as it just re-sor, as soon as I find the exploit,

or not even the exploit, but just the one that, literally this is a great way to make money, I'm going to do that, and I'll sit there and put on a podcast and do that over and over again, like I didn't, when I just tunneled into the ground

in Minecraft for no reason, and it got super like, I'm going to build it up by this many blocks, by this many blocks, and put it up here, and I want to put a hole there, and then I'm like, I'm going to, give me 16 ovens.

I want to cook all this sand to make glass, because I suddenly want a glass seat, you know what I mean? Like, there is that to it, And as soon as it gets to the point of like, okay, cool, I understand how to get a way better ship, and I'm going to start building to that ship because I do want to do this. Because right now, one of my annoyances is the fact that it feels like your life support systems,

your oxygen tank, your fire resistance, your fuel goes so fast, go so, so, so fucking fast. That's the point. That's the curve of the game, right? Is that I am in this and they don't want me going too far. They want me to figure everything out in this little base. And I feel like once I start feeling it that I'm getting further and further and further and getting stronger and stronger and stronger, I think that I'll be the defining factor for me. And I hope after a solid night of playing,

I'll have a much better grasp on that. Colin? I think it's a cool game. I spent maybe a little more within an hour within the day we got the codes. I think this was Monday maybe when I played. I played brutal later that night and then last night I played it again.

The positives from what I can see, from what I can tell, I mean, it's in my head. I'm thinking about it. It's more than I can say about a lot of games that really don't. borrow their way into your mind anymore unless they're really, really good. And a good game does that. So I don't think that No Man's Skies anything less than good.

What I do think that it's going to end up being is overwhelming in its overwhelming nature. Jim Sterling wrote a really interesting review that I think is required reading for people out there. He didn't like the game very much at all. I think he gave it a five out of ten. But the salient, he had a lot of interesting things to say. And what he was saying was that a game, and you know, and I'm generalizing. I talked about it a little bit on Colin and Greg today. that he was talking about like we are and I've talked about this in the past as well when people

bring up like journey's 90 minutes and the unfinished swan so short I'm like who gives a fuck like those games are great for what they are and he was saying like we're starting to we're starting to conflate scope and size with the character of a game like and that big and procedural or big and and broad and fucking endless means good and it doesn't like that that that isn't true and I think No Man Sky for all the marketing problems and all the hype and all of the fact they can never reach what people thought it was going to be over these three plus years that we've known about it.

I think that it's just, it's too big. And I know that's the idea of the game, but, you know, I've been really fascinated reading a lot of people's critical reception of the game. The critical reception in game is not good. Like, it's like, yeah, it's like very, it's very, I mean, there are people that really like it, of course, but I was going through Metacritics.

As I explained earlier today, Metacritic has this thing. I don't know how long they've been doing it where they're actually compiling reviews and progress quotes as well, which I've never seen before, not that I'm really looking at Metacritic all the time. And I was reading them just one by one

and I'm like, three-fourths of these are like decidedly mediocre. Some of them are just outright negative. And I'm like, that's an interesting thing because everyone's only been playing the game since Monday. So it has, and so these are like interpretations as of Tuesday night of the game. And the thing about me playing it and the reason why I just haven't been,

I want to play it. I'm going to play it. I'm going to dump time. It's what I am. I have to, because I feel like, I feel like I owe it to this game for some reason.

I really see. Because I feel like there's like, I love space. I love space exploration. I love all that kind of stuff. And I feel like, you know, there's something here for me.

And when I played it, I was filled with a sense of awe where I was like, this is kind of cool. Like, I don't really know what the fuck I'm doing, but I'm doing it. But what I'm realizing

is that to Greg's point and from reading these reviews and just talking to friends that have played the game and dump some time. And it's just, it really is the same thing over and over and over again. And you can say that about any game, right?

Yeah. In Ninja Guy, and you're running around swinging a sword left to right over and over and over again. But that's really fun. Like, that's a rewarding gameplay loop. I don't know that this is going to be fun for more than a few hours for me. And what I sense from people out there is that some people are really going to love it and some people are not going to like it at all. And I don't know that there's going to be much of a middle ground.

And that's fine. Sean Murray himself, Hello Games, is lead, said, himself he used the word divisive and he thinks the game's going to be divisive. I don't think Sony did any favors for this game. I think they hyped it up way too much. I think they built it into something that it was clearly not going to be. And we talked about that for a long time. I said from the fucking word get-go when we saw it at 2013, I'm like, there's no way.

Like what everyone think this team is like 15 people. There's just no way that they're going to make this game into what everyone thinks it's going to be. Yet it's still algorithmically and mathematically super impressive. It's a great idea. and that's the thing and that's the thing that's the nugget for me and why I want to give it time

and why I want to give it a fair shake and I don't think an hour plus an hour and change is a fair shake for this game at all I want to give it a fair shake because I think it's cool one of the big thing I think the reason it will be so divisive

is the fact that the people who are like it's the same thing over and over again fall out of it are going to walk away with that idea and the people who are going to go into it are going to go into it full bore and it is going to be that

you're going to have these explorers with these amazing ships who can run for an hour and who can never, you know, don't take damage to have these guns that blast down the iron reserves in two seconds. I mean, like, you're going to get so powerful that that game's going to open up and then space becomes like your oyster and you are able to travel and do all the stuff. But the people like me who are already like, and I'm not saying I'm going to be one of my hope that I turn this corner and I'm totally in. I get it. It all clicks.

I'm ready to go and I want to be that person because I do want to be that person. I want to be somebody who plays the game a long time because I do, I still am of the fact that it feels like a great endcapped every night, right? We have these stressful days running this business. and then to go in there, like, all right, cool, I'm going to warp over to there. I've never been there. Oh, these planets are,

oh, cool, I'm going to get this resource and I'm building to getting this new blaster cannon that I've been really eyeing for my ship or something like that. Those people, the ones who give that much time are going to be super into it. The people who drop out early

and don't get to see that are the ones who won't understand. Yeah, but there's, we talk about, it's like the Final Fantasy 13 effect, right? Like how much time do you have to put it into a game to get something out of it? And I'm simply not made a time.

No one is. And like, I'm of the mind in a sense with this game, and this is just me being very candid about it, that there are people that just under no circumstances will like it and there are under no circumstances will not like it. And I think that there's just already camps developing whatever, and I'm really trying to be as

objective as possible and going into it. That's why, as I said, when we talked about it on PS I love you, I'm like, it's no less than good. I mean, I don't know how you can look at this game and be like this game isn't good. Or this game isn't interesting. Of course it is. It's bold and ambitious and I think that Hello Games at the very least should be commended for trying

something very new and very different. I mean, this is this is a game that is totally algorithmic. This is a game that is, and I talked about on PSI, I love you, I think. When I went to the credits, I wanted to see, because I was really super interested.

You could just go to the credits immediately for the menu. And I was like, I want to see how many people worked on this game because I don't believe for a fucking second that they didn't outsource a lot of this shit. Lo and behold, that screen doesn't scroll at all.

It's literally like 16 names. And I'm like, that's incredible. I thought when Sony got involved and Sony kind of picked this game up as a de facto first party game, that they were going to dump, and I'm sure they did double of money into it, but they were going to outsource this that there was probably

a hundred people that were working on this game. And they were just kind of keeping it as well-hidden secret. And you see that in the credits. There are outsource studios all over the world that do shit. Like we'll make assets or figure out a math equation or figure out a program. Just worry about online or whatever. And so I think that, you know, they should be commended. They really, and there's a great image going around of four sequences with Sean Murray looking more and more tired and withered and haggard as the process of developing the game goes on. Do I think that they over-promised with the game? I don't

think they did. I think Sony did. And I think that that's a problem because there's a problem of optics with this game. And as I said before, it is the same issue that the last Guardian is going to suffer from. They can't meet the expectations. So you have to just take the game as it is. And I think

the game is a respectable, bold, interesting idea. It is extremely empty, but I don't know if that's really, I don't know if that's a bad thing. It's space. But I do get the, you know, Dan Stapleton at IGN, I read his review today. He doesn't like the game either. and you know he

he was saying that he isn't scored it yet but he was saying that the game is just empty that they're like fighter or not fighters you can see them sometimes in the atmospheres but like they're not doing anything they're not like on trade routes

they're not like even code they're just there to make it seem like the universe is full but in reality you're just totally by yourself and another person I think it was a game spot or games radar or someone said I've been reading all these things I'm actually more interested in what people think of this game than playing it at this point

another person was saying it's fun to rename things and it's fun to find an animal and name it or find a planet or some sort of resource or whatever but he's like if no one's there to see it like who cares like if I name this planet and it's one of trillions of a trillion planets and no one's ever going to see it

who the fuck cares and that's an interesting that's an interesting point that I never really thought about yet I think it's one of those games like Journey but like on the opposite end of the spectrum you're going to get out of it something as Greg said something totally different depending on I don't necessarily know if it's

time as much as it's like just energy like what like and minds share like what you what you put into it one of our community members I don't know his name I saw it on the Facebook group today is keeping a handwritten journal of his time in No Man Sky which I think is a fucking cool idea I would never do that because that seems like too

cumbersome and laborious for me but he's sketching things out and writing things out I'm like that's kind of cool because you would imagine that that's he's role playing that character yeah yeah so I think No Man Sky is quite unlike even though it takes you know it's a little bit of Minecrafted Teraria and all these kinds of games it's it it's not unlike anything we've ever seen before,

so I think we need time to marinate and to figure it out, because I think for a lot of people, this is going to be the game of the year, and maybe even the game of the platform. I think for a lot of other people, this game is going to crash and burn for them. But I think that either way,

it's going to be a massive success for Sony. Yeah, and I think that's the thing, is we keep talking about how Sony overhyped it and did all this stuff, but them doing that made all those things true. Otherwise, without them having it at E3, even multiple E3, showing the things that they showed,

what's the difference between this Abzu, where it is just a smaller game that comes out. Like, if this didn't have that hype and that platform, I don't think that it would be seen the same way. I definitely don't think the same discussions would be going on. But the game might be, the unfortunate truth, though, it's like the last guardian, right? Like, if we never saw The Last Guardian and they released it

and they called it, you know, Project X on PlayStation 4, and we just didn't know. We would have probably, that game would probably be metacritics scored higher two points. But I guess the thing is, what matters more, Metacritics or sales? Well, both, because I think that a good example of this is like

we have a pretty good at already the order 1886 sold pretty well right on PS4 that's good for Sony they probably made money on the game they have this great engine now and this this high fidelity kind of engine that they're working with but the game sucks no one is interested in like there are very few people like I were actually authentically interested in the sequel but there are a lot of

people that are like I'm never going to play that shit ever again and I'm like there's anything with the order on it I'm like there's a long game to be played with a lot of this stuff too you want both and so I don't Sony of course wants to be profitable with our corporation but also on the back end you know, No Man Sky is going to be supported for a long time.

It was a smart game for them to get in a bed with. But I guess what I'm saying is it's just even if you've dumped dozens of hours into the game as some people have, I still think it's too early to even render any sort of conclusion because this game's just so weird.

It's almost like an MMO where it's like just you have to just relax and like kind of see how it all pans out. The game's not, the game isn't working properly right now. It's, there's no real online functionality. It is empty. It's lonely. But I think that kind of gets me, like, I am just off of playing I AmSetsuna, I platinum did on PS4,

a really fantastic Japanese role-playing game from Tokyo RPG Factory. And that game is all about sorrow and sadness. That was like what the game's all about. If you're not into that, the game's going to fucking make you cry. You know, like if you don't want to be in that world. But that's what the game was about. I kind of feel like No Man's Sky is about loneliness. I mean, it's about making your own adventure.

And that's the thing. And like that, when we go back and forth with like, what do they say about multiplayer? And these people who have been trying to find and meet them. and not beat themselves, but meet each other. You get to this point of, I think the journal is such a great point. And the one going around on Twitter today of that, looking over there and seeing that weird little animal that stops and it looks at the guy and then just fucking runs at him and starts attacking him.

It's like, it's an amazing. Those are those moments that are going to matter. And it is a game where, yeah, there isn't a story. There isn't this thing happening. It's these moments that you'll have, that you'll share, that you'll talk about to your friends that are going, like my stupid dinosaur spider thing today that happened. Like, those are the ones that make that.

And if you are a guy who's like, yeah, I do, I'm going to hang out in this system because I want to learn this language. And I want to keep bringing things back to get words from these people so I can understand all them and, you know, decode all this. And that's interesting and, you know, fascinating. Today, you know, someone hit us up on Twitter and was like, you know, I heard where you guys are. He's like, I just finally wrap my head around monolith.

That really opens it up. You should keep doing that until you get to that point. That's going to be fascinating. Yeah. And I've mentioned that it's, I'm sorry, all the, you know, comparisons to Minecraft, I do think that this is going to be another game that's such a moving target. They're going to keep putting out these updates and it's going to be like, all right, cool, this is how you can see things easier. Now those ships are trade routes and doing all these things.

I think that's the key thing too in the argument against the order 1886 thing, the Metacritic stuff, is that this game is going to, and depending on the people, the hardcore people playing and finding this stuff, which I think there is already, we're seeing, there's that a group of people that are dedicated to that. And as long as there's enough nuggets like that, Kataku's going to every day have some different, like, oh, this thing found, this thing found. For how long? Forever? You know what I mean? For the next year?

You know, like, I finished today, right? My session, and I was like, I need to go watch a couple of these videos that are like the five things to do when you get No Man Sky. Just to get a little jump start of like, what would amplify it? You know what I mean?

And that's literally how Minecraft started, right? Where it was, here's this game. No fucking recipes in it. And people at least start going to boards and talking to each other and checking in. I think the one important thing with No Man Sky is, we are eager to jump to conclusions a lot in this industry, and I do, and I think we're,

our conclusions, whether they're positive or negative or neutral, are right for us, and I don't think there's anything wrong with that. I think No Man Sky is one of those games where we kind of have to keep an open mind. Like, that's where, and keep that open mind open for a while longer. It doesn't mean you have to play it or buy it, but I think it's going to be, it's just, it's weird, it's not a platformer, it's not, it's not a side-scroller, it's not an RPG, it's just, it's kind of this weird thing.

I just, I'm reluctant, even very preliminarily having played the game in a very rudimentary way. I am nowhere in the game at all. You know, I'm flying around and seeing shit, but I'm like, you know, I just don't know. I don't know. All I know is that it's good. Like, it's good. And I, and I think the word, like, the bold is the word I would use to describe it. I just think it's bold.

So bold games sometimes don't work out very well, you know. I think Abzu, you guys, I know you guys talked about it last week. I think absou is a huge miss. Like, I think, I think, as I just. described it in a Seinfeld, a Seinfeld reference, we already have a George. You know, we already have a journey. We don't need Avesu, right? No Man Sky, we don't have a No Man's Sky.

So it's like, I need time. And I've never, not never, but it's been a long time since I've been so interested in what other people think, where I'm like, I don't even know what to think. Like, I want to, I'm like, I'm seeking out random ass opinion. I always, I read Jim Sterling's reviews. I'll read a review here and there, but I'm like scouring shit about No Man's sky because I'm just like I don't I want to see like what the consensus is the consensus seems to be ironically when you have two polar opposites right in the middle right like and it's not because people

are meeting in the middle it's because like well you take some of the good and some of the bad you take the good you take the bad thank you yeah yeah you both and they have facts alive facts alive so do you think people should play no man sky give it a show yeah I mean if what's you've been hearing sounds interesting sure if you're like I hated everything about Minecraft and I hate games that don't have a narrative then no of course not but I see what do you think call I don't know. I don't know. Like I think, remember we talk about often about The Witcher 3, how, and we were actually talking, I think, about Adam Boyes about it a few days ago where I'm like, Witcher 3 made me lose my goddamn mind.

Because it just never stopped. Just never stopped. Never stopped throwing things at me. Never made me feel like I was making any progress. Never, you know, all those kinds of things. That concerns me about the noise guy because it is a thousand times worse than that. So in that sense, you know, if that sounds fun to you, like an endless. I feel like you're going to extract and squeeze much more than $60.

out of the game if you play it enough. If you're committed to and you stick it through, yeah. But I think that if you, you should probably watch some video, you should probably I would wait. I mean, I don't, what's the rush? The game's probably going to be patched again soon. Like, I, we've waited so long for this game. Like, if you, maybe wait a few more weeks and see what people really think and some people

you trust, like have render final verdicts and no, you know, no, you know, Hilo games maybe releases another patch and stuff. Remember, the game radically changed with the patch the day one patch, like radically. If you read the, I've never seen patch notes like that in my fucking life. And with a launch game in my, actually. Actually, or at a launch patch. In fact, I don't know if I've ever seen a patch like that ever. And even one, a year after the game came out.

It's like, they're like, we changed everything. You know, I don't know if you saw the patch, it was never stopped. It was like, we changed this. And, oh, we changed the entire game. Okay, cool. You know, and the one thing that concerned me about it, which people said was mitigated by the patch was that people already had the platinum trophy, which shows you that, not the trophies are indicative of length or quality of a game, of course,

but shows you that you can see and do everything in the game, because the trophies are all like, see this many things and achieve this title and all this kind of stuff, people have it. So another thing to be a little concerned about. But be open-minded. Staying in the realm of PlayStation. I want to talk about PlayStation meeting. Oh, PlayStation meeting.

2016. At the PlayStation Theater. Is happening. In PlayStation City. Yes. PlayStation City. Big old PlayStation City. So here's the thing.

We know it is happening on August 7th, 3 p.m. September 7th. I'm sorry, September 7th. 3 p.m. Eastern Time. Right? Right. We know that it's going to be the PlayStation Neo. PlayStation.

You don't know that. Whatever. It's going to be more than that. PlayStation Trinity. It's going to be more than that? I think so. So what do you think it is, Call? There are some rumors that there might be a slim PS4 there as well.

I don't know if that's true or not based on some patents and so like that I've been leaking at, that people were actually thinking maybe it was a new Vita and we got excited for about two seconds. PlayStation, Infinity, Trinity. I think they're going to show the Neo, obviously, and what I'm most interested to see is the pricing, the specs. It's like it is the Trinity. It's the pricing, the specs, and the release date. It's the only things that matter. But I think there might be more there, too.

I think that if they're going to see, if Neo has more high-tech components and is going to raise the price of PlayStation 4, then they must have something new sell at PS4 at the same or lower price, too. In other words, you're going to have some sort of divergence of price points. Otherwise, because Greg and I were talking like, is the Neo going to phase out PS4? And if so, like PS4 standard, which I think might not be a bad idea, but are you going to sell it for more? So there's semantical problems with this that I think are going to have to be answered to this beyond just the Neo itself. If you're going to reveal this thing, then the automatic questions are what happens to PS4? are you releasing some sort of slim, really cheap model of it? Because now there's going to be some sort of power deficit.

And, you know, I think those are important and salient questions to answer right off the bat. So I think that they're not just going to have a half an hour thing. Like, here's the Neo and here are the specs and the release of the press. They're going to have to really talk a lot about the old PS4, too. And if they don't, that's a huge mistake. Well, so it's going to be live streamed. Yep. So because of that, we kind of assume this is going to be more of a press conference stuff.

Pre-impost shows, Twitch. It'll be like the PS4 reveal in 2013. We were invited. Greg and I got our invites to go, but we're not going to go. I don't think. As of now, we're not going. We're trying to figure out, like, what the benefit would be. Even if there's hands-on there, does it really matter? Hands-on of PS4 games.

Yeah, that's not. They look better. Yeah, you know what I mean? I'll take your word for it. You know, I've played these games. So I think we're going to, so we get our invites, and we are going back and forth with Sony about what the benefit would be going, but it looks like we're not going to go.

And, yeah, but it will be stream for all to see. And I think it'll be a lot like, it won't be nearly as exciting or cool, but it'll be like the PS4 February 2013 reveal. I think it'll be probably be an hour long. I'm sure they'll have some devs talking about some first party and third party game and how they're extracting power out of it and stuff. And what I'll be most interested to see is there are rumors circulating that that I think from Vice, but I'm not sure. They'll hold me to that about we had some conjecture in the past that.

Did Sony look at Scorpio and get a little nervous because Scorpio is a quantum leap for Xbox 1, which is why I think it's a more acceptable revision, especially because it's coming out next year, as opposed to Neo, which is supposed to come out this year. That's supposed to be just a little bit of a step forward. Yeah, Patrick Kleppick and Austin Walker say. that Sony has looked at up in the power compared to the original specs, and there's internal worry that the Neo may look outdated compared to Scorpio next year, and how much they can address the Neo before launch is unknown,

and Final Dev kits will release around the September 7 reveal, so they're not even out yet. So there is a chance they've been speaking thing. Now, there's an important caveat there, and this is something Greg and I talked about as well, although we don't know what it means. The Dev kits are going out, but when you spec games on PC to what they say the console is going to run at,

So people are already working, definitively working on Neo games. And remember the rumor was that by the end of September, any game coming out had to have been, or well, any game starting in October and any game releasing in September had to be patched. Right, that was the old rumor. And so my assumption is that it could be a red herring with like, well, the kits are going out there for, the console doesn't come out for a while. I don't know necessarily if that's true or not true. All I know is that, like when you talk to devs, like, for instance, Vita games were made,

were put on Vita for a lot of developers at the last second if you talk to them because they didn't have enough dev kits to go around. Sony's probably communicated a long time ago. It's going to run at this and this is what you're going to spec your games at so make them run on PC and then we'll send you the dev kits and you'll be able to get them onto the dev kits and then we can start certifying everything. I assume that's probably the thing. So while I was a little more bullish on an early next year approach for PS Neo

based on that specific sentence, I'm actually kind of backtracking on that a little bit. now that I realize, well, why would you miss out on the holiday sales? And, um, especially when Xbox has the Xbox 1S out there. Right. And people are buying the shit out of it.

Right. Exactly. It's selling well, that white one, I think sold out. I think it's gone. Um, as far as I know they're not even making.

Yeah, I saw it headlines as this is gone forever. Hey, go. So, so I think that there's, so there's a lot, like,

I'm interested, like, so I'm interested in the form factor. I'm interested in all those kinds of things. My hope is that it looks exactly the same. That's what I, That's what I would really love is it's just the fucking same shell, but they're not going to do it. They'll never do that.

It doesn't make sense. Well, it makes sense from this point of view of being like, I still think they're going to have an issue with this. I still think that I still think there's going to be a big issue with this. And it would be kind of a cool thing to be like, it's really the same. Like, it's just a little more powerful. You want to be able to tell you look down on your shelf, but you can just tell your friends you have. But actually one of the things happened today with Hello games coming out and saying Neo will change the nature of their game. I'm like, see?

You know, I'm like, now you are creating halves and hats. I didn't see that what they say. That will just allow them to create a bold or more ambitious game, I guess. I don't know the exact quote, but I was reading it before. This is exactly what I was talking about. This is exactly what I was talking about. This is going to happen for a lot of games now, and this is going to create controversy and problems for Sony.

So they have to have a marketing approach to this, and they have to have a PR approach to this, too, to put out these fires, because now we're going to see games running on this console, and so are we going to, how are the games going to look on the old console? If No Man's Sky is going to be better on Neo, Isn't that against the whole preface of a ubiquitous platform? Why even have a PlayStation 4 at that point? So Sean Murray says, quote,

for our game, No Man's Sky is procedurally generated. So more powerful hardware doesn't just mean upgraded textures or higher frame rate. It means we can fundamentally change the experience. You can have, and you'll see this from our patch notes, we're able to change huge things in the universe because we have complete control. With more powerful hardware, we can have more trees, more leaves on those trees, the density or immersion of worlds or new types of worlds could exist. so that's the problem is when you're talking about this fundamentally changing leaves and trees cool but then the last part of the new types of world that's that's where it gets into it where because the rest of that does just sound like PC slider stuff sure

the shaders and all that sure yeah it's just more complicated than that though these these games this is gonna I'm super interested in that we're never going to learn the answers but the the the pipeline issues with this too like certifying games takes time and money it's uh I pointed everyone towards uh Rami Asmales uh from Vlam Beers piece on Kataku last week about the active certification. And I tweeted that out because Greg and I talk about cert a lot on PSI Love You. And what it means to go through cert and the nightmares you hear from developers about going through certification

and it's fucking terrible. And now they have to go through it twice. You know, like every game's going to have to go their certification twice now. Now all these games are going to have to be... I'm telling you that there's... I think Sony's fully cognizant and aware of these issues and I'm sure that they have a plan of like an approach.

I think this is why it might have has maybe taken so long to reveal to him. in addition to maybe respecking it. I think they went, yeah, I think they, but I don't know, I don't know that they're respecting anything. Like, you have to assume that if this is coming out in October, let's say it's coming out October 13th, same day as PSVR. I think that's probably a safe date to assume, right?

Yeah, if it's this year, that makes sense. Those components were ordered eight months ago. Like, they're not respecting anything. I don't know how you would possibly, they're probably manufactured already. So, like, at that point, like, what are you going to do? You're going to go to Foxcon and be like, it's like the famous, isn't there a Bill Gates story where they had, they had a prototype iPhone 1 in his pocket with his keys, Steve Jobs.

Or Steve Jobs, rather. What did I say? Bill Gates. Steve Jobs had an iPhone in his pocket with the keys. The plastic screen. The keys scratched the shit out of the screen. The iPhone was going to come out like a month or six weeks, and he's like, we have to remove the screens from all of them, all of them put glass screens on.

That's a big lift. It's a heavy lift for a company that doesn't really have that much money. I think they've tinkered with it. I don't know, and I don't know what that would mean. But I think something has to have changed from when this originally was what it was. And I think that it's a direct reaction to everything we've heard about it. Well, I was reading on NeoGap, a lot of people think that, what this could mean is things like overclocking.

Like they figured out ways to just kind of change the clock speed on stuff. Yeah, yeah. To kind of just be able to boost the specs that they throw out there and like put on the box, you know? Yep. Because people hear the six taraflops or whatever it is. Without taraflops. For the Xbox, the Scorpio. And I think that that, that is the number.

All this is, it's like back in the day with the bits. You know, it's like, well, the 64 bit versus this. It's like, all right. Well, what does that actually mean for the games and for the things that are happening? And I think that obviously numbers do matter. Like those things like to people that don't understand what they are, higher numbers sound way more enticing. So I think that like even if it was just overclock stuff,

that can go a long way in terms of what the Neo potentially was versus what it potentially could be. So besides the system, let's predict the live stream. Let's predict the conference itself. Okay. What do you think happens? What games are shown? How do they focus on VR versus games you've already seen?

any new game's going to be announced? I think it opens with a slick-ass montage as usual, and then, like, similar to how they did the PlayStation 4 reveal, which did so well, right? Like, you have it, like, the silhouette of it, right? And it's PlayStation... More importantly, I want to know guesses of what it's going to be called. PS4 Plus.

You think that's what's going to be? That's my guess, yeah. But whatever it is, PS4 and then... Doesn't that get a little bit confusing with PlayStation Plus? Maybe. I don't know. My other theory is I just called PlayStation 4. You know?

If they're going to phase it out, the news about this is just PlayStation 4. To me, that makes the most sense. It's phase the other one out. This is the PlayStation 4 from now on. But do you care if it's $50 more than what PlayStation 4 is now? I mean, if is it $50 better? That's the kind of the question.

If consumers want to find an older one, they can find an older one. Like that's, you need to, when you're making changes like this, you kind of got to stand behind them or else the more, I feel like this is type thing you need to commit to. You can't kind of like pussyfoot around it and just be like, here, if you want the old one, it's cheaper now because that's like, unless they're just trying to get rid of the stock. that they have and then that totally makes sense. They need to commit to this and they need to be like it is what it is. Your games, if you already have

PlayStation 4 it's going to be fine. If you want the best experience this thing's out there. And it's going to piss a lot of people off but I think it's going to make the people that want it happy. And I think that's what's important at the end of the day. It's like keeping the thing going. So yeah, I think that just calling it the PlayStation 4 is the best

move. It's only the best, they can only do this if they are phasing out old PS4 and if they're charting the same price. And I just don't know, don't know enough about the components and I don't know about that kind of stuff at all to know if they can get away with doing that. They are selling people. They've always sold PlayStation 4 to profit.

So they might be willing to eat it a little bit. But if they're going to charge like, you know, $50 more or $100 more and then they'll be like, this is it. This is the PS4. You're going to be a, I couldn't think of a time in history where they were like, we're going to significantly raise the price of the console. You know, and it's like, well, what? That's why I think this is still, I still feel like this could be an unforced error.

But it's all about, it's all conjecture because we don't know how the hell's going. When they come out and sell it, that'll be the different thing, right? Because I think when this is, it's Tale of Two Cities with, like, Scorpio and this, right? Where Scorpio came out was like, here's your first impression of this thing. Here's everyone saying it's awesome. Here's us telling you why it's awesome. We're building something here. That's going to be awesome.

And PlayStation let it all leak, leak, leak, leak. Everybody had an opinion and a opinion. Andrew House gives like a business insider or whatever quote about it. It's like, this is a shitty way to reveal this. You come out and it's an awesome montage. Andrew House, you soon takes the stage, talks about how successful PlayStation 4 has been, but they need to look to the future and iteration and how things have changed.

Let me introduce you to the PlayStation 4 Plus. Here a shot of it. Talks a little bit about what's in it, why it's better, what is doing this. Let's talk about the games. Bring up Neil and Bruce. They come up and talk about, hey, yeah, Uncharted 4 looks like this on it.

They show you Uncharted 4 on it. They tell you that that'll be a day one patch for Uncharted 4. As soon as this releases, you'll be able to get it. You'll be able to play this. It'll look more amazing. Jump into the next one. Show some new game, right?

Yeah, that is coming up. Talk about the fact of like, we've always been excited. it's always looked great, but it looks so much better, we're getting so much more out of it. This is why it's awesome, da-da-b-ba. Jump from that into, let's get you into specifics about it now, right? Like, here is the price, here is the release date, and then some kind of stinger, I think, at the end, yeah. But how does PSVR play into it?

I don't know how much they want to play into it. That's the weird thing about this. It seems like the rumors always go back and forth, right? It is for PlayStation VR. It's not. It's just for 4K. You're not going to get any more out of PlayStation VR. Maybe you will get more out of PlayStation VR.

I think that that you talk about, I don't think you show it. I don't think you talk about it. Because I think the concern is that if you do, you suddenly have all these PlayStation VR pre-orders, right? That now feel screwed over in the fact of, you're telling me I have to shell out $600. Then it becomes Oculus.

Then it becomes five. Exactly. You lose the advantage you have. I don't think, and you don't want people thinking about that day and date that they have to have it. I think putting it out on October 13th is a great idea. You're already in the store. You're buying PlayStation VR.

You're already dropping all this money. Why now? get this one, whatever. But when it becomes like, cool, and it's going to make it so much better, it's going to make, it's going to run the game this way and, you know, get rid of it. That's when it gets like, wait a second, man, I just, I bought, I already pre-ordered this, I already paid for this so far out, thinking that I had the best experience for that. Far out, man.

I'm going to smoke an L and play some PlayStation VR. Oh, my, my, my Neo. Yeah, this is intriguing. I'm intrigued. I think that they have, I think they have just obvious marketing challenges. And I think they're going to have to maintain positivity around the PlayStation 4 throughout this if they don't do it right because I think that it's going to be easier to not do this right than to do it right. I think that the second Neil and Bruce come out and say, like, look at the Uncharted 4 on PS-Neo, whatever, everyone's going to be like,

what about the 40 million of us that have a PS4? Are you kidding me? Like, what now we, like, I'm telling you this is going to be a problem. I know some people are upset about this, but people are going to be like, so I get the shitty version of the game now. Is that what you're telling me? I get the shitty version. And how are you going to, how are you going to, how are you going to be like, no, you're fine, too.

Horizon looks way better on this machine and runs better. But you guys will get it too. You know, you got to, you're going to have has or haves and haves not with this. Like you are. So it's, it's, no, it does. It does. It does.

But, but it is not, this is not normal for this industry. For this. For console. I think it's going to, this is the new normal. It is. I mean, I'm not disputing that. What I'm saying is that. dealt with us before. These aren't phones.

You know, like, they're not iPads, they're consoles. The NES, they came out in 1985 and the NES that came out in 1993 are identical. They don't, the NES, the top-only NES doesn't do anything to those games. Like, it's the same fucking thing. It just runs it way more reliably.

The S-N-E, all the Genesis iterations, for instance, are the same. All the S-NES, the two S-NES iterations are the same. PS-1, like the PlayStation and PS-1, the proper PS-1, like the little one. This is new. And so, like, I think that, you know, this isn't, like, adding an Ethernet port or Wi-Fi. You know, like, it's like, this is, this is a PC-like move.

And I think they're doing it out of survival. Like, they understand it. And I don't begrudge them that. These people are way smarter than me. I have no doubt about that. But you, when you radically change something that people are used to, some of them, you know, we've been playing games for 30 years like this, you're going to have some problems. And I'm not saying they're not going to overcome it.

I'm not going to say that in five years we're going to look back to me like, that was fucking stupid. Like, why would we ever not want this? I still think that it would have been cooler to have a modular console And I think that they weren't far I don't think either of the manufacturers were smart enough to do that And I think that if they can go back they probably would have But because that would have been way easier for them

They'd have to R&D all this new shit And they can just like you can plug and play as much as you want I think that would be way smarter I think that's what the next consoles will be But in the meantime I think that they have to overcome those things So yeah the Trinity though name Price release date And I'm gonna say I'll stick

I think PlayStation 4 is possible I think something like PS4 Plus or PS even PS4-2 or something like that as possible. You're about PS4.5. That's too techy, right? That's how I feel. But that's what they're calling in the tournament.

I mean, they won't do that, obviously. But you know what I mean? Something to that. I think putting a number on it makes even more, or a letter on it, makes more sense to a consumer again when we're chasing phones, if that's where we're going. Yeah, I think, I think, yeah, so the price, I think it's going to be the same price as PS4 is now.

And the, and if it's not, then PS4 is definitely getting, staying. The standard PS4 is definitely staying, and it's definitely getting a price cut. I think it'll be $50 more than it is now. Then PS4 has got to get a significant point. I agree. It's got to get cut.

And maybe they make a slim model. Which all this stuff, all this stuff's floating around in the ether like it's going to happen. I think you'll get slim model there. I think it'll be, yeah, less than what it is now. $50 more for that one. And I think the Stinger at the end will be red then. Hmm.

You're in New York. Rockstar's. That's actually a great point. That's, I think that's what you come out and you're like, because it's still a gaming thing you have to celebrate on games, games, games. I don't, again, it is the haves and haves not. I don't think you come out. You're like Red Dead looks so much better on Neo, but maybe you do,

because then again, you're giving yourself another leg up on why you should buy this instead of an Xbox, you know, 1S this holiday. Yeah. And I've said in the past, I think I said it on the show, but I definitely said on PSI I love you is that I didn't believe the rumors about Red Dead supposed to be at, it was supposed to be the Stinger at Sony's E3 conference until I heard it from people I trust. Like I heard it from people that I absolutely fucking trust. So they're not wrong about anything else

I don't know why they'd be wrong about this So something happened there I think And so yeah It's possible that they are they're owed this You know They could have they could have pulled it in light of the Orlando shooting and so like that Because I'm sure it's a very violent trailer So

You know Something that's actually a little weird for Roxas They usually don't give a fuck about anything But yeah I guess But again PlayStation though They do care So yeah I think yeah There's a bunch of different ways this can go

Release date I think October 13th Although if it doesn't come out alongside PSVR, maybe next year, like I don't know that you, but do you release it alongside Horizon or something? I don't,

you have to have something to release it with. I don't, I don't understand. What's really interesting to me with the whole just economics of how all of this is working out, Xbox, Xbox 1S, announced to D3 already out.

Scorpio announced to be a much bigger, better thing next year later, later, later, later. PlayStation having an event now is kind of weird if they don't release the Neo this year because why now? Why not wait then to do it later? If it is just

like why not just have the event be about the PlayStation Slim, you know, like just what's their Xbox 1S version? It could be but I don't, I don't think. That'd be the best troll

that would never do. We're shrinking the PlayStation 4. It's $50 cheaper. It's that's, see you guys. It's the same reason why Andrew House gave that interview so that everyone went to E3

and was like, it's not here. Like, because we were all like, of course. Of course it's, I would have bet $1,000 dollars that Neil would have been in E3 if he didn't give that interview.

So it was, so you're right. I mean, so you want to get like super fucking crazy and super unsubstantiated and super, you know, pie in the sky. And combine the PS4 Neo coming out this year and my theory that Red Dead will also come out this year. And that's all revealed to be coming out the same day. And it's, it's, you know, timed to Neo exclusive or timed PS4 exclusive or something like that. You know, who knows? I mean, there's all those stupid rumors going back to the agent that Sony is owed an exclusive for Rockstar. Whether or not that's true or not, I don't know.

Yeah. Very, very interesting. We shall see on September 7th. We don't know what our plans are yet, but we will definitely Twitch.com. Keep you long. It's probably talk over the conference as well. It's going to be fun.

It's going to be damn fun. Speaking of inside sources, Colin, this topic is all about them. We got two questions kind of from different angles about it. Question one comes from next gen mat. He says, hey guys, was wondering if you could explain inside sources in the gaming industry. When the NX rumors were dropped by Eurogamer,

IGN and Kutaku confirmed the rumors with their insider sources. I assume this is either someone in Nintendo or a game developer or a retail partner of Nintendo that is information on the NX who confirmed these rumors. What I don't understand is why would they confirm this? Why was their relationship with Nintendo? What do they have to gain by confirming or supplying information? I understand writers being told information off the record,

but I don't understand why someone with access to major developers or platform holders would release this information and allow journalists to publish it anonymously. Also, why would you remain a single outlet's go-to for confirming leaks. Why maintain that relationship with IGN or Katak. Any insight would be awesome. Cats out of the bag at that point. I also, I mean, but the point is, like, at the nexus of, like, this information being released, right?

My answer is, I don't know. Like, I've always wondered that. Like, I have no fucking idea why people tell me the things they tell me on the record or off the record. Like, you know, off the record, I guess I get. I know a lot of things off the way. Yeah, you're friends. But, like, but like, the things that have been told me where I'm like, someone text me when I was at IGN and was like, I'm like, really? You know, and I tweet back or text back, like, is that on the record?

And then you get a yes. And I'm like, really? Like, I'm, and then you try to get the second source, whatever. And you start, that's like what your whole day is about after that and reaching out for comments. I like that. My whole thing is, I don't know if Greg has a different insight into it. I don't know. Like, I really don't know.

Like, I think some people just, just want, you know, I think that some people might maybe get a little bit of satisfaction being like that's like in their own hard and their own mind. That's me. Like, that broke because of me or whatever, you know? I don't know. I don't know. So I thought the question was going on why an unnamed source. In general, why would some... Read it to me again.

Let me see it. He's saying, why would an unnamed source... But he asked why would some... When there be a confirmation or whatever. No, he's saying why would an unnamed source with actual connections to these industries... Like, these companies risk anything to talk to anyone about what they know. Like, what is the payoff?

When NX rumors were dropped by Eurogamer, Igen and Kitaku... I'm sorry. Yeah, by Eurogamer. IGN and Kataka confirmed rumors with their insider sources. I assume this is either someone at Nintendo or a game developer, retail partner in Nintendo, who has information on the NX who confirmed these rumors. So right there for that one part, that's calling your friends who work in the video game industry and being like, hey, did you see what your gamer just put up?

Is that true? So that would be, that's that second thing that Colin was talking about. I'm just saying it's all in one bucket right now. I'm trying to clear it all up. So for that, though, like so you hear, let's pretend you're at IGN, right? You hear this thing about the NX from, I don't know, wherever the hell you're a game from. So then the rest of the day you spend it trying to figure out, like, reaching out to the people, you know context. And all you're trying to get from them is a, is this true or not?

Right. I would never publish anything without a second source, right? So you hear something substantial and then you just have to bounce that off of someone else. The only time that I ever published things that were only from one source is if someone else had already confirmed it and we want to confirm it ourselves. So a good example of that is when Orbis's controller, PlayStation 4 was, codenamed Orbis for people that don't know or don't remember. And that controller image leaked of it. And I was the one who actually confirmed that it was real.

Because the image was already out there. All I didn't need to do was talk to one person to be like, is this real? And that person was like, yes. Good enough. You know, like, okay. So I guess the question is, why would that person give you anything? And my answer is the same. I have no idea.

Yeah, you do. Because why would somebody who's going to be named an insider source confirm that? Because they're your friend. They're your fan. They trust you. trust them? Like there's, I mean, and also, there's no pressure there. Okay, cool.

Kataku, Eurogamer, whoever has blown up the initial story of here is the picture of the controller. And you just call developer X and say, hey, I'm not going to use your name, but is this real? Yeah, that's real. Okay, great. Thanks. Like, that's using your relationships that you've cultivated and done things.

But that doesn't answer the question. That's not what the question is the answer is like, what did they get out of it? And I don't know. Like, that's what I'm saying is like, yeah, we're friends. There's trust obviously built up. We've broken a bunch of stories in the past. We know a bunch of things. but and a bunch of things we would never talk about because they're not on the record

and we respect that as well. You build up this camaraderie with my honest answer to be different grammars. I really don't know. Like I, I, I, um, I've always tried to respect that kind of thing with my sources where and, you know, I don't, I don't technically consider myself to have sources anymore because I'm not breaking stories. When I hear something interesting and I want to talk about it, I'll talk about it. But, um, like when I, when I talk to, you know, a source about, uh, that person's

feelings on the Neo iteration, for instance, and I, and I tweeted that out and caused a big problem, whatever. It's like, well, I'm not, like, really double and triple confirming things anymore. I believe that source and what they said. I think it's true. But that kind of just comes through camaraderie and that comes through trust and time. When I started writing, when I moved over, I had no sources. No one was telling me anything. You eventually have to shake. That's kind of why I'm happy I'm not a journalist anymore. It's like the whole schmoozing kind of thing. Like, that's not for me. I have like very specific people in the industry that I talk to and trust or whatever. But like when I think about Patrick Kleppick and Jason Schreier and these guys that break

real stories, the amount of fucking digging that they have to do and the amount of handshaking that they have to do and meeting these people is like, it's mind-boggling. It's not worth it to me. So I don't, I don't know the answer to that question other than the fact that like, you know, the one thing that bothers me and I think Greg can speak to this more because I know that, you know, journalistic standards are varied depending on what you're talking about. But it's funny you bring this up because today I was going back and I was reading an old story. story from Kataku about how they were blacklisted from Polygon or

blacklisted from Bethesda and blacklisted from Ubisoft for all the shit they did with Doom and Fallout 4 and the Assassin's Creed games that they leaked and I was saying like and how they just they have no communication with those companies and where those companies can present out they do not exist because they leaked four of their

games or three of their games plus like they talked about how Doom was all fucked up and prey was being developed by Arcane like they have incredible contacts that the PR and marketing teams can't control they sacrifice their entire relationship with two massive companies with huge games, getting no early copies of games,

no access to anyone, no invites to the E3 conferences, nothing to write these stories. And I'm like, I don't care what anyone says about them. That's journalism. Like, they, Kataku has this bad name, but they burn the bridges and, like, hurt their bottom line to, like,

break these stories. And I think that's fantastic. So you have to, like, the reason I bring that up is because those are, like, significant stories. Like, I've written stories about, like, this game's canceled or, or this person said this thing or blah, blah, blah,

yeah, like, there are layoffs here, or this game, you know, blah, blah, blah, These guys were like, hey, fallout four is real. Here's a bunch of information about it. They were like, praise being developed by Arcane in Austin. And then Bethesda was kind of hinting that it wasn't. And they're like, you're lying. Here are all the emails.

So like that's fucking badassery in my mind. Like, because, and I'm sorry to interrupt, but this is, this is something that was said by Steven Satillo in the piece. And I'm just paraphrasing. He's like, we don't owe it to anyone to hype a game up. We are not playing by any, they're not playing by anyone's rules. They're playing by the rules. rules of what I feel like is

their journalistic integrity to, we heard this and it's true and here it is, and they're always right. But who the hell is talking to them? That's what I'm saying. Like, for all the sources the people we talk to, I can't fucking imagine who's giving them emails from arcane. Yeah, that's ridiculous. Or who's like, you know,

who's like, here's all of the key art for Assassin's Creed. Twice. Yeah, God. You know? So that actually leads into the second question from the wombat dances. Do people have a right to report on industry drama and pre-release content. I asked myself this question in response to a video on the no

about how Sony had their No Man Sky leak video taken down, supposedly because they didn't want companies talking about the leak. I also thought about industry drama such as a Gojima and Konami, Amy Henning Nadi Dog, and Timiko falling apart while developing Last Guardian. When we inevitably hear something about these events, do you think that companies should and could sue those who report on the drama? I'm also curious on your opinions of reporting on content that has yet to be released, think No Man Sky or Kickstarter backers.

I remember when backers for Broken Age Act 1 started making content reviewing the game before the official embargo. What about games that have yet to be announced? Collins brought up how a secret of the games industry is. Does that make it okay to report on what a studio is working on before it's been announced? Like the Norse God of War Game or Days Gone? I know I touched it a lot here, but I'm eager to hear your thoughts. It's not even that you touched on a lot so that Tim Redded at fucking Super Speed. It's, it's, it's, I mean, I got it all.

It's, it's all fair game. The things that I think are off limits are, is like, part. personal shit, you know, um, outing a person for being gay. Like, what, is that a story? No, like, it's not. Or this person's getting divorced or this person's yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, man, alimony.

Like, who gives a fuck about anything that? And that's not really happening in the games industry. That's like Gawker-esque, you know, Gawker Prime kind of shit. Um, good riddance. Uh, but, um, it is fair game to say, like, this studio is having problems with this game or this game exists or, uh, it's, like, why would, why is that sacred?

Like, why, why, why, why, why, why? is that I don't understand that. If that was the way it was looked at, then the Pentagon Papers would have never been leaked. Then, like, we would have never got, like, all of this crazy, like, there seems to be this weird standard where it's like, it's the artistic vision and all this kind of stuff.

Well, but Hillary Clinton's emails were leaked, and those were pretty newsworthy, weren't they? I mean, they were seemingly illegally gotten from sources, you know, clandestine sources and all that kind of stuff, but it's still newsworthy. Like, I'm not saying that it's right to do those kinds of things. What I'm saying is that it's still newsworthy. The thing you're talking about is I think it's just an ever-closing gap of the fact that I think for a huge part of the video game industry, the journalism, it was equivalent to entertainment tonight.

And now you're talking about people who are out there covering this like you would cover anything for a real newspaper. Our generation that has come up. You know what I mean? You talk about the, not of them knocking or the originators of EGM or Game Pro or Nintendo Power, anything like that. But that was the thing of like, all right, cool, we are totally at the behest. of the publisher. So yeah, we're going to do this.

And maybe sushi X will put out the 17 rumors and two of them have some credibility. It's like you figure out which one. Yeah, exactly. And I have no idea if that's how it was really done or anything like that. But then you do have our generation that came up and people who went to journalism school and want to do what Patrick's doing and want to do what Austin's doing and want to get out and what Steve Mitchell and all them are doing, get out there and say, okay, cool, like we want to break that.

And so there is this huge shakeup of, in the middle of that gap that's closing all the time is PR. And that's their, you know, their job for the entire olden days was to set up tours and bring games through and to show you the best part of the game and explain to you when and have this plan that it's going to drop an E3 and this is how it's going to go. And there'll be all these beats in this campaign and da-da-da-da-da-da-da-da. And then you have all these people who are there wanting to feed a ravenous audience who I do think demands more than the entertainment tonight coverage as is seen in the reason why video game journalism and commentating and all these things are taking off and Jim Sterling's working out so well and all these different things. they want that they demand that and then you have so you just have an industry that's in the middle of a huge change and that is an industry that's being treated is you look at movies and entertainment coverage there right and how that had to grow with this industry that has now been around for more than 100 years or whatever right you look at video games and we're nowhere near that we are still in the infancy of video games so you're in the double infancy of video game journalism and what this is an enthusiast press or whatever the fuck you want to call it and so there's these growing pains, there's these stretch marks that get made because it is still the holdover of people who for years made the message and got it out a certain way. And then now there are the people who are going to go and call their sources and get this and blow up an Assassin's Creed campaign before it ever starts. Yeah.

And this is the whole thing for me is that when people are like, well, this is wrong. It's wrong when Assassin's Creed syndicate was leaked on Kataku was called Assassin's Creed victory. And they were like, it's wrong that victory was leaked that way. They had a plan for it. And I'm like, well, that's not Kataku's problem. as long as it's not personal, it's not going after anyone personal, no one's families, it's corporate.

It's about a video game. It's really not the end of the world. And it's interesting. We want to know those things. Like, I'm sure that was one of their biggest stories of the year when they released that, because people care about that. And so you have to just draw the line at, and what I think is the line of decency.

And I don't think there's anything indecent about a source coming to you and being like, well, I have all this information. do you want and you want to verify it and you vet it and all that kind of stuff. I mean, we were at IGN, IGN leaked destiny. You know, we were the ones that did that. Like, that happened when we were there. And that was a service to the readers to be like, this big game that you're going to be excited about it exists. And I don't really see, like what, I don't want to act like I had anything to do that story, by the way.

I don't. I don't deal with Activision at all. But to me, it seems to be like one of these interesting things where I'm like, everyone's like but they're anonymous sources and stuff like that I'm like dude go read Politico one day and see how many people's names are on the shit you know like go read the Wall Street Journal and see how many unnamed sources are on the front on the front story that's the way it goes if the if the journalist and the writer trusts that person then they don't have to be named you clear it with your editors and you're fine

that's the way it's always been we didn't know who the fuck deep throat was until he was almost dead everyone seems to forget about those things and by the way that actually mattered so it wasn't it's to me it's like I think people are like protecting the people are like protecting the PR and marketing interest a little too much. Well, I think that's the thing, the line of decency, like, where does that land? Like, respecting these people that are trying to have their PR plans or whatever. And I get that the, once you bring PR and marketing into it, it gets really dirty sounding because it sounds like these people are, they're just trying to sell you a product and stuff.

And it's like, yeah, that's their job. But I think that also all the work that they're putting in the game, I get it. I understand these people being upset about this stuff. And when you take it a step further, like, spoilers. Like, this specific story is about the No Man Sky leaked. is the new story and they're being asked to take that down because that is putting spoiler information out there. You know, you think about like the TV shows and stuff like the Walking Dead recently, it's been an ongoing thing, Game of Thrones as well,

where there's like these fan sites that are all just about spoiling stuff. And they're getting either sued or take down notices or whatever from AMC and HBO because people are walking around taking pictures or drones are flying, filming the shooting of these shows. And it's just like, okay, so that's news. You know what I mean? You can see who did a Negan kill. You know?

Yeah. What if that spoils that? You know, like that's the type of thing that's a little... Where's the decency line there? When you're actually invading people's space to create the thing that they're doing and with the video game stuff, it's the same way. Sure. And that's the thing is like, I never...

I can't speak to these other people and their sources. And I'm sure Greg kind of operated the same way I did, which is people came to me. Like, if someone had like a... thing with just information. I never really had anything like material. I never had like a USB drive. It was nothing like, you know, a fucking dead drop in Washington, D.C. or something like that. Like, I was just like, it was like a phone call or a text server like this information

here's what you need to know. I think that if like, if you're, if someone like what you're talking about with Game of Thrones, like they're breaking and entering, like they're like this is a private studio is a private thing. Like that's different. That's not what I'm saying. And I can't speak to the legal nature of what they're doing and if they can get sued or whatever. From a libel point of view,

I don't, I don't see how writing a game, writing that a game exists is libelous in any way. And the, to me, it seems like, you know, what you said was like,

I can understand why people are upset. I understand why PR and marketing are upset. Let's say, Dragon Quest 11, when we already don't exist. Like Final Fantasy 16 weeks,

right? If I was at Square Annex, I'd be fucking pissed. Yeah. I totally understand why they're pissed. I don't understand why Joe Shemot on YouTube's upset about it. The hell does he care?

You know, like, like, that's the thing I'm confused about. Like, there's too many people carrying way too much water for these companies.

You know, and that's, and that's the thing where, like, yeah, we're talking about how marketing would be upset, but there is also the developers, right? There's these teams of 100 people who have been working in secrecy. They haven't put it on their LinkedIn. They haven't been telling their family, you know, blah, blah, blah. I understand that, like, that is the thing, especially when you know someone on it, and I'm putting in quotes to know somebody. Let's say, Sean Murray's next game got leaked, you know what I mean? And he put up a tweet of, like, how depressing that is.

Like, you put up a tweet of, like, it sucks. This guy paid $1,300 for this game. And I understand then people, like, feeling like, they know their personality and rally behind him, carrying water them. Because there's an alternative to this. Here's the alternative. Don't click on those stories. Well, no. I mean, that's a solution to the problem, I guess.

The alternative is like, let's wait guys until the, you know, until everything's buttoned up and they want to show you their bullshots. And they have all of their beautiful trailer and that leak out the information you for over 18 months. It's not exciting. We love that. Isn't that great? Like, that's the alternative. Let them just spoon feed you everything. No gate keep.

You know, they're the only gatekeeper. No one can penetrate the gate. Like, there's no, there's no information about. you know, interesting information about like, well, this game's troubled or this isn't an interesting story? Like, to me, as an enthusiast, to me, as someone who loves this industry and has been in this industry for a long time, that's interesting. That's way more interesting than me than most of the games that are coming out. And I think a lot of people feel the same way. Are we owed those stories? I don't think so. But I often wonder, like, if people look at the

other side, it's like, you want it just spoon fed to you? Well, you just want it on their schedule. You just want, and I understand that they own the IP and they control the game. And I respect all that kind of stuff. But that doesn't mean you have to necessarily play by their rule. No, for sure. But so going back to what I was talking about, like the HBO stuff. So, yeah, the people that are breaking and entering, like, that is illegal, that is wrong, whatever. I'm not saying that that's right. But reporting on that.

Right. So that's the thing. Like, that is then the source. That is the thing, you're not going to it, but it is coming to you in a way, right? So you see that, then do you, are you allowed to write about that? Like, is it, because that is news. It is news that somebody found out. But that, yeah, no.

This reminds me of the newsroom. Remember that episode of the newsroom where you obtain the information illegal? Yeah. Like, there's, I don't know, it's not even important. That's a not even important analogy. So no. But I mean, so No Man Sky. Yeah.

Right? No Man Sky obtained illegally. No. No, no man Sky's, no, no. No man Sky's, no, no, some guy bought No Man Sky for $1,300 on eBay. But how did it? Because people were breaking street dates. There were thousands of people playing the game before it came out.

Kataku and Polygon were putting videos up a week before it came out. They just went out and bought it. Like, and so, and that's what I was saying was so weird the way Sony, like we, like, we, I never seen Sony send emails the way, like, and, and treat a game the way they were treating No Man Sky because they, it was. completely out of their control. And I think that they realized that. And I thought that was interesting. But if you can go to, like, and people like still are like, you know, Stephen Totillo or one of those guys tweeted out or someone from Polygon, I don't know,

was tweeted like, we're not beholden to any embargo. We walked into the store and bought it. Yeah, that's always the thing, right? You know, that was always our thing at, you know. And I think that that's, you know, I get it. Yeah, it's like, and I'm like, I get it. Like, you don't have to, like, if you don't play by the rules here, you might not ever get a game from them again.

And you have to balance those kinds of things. and I respect that. If I had gotten the game early, if I had bought the game early, I would probably have played it but probably would have not shown anything until the embargo. In fact, I was certain I would have,

not because I was trying to hide anything, but because I have a long-running relationship with Sony and you don't want to... Yeah. We'll never get days gone. We'll never get God of war. We'll never get any of those games. We'll never be able to talk about any of it for you guys.

And we provide a service. And the whole point is our business isn't news to that point, right? Sure, there's the relationship of it, but there's also the fact that, yeah, like... It's just about having discussion about all this stuff. It's not like this or that.

We don't have to draw the line of being or trying to be, you know, like in terms of news or news coverage or coverage in general of trying to be objective on that in front anymore. We don't want to be dicks. These are thought-provoking questions and I think they're salient questions and important questions, but I want to make a comparison to politics. Now, I understand that politics is way more important and way more real world, right? Political campaigns craft a message. They often make, they often leak things intentionally all the time, which I'm not entirely convinced publishers don't do either. And everyone's like, well, Hillary Clinton's about to give a major economic. speech, right?

And then two days before the speech or 36 hours before the speech, the speech leaks. They didn't intentionally do it. Someone just leaked that someone with a ax to grind has access to the DNC server. They get it. They send it to the Wall Street Journal, the whole entire thing leaks. Should we just have respected that Hillary Clinton was going to give that speech? But she had a plan, guys. Hillary Clinton had a plan and they worked so hard on it.

You know, you're basically saying the same thing. It's like, you know, someone at Ubisoft was like, or someone that had access to Ubisoft's content was like, here you go, journalist. Here's all the stuff from his ads to greater. They're supposed to be like, whoa, but Ubisoft had a plan, guys. You know, you also had a plan. We got to respect the plan, the marketing and PR plan.

No, what you have is newsworthy. Publish it. You know, like, you didn't do anything wrong. You didn't do anything wrong. I mean, that's kind of my stance on it. I think you can say that that's the journalistic stance, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean, you are a journalist.

I'm not. So you have a journalist. We were both journalists at one time. You have a journalistic training. Yeah, yeah. That sounds on the up and up to you? Yeah. fun. So, I mean, that's kind of my stance.

If we want to take our, if we want our industry to be taken seriously, start taking it seriously. Yeah. All right, topic four of the day, as always, brought to you by you over on kind of funny.com slash gamescast topic. Go there. Leave your questions, just like Osloat 570 did. Howdy, fellas. Is it shameful to play games on the easiest difficulty?

On some games, I'm just not good enough to have fun and do well on medium to higher difficulties. Next question. No, it is not. Do what we want. Play the games the way you want to play them. What do you care? I think the key thing there is that am I just not good enough. I'm just not good enough to have fun and do well.

It's like, all right, cool. Doing well is one thing. Get good. If you're not having fun, that's the bigger thing. You'll get good eventually, right? That's how that works. I personally, I like playing games on normal.

Like, I think that normal is the way that they intended it. Yeah, it's usually rare, but if I'm playing a game on normal and it's way too easy and I crank it up on me, he's like, man, this game wasn't balanced correctly. If I can't play on the default difficulty and have fun. Yeah. That's usually, usually a problem. Yeah, I mean, and honestly, in earnestness, like, I think you have to play the game the way you want. It's your game.

Once you have the game, you play it the way you want. I actually ramp the difficulty up a lot, but that's just because I usually actually for trophies. But that's the thing is, like, depending on how, I think that a lot of games don't do a great job of having harder difficulties. It is just kind of like random things. Yeah, exactly. It takes three times more bullets to kill this thing. That doesn't make it more fun. Yeah, they're not thinking.

challenging or whatever, which is kind of a bit more annoying. Having said that, there are games like Halo that do a great job of making sure that each difficulty level is its own experience and is balanced and all that stuff. And I think that it's up to you to kind of find where that sweet spot is for you because I know that it could be even franchise

specific. I know any time Alfredo plays Halo, he just pops right into, he does his first run on heroic because he wants to get a feel for it and then he does legendary because that's a different experience. Legendary. But for me it's normal. My name is skier. No man, sky. No man.

Sky. Have you guys ever played a game on Easy? Oh, sure. Probably. Yeah. I don't know which, but. Definitely on trophy when you're trying to run through

and do it again and again and again. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, if you're grinding. The first game that I can remember was definitely cry one. Because that game had a feature where if you died, I think, five times in the early on. Then it just automatically bumps you down to easy. I'm like, well, I'm not going to start this game over and, like, play again. So I eventually later beat him. I hated that.

I don't feel like games do that anymore, too, like, or as much. Like, talk shit to you? It's like, yeah, it's like, are you sure you want to play on this? Metal Gear did. Metal Gear did with a chicken hat. You kept dying too much. Like, do you want the chicken hat? They won't be as hard, you pussy.

Oh, yeah, or freaking, pretty much any Nintendo game nowadays. Like, after a while, they just give you the... Do you want to skip this? Do you want to skip this? That sounds like a PS2 thing to most to me. Like, that brings me back to that era, that specific era. Where it's like, ah, you kind of suck. That's funny.

Yousuff McQueen says, with the success of Pokemon Go and Battlefront, How important do you think IP is to a video game? It's extremely important. Usually important. Having something that's identifiable is like the most important thing for marketing and marketing is how things get sold. So in terms of the success of a game, I think that it's easier for people to wrap their heads around what something is

when they can visualize it already. You know, when it's a new IP, it's like what does that even mean to people? They need to then learn what that is. Whereas Battlefront, you can literally have a teaser trailer that's, it's a snowy planet and all of a sudden there's a t a t coming you know it's star wars you understand what that means whereas uh other things need to show a lot more for you to take something out of it it's the reason games of the two after them sell better right because there's usually now an established audience he's already learned what this is and has talked about it and going on and they want you to

go do that and that's why you know obviously the spider man on playstation four is going to sell so much better than sunset overdrive yeah yeah i i uh i don't know i don't know that i have anything really to add to it, I guess. I just feel like, what I was going to say was that I feel like there's too much of a reliance on on established IP. I like that,

even if Sunset Overdrive or days gone on the other side, I feel like there still needs to be investment in new IP to establish those things because that you, the IP can be, that towel can be fucking wrong real quick. 100%. And I feel like there's a reluctance to invest in that.

Yet I also see a changing of the course as well with Ubisoft, for instance, saying like we're not going to do we're not going to beat the shit out of Assassin's Creed anymore for no reason. We'll disappear for a while and when we bring Assassin's Creed back maybe you'll like it. But we'll give you a movie though. Yeah, we'll give you a movie in the meantime so you don't forget too much about it.

But I feel like that was a really smart move that they didn't have to do they probably could still sell millions of copies of that game every year if they wanted to. Well, Grand Theft Auto's are great. Actually the best example of all of them, right? So, you know, if I would not, I don't know that I would have the reluctance, the restraint that Rockstar and take two of how with that game where if I had Grand The Adolfo 5 and I was like, well, now we're just going to hire

literally five studios and we're just going to make Grand Theft Auto all day. Every year Grand Theft Auto is going to come out. That's what they did on PS2. It wasn't made by five studios. It was made by the same studio. For the best trilogy of all time in video games. But they showed and what did that do? Well, they have the second or third

best selling game of all time. They made billions of dollars in profit. And they have this sacred IP and they know that when they release Grand Theft Auto 6 it's going to be a massive deal and they'll sell they might have sold 20 million copies of all those games, but the next one, they'll invest less money in making it,

and they'll make more money on the back end. So I think that there's ways to really respectfully treat the IP as well. And keep in mind, too, that going back to the well on an IP doesn't necessarily mean that you don't get to make new ones. Look at, you know, naughty dog, right? They make all these uncharted and that opens the door for a last of us. They're making enough money. You've established yourself.

Go do this. Same thing you assume now with sucker punch, right? You made a bunch of infamises. People understand who you are. You assume next one's going to be a new IP. Go make it. Yep. Joy, but noodles.

Joy, but noodles. The follow-up question is the last one. Newman's Sky! What do you think about that potential Telltale Mr. Robot game? I don't know what to make of this yet. I think by the time, well, maybe not by the time this actually airs,

but around that time we'll probably have information on it. I find it hard to believe that Telltale is going to make a Mr. Robot series, but they did make a, what was that, Wolf Among Us, which is arguably not nearly as popular as Mr. Robot. So, they, but that was also a different telltale. There's something, like,

So people have to understand that, and we talked about this on Colin and Greg, that all Telltale did was retweet Evil Corp, which is E-Corp, which is the corporation that they're going after and Mr. Robot trying to hack. They just retweeted shit from those verified accounts about this app and all this kind of stuff that's going to be revealed at Gamescom and all that. If they make a Mr. Robot series, that's fucking bold and badass, especially because Mr. Robots, apparently, ratings are not very good this season. So I'm a little reluctant to think that they're making everything. I feel like that, yeah, the ratings aren't great, but in our Venn diagram of video game friends and nerds and Mr. Robot fans, it feels like there's so much overlap. Every time you mention this show on Conagall Live,

the chat explodes, you know what I mean? I feel like you would find an audience for it here. And you've seen them do it with Game of Thrones. They like getting tied into these universes. Game of Thrones is huge. You know, like, that's the thing I'm saying is like, Mr. Robot is a somewhat niche USA show. Sure, sure.

Game of Thrones is a marquee. They're working with HBO series. Batman and Marvel and Game of Thrones. And I had another mind. Minecraft. They're working with huge IPs. And then Mr. Robot? I'm like, well, it just doesn't seem like, I mean, I would love that. I think I'd be cool. Would you play it though? Oh, yeah, definitely. Mr. Robots

great. And I'm going to play Batman. So, so, I mean, I'm going to wait until they all come out. But Batman, I'm really excited about it. It looks great. I heard it doesn't run very well. Shocking. But now, I would play that. Yeah, I would be really into that. I just, I just feel like that there's got to be other things

they could be doing, you know. But maybe maybe they want to, you know, do something. They're excited about it. They're passionate about. Yeah, I respect that. And the show is exceptionally written. Grosser's Pride says, this one's more directed towards Tim. Pokemon Go is huge,

but I haven't really gotten into it. It's an occasional distraction for me, but I'm not compelled to play it. That said, the app inspired me to buy a 2DS on the cheap so I could play Pokemon Yellow, and I'm totally hooked for the first time since Pokemon Go came out.

My question to you, as a lapsed Pokemon player, do you have any suggestions for the next Pokemon game I should play in my 2DS? Should I try to go in chronological order or should I hop into the current iterations? Are there any must play in the series?

My favorite of all time is gold and silver And the remakes on the DS Heart Gold and Soul Silver are I think by far are the best Pokemon games They're all good They're all great even So it's like I don't think that there's any bad place to jump in Black and White was really good

If you're only going to do one I'd go Hard Gold and Soul Silver And go from there I think that If you take the time playing those That might lead up nicely to sun and moon coming out in November. I thought his question was going in a different direction.

I thought he was going to ask about, because he said that Pokemon Go actually convinced him to play yellow. I was wondering if he was going into the direction of like, what do we think, because we've talked about in the past, what the bleedover is going to be from the Pokemon Go casual player. Will they buy a 2DS or a 3DS and play the new Pokemon games? I'll be really interested to see if there's some sort of data. Yeah.

That's released conversion data. Early on, on Gamescast, I was saying I don't think it's going to have much conversion rate, but I think I'm going to kind of change. change my thoughts on that. I think that, you know, seeing all these people play, like, people that do not play games, I bet you we could convince Aaron to play Pokemon. You know, I don't think it would take too much. I mean, she would need a 3-S and stuff. Yeah, she can use money. She'll play invisimals. Yeah. Great. But I think that it's going to be interesting. I wonder if there is a way to kind of get that data. To that point, to Greg's point, she has asked multiple times straight up

she wants a Vita. So God bless. What are you waiting for? God bless. I'll just give her mind and I'll go by it now. 4533 says, is there a place for disabled. or differently abled game journalists. I can only play games with one hand. If I would review a game, would my opinion, specifically in regards to the controls, be just as valid as a review by an able-bodied journalist? I think there's a place for that, yeah.

I think you start your own, though. You start your own thing. You do your own niche reviews. You get your own YouTube channel, your own site, your own.com. Isn't there a cycled abelgamers.com? Yes, but I, yeah, about, about another rating games on how they are for disabled gamers.

Yeah, yeah. That sounds good? That sounds like an outlet. Yeah, I mean, I think that that would be valid. And what I really like is that game developers seem to be, I mean, these aren't, a lot of these, you know, catering to a disabled, like, super niche in a way is not profitable, but it is the right, probably for it's the right thing to do. And I like that a lot of studios are starting to think about this. The game hue that we saw at GDC that's coming to Vita NPS4 in a few weeks is all about colors. And remember, I asked them on the stream, I'm like, how can a colorblind person playing and thinking I kind of, not nailed them, but I was kind of like.

Gotcha, fuckers. But I was kind of like expecting an answer, which I thought would have. been a valid answer would have been like you can't play it and I would be like okay that's a valid answer because there's you know but they're like no we actually thought about this and here's how you play it with you can't see color and I was like huh yeah so it was the answer they put like letters on each one symbols yeah in terms of is there a place for him at an IGN a game spot or whatever I think there is I don't know if you're on the review team necessarily if you are I think

there's like it would be hard I'm not knowing him personally and like the another disabled gamer right in terms of like if your critique is that it's to control, that's where it gets weird. You know what I mean? And if you are critiquing that it doesn't have this mode that you would need, that gets weird. But I definitely think in terms of a pundit role, a personality role, a person who loves games and has a unique perspective on games, yeah, there is. Definitely. Big Time says, hey there, Tim, Colin and Greg, with Zelda, Breath of the Wild coming to both Wii U and X, I'm presented with a dilemma.

Do I play it on Wii U and miss the chance of possibly playing it on the go? Alternatively, I could wait and play it on the NX when it launches in March and miss out on being able to discuss my experience. experiences with the day one crowd being on Wii. How are you planning on playing? Zelda. NX all the way, motherfucker. I feel like you might be a little misguided.

Yeah, the day and date of all of this. Yeah, supposedly day and date. So the day one will be on the NX if you get an NX. So I'm gonna be playing on NX. I hope you are too. I'm gonna be playing on NX on the plane. I'll be playing on NX as well. Playing in Y.

Fuck, Kevin. Super Flip says, Hey guys. I host an annual video game tournament I call the Thunder games. Nice. I try to pick games that are short and simple so that anyone can come and play regardless of skill level, i.e. Nidog, dive kick, oh.

Speed run on Super Mario level 1-1, et cetera. My question is this. What games do you think fit this category that I can include in the upcoming year's event? Starwall. I usually have three rounds with three different games in each round and end with the semifinal and final for the top scores. Starwall. Video ball. Video ball.

Yeah. Hell yeah. Towerfall. Yeah. What was that? Overcooked? What was that game? I can't remember

I can't even think of it I'm trying to think all these What's the one? God, now I'm doing it. The one where we played at GDC as well It was with the wireless controllers We asked for him for advice on the wireless adapter It was like we were in

The volleyball one? No, where we were in the Pantheon And we ran around with swords fighting each other That was a good one Oh right Go look at our last place I know exactly what you're talking about Yeah, just go and arena

Arena gods Arena gods Arena gods There we go And then when you were talking about it was dodgeball, dodge ball or something like that? Yeah. Stick them dodge ball or whatever.

That was fun. That was great. That was great. But StarWall. Final question. Comes from Matakath the Red. Hello. I was wondering if you guys think Level 5 will ever continue the Dark Cloud series.

Colin? Yeah, I think it's possible. They, they released, I think, Dark Cloud 1 and 2 on PS4. Level 5 is a weird studio because they work on a lot of different things. They're doing Nino Cooney 2. They're doing Leighton. you know so so they seem to have their hands full i don't know like like the rhyme or reason how they make stupid how they make their games but i think dark cloud three has always been

kind of a point of discussion rogue galaxies another game that they did on ps2 that people really love that they can go back to level five is a pretty great developer i mean they did have misses white night chronicles was fucking trash what are you talking about clements loved it oh my that that game can we just say clements sucks oh my god i hate white night chronicles they hated it um so they have had misses but i think it's possible dark cloud is an interesting game and I feel like in some ways a little bit ahead of its time. That's out now on PS2 classics? I think they'll

watch numbers on that for sure. Yeah, I think that Dark Cloud in it's kind of like, it's kind of like, I always reference Azure Dreams in these other games where you're like going into these places and trying to extract as many goods out of them as possible, kind of exploring and all that kind of stuff. It seems like part of the Zykeyes today actually when you look at these roglykes

and these kind of procedural games, like I think that Dark Cloud 3 could be a game that exists in a triple space amongst those other kind of more indie style game. So I would love to see that. I would play the shit out of that game. I love Dark Cloud. And Dark Cloud, too, is great too. That reminds me, did you see on Neogath recently that there was some, a threat about how Capcom saw the result

or the sales of Resident Evil remake HD, and they're like super surprised by it, and they're like, oh, we're going to try to do a lot more of this? Animusha. Yeah, I mean, I can't fathom. I don't understand what they're doing with Animusha, one, two, and four.

I hate that. What they're doing with Animusha. I'm so fucking much. They should release the Ani Musha Trilogy. Anamusha, Anamusha, too, and Anamusha Dawn of Dreams, the great Anamusha trilogy. Oh my God.

Ladies and gentlemen, this has been the kind of funny games cast. We will see you next week. Until then, I love you. Honey Musha.