Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - Steve Gaynor (Special Guest) - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 53

Episode Date: January 22, 2016

Special guest Steve Gaynor drops by to talk about Tacoma and Virtual Reality. (Released on Patreon 01.15.16) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up guys? Welcome to the first ever episode 53 of the kind of funny games cast. Nailed it. He does it every time. Every single time. As always, I'm Tim Geddes. He's joined by the coolest dudes in video games, Colin Moriarty and Greg Miller. And for the first time ever, we were joined by the one and only Steve Gainer. Hey, everybody.

This is exciting. Today's going to be a fun show. I just talked to Greg for two solid hours. This is going to be the new hotness. We're all... You're loose now. You got all the bad stuff. thought all the junk's out of your system.

Now you're here to throw gold. I see the junk all over you. And now we're good to go. That was, but that wasn't on campus. Don't right. Remember, the gone home cast is up right now.

Yes. I'm YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Spoilers started an hour and 15 minutes. It's true. Hour and 15 minutes in that's when you're good. You're good for an hour and 15 and then stop. Yeah. But I promised I don't know the topics.

Yeah. We're talking about Tacoma today, right? Yes, we are. Good. Because I promised that we would talk about Steve's new game Tacoma on this show. Good. Very good.

See what I tied it together. They call the Kind of Funny Cinematic Universe. Yeah. I want that to be a thing one day. And I think we're edging closer and closer. The KFCU, no, that's Kentucky

Fried Chicken University, homie. Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast for every week. We sit together, talk about video games and all cool stuff going on. You can get it early at patreon.com slash kind of funny games, or you can get it late at YouTube.com slash kind of funny

games. Either way, we support you supporting us. and I like that a lot. Today the first topic is one that we haven't done in a while. What are you playing right now? We just had winter break. Whatever that means different people. Probably didn't mean much to you.

I was working. Yeah, he were working. We all were working in different ways. Well, some of us. Yeah, there's lying around doing nothing. I was working in a particular way. So I just want to know what kind of games you were playing. My favorite game that I played over the holiday break was chain smoke.

in Las Vegas, which is my favorite. You understand that particular game that I like to play. In terms of video games, I played three games recently that I'll talk a little bit about. The first one. It's overachiever. People have been busting balls about Metal Gear Solid 5, so I started finally really getting into that. I played it for about 10 hours. And we taught, what did we talk about this? What are we talking about this on the last games cast?

Oh, the last game's guest. But you didn't go into detailed thought. Right, right. So, yeah, I won't believe that because I want to talk about the other games. more, but it's a metal gear game for two hours. I enjoyed the, or not even I enjoyed the very, at the beginning, I think it's fucking awesome. And then it turned into a game

I didn't really want to play, so. Whoa. That's kind of backwards from, I think, a lot of people's experience. Yeah, oh, no. Columorio. Welcome to Colin. Yeah, it absolutely is. It's just, it's really loved, like, just a driven experience, and you didn't want to be in the open world. Yeah, it's just not what I'm looking for with Metal Gear. I, as I

said, I think, on the last games cast, it's appreciate the aesthetic value, you know, the production values, the aesthetic's great. I like the depth of I think that there's something Peace Walker-esque about the game, obviously. Just not what I'm looking for in a Metal Gear game. And I don't think it's the epitome of gameplay

that people talk about it as it is. I think, as I said on the previous one, I think there's many examples of third-person shooters that feel better. So it's... To which all the comments go, it's a stealth game. Okay.

It gives you whatever you want to be. Just saving them the trouble of putting it below this video. It could be whatever you want to be. I did love, as I said, I loved that loop of clearing things out, being very silent until you found after 45 minutes,

he fucking wanted to throw your controller out the window. So I appreciate it and it's there I wanted to give it a go But it's not a game I have any interesting What is your favorite metalger solid game? Two Okay Right

Colin, welcome Let's move on And then so the other games The other two games I was messing around with I never got through it I'm a huge fan of Wolfenstein The New Order I think the game's fucking cool as hell Yeah

So I went and I earlier this year May or whatever it was The old blood came out the DLC And I got like halfway through it And then I just stopped playing it So I just deleted my save even started playing it again and I got about halfway through it and still haven't beaten it yet

but I just I really love machine games I don't fucking love those guys like I just think they understand the story driven first person shooter I think the game feels great I think it's it's not quite on call duty's level in terms of the way maybe it feels but it's pretty close you know to me that is the high watermark of shooters in terms of gameplay were you a fan of um uh uh redick

I played riddick back I I played redick back on Xbox, the original Xbox. So yeah, that was, that was the last redneck I played because I think there's been like one or two since that I did not fuck with. Yeah, that game was that game was awesome. Yeah. And the darkness, I thought was really, really good. And that was, I think,

the core team that went off to form machine games. So yeah, no, I mean, those guys know what they're doing. Yeah, and it's, I'm excited to see, like, clearly they'll probably do another Wolfenstein. I think that's great. So I was messing around that. I recommend that. I just, I haven't gotten through it because I'm so meticulous about getting collectibles in games because I'm a moron, that

that like I just really have to like go and like you do every little thing. And I still love their emphasis on the dream sequences in those games. Like I think it's so fun. And I don't know if you play them whatever when you find the beds in the game. And you can play an original Wolf and Steinlo.

Yeah. And it's like a nightmare. Yeah. I'm like, that's so, oh, I love that idea. The third game that I know is a little bit old for people that have played on Xbox One or PC, but we just got codes for it. I just started playing as the banner saga. Oh, okay.

Which is cool as hell. Again, it's a little obtuse in some of its mechanics. stories are a little confusing it's very like Norris and it's you know so some of the names are all confusing it's hard to keep up with like who's who but I do like the combat in terms of there being like an armor class and a strength class and you have to damage them both in order to

whittle these enemies down I think it's quite clever and quite deep if you basically like if your armor if the enemy's armor is above your attack then there's a 10% chance per point above your attack that they will block your attack so you have to whittle their armor down first I think it's like really super clever yeah and then but you can still get lucky and get a hit on them, even if their armor

is really high. Exactly. Yeah, yeah. And there's a bunch of choices. Like, there's no permadeth in the game in battle, but there's permadeth in the choices you make around the battles. And I had this one instance where I, like, tried to save, you know, this girl was under attack and I did the wrong thing and she's gone. Like, she's just gone from the story.

So I was, I dig it a lot. It reminds me that, you know, what we talked about with Final Fantasy Tactics, which I think is one of the great games of all time, or tactics ogre, especially let us cling together on PSP, which is a fantastic fucking game. We need more of these. Fire Emblem. Fire Emblem.

Fire Emblem is a similar game, but I just don't feel like in a similar way to the banner saga, it's not all the way what I want. Fire Emblem is even further away from what I'm really looking for. I'm really interested in why that is. Like I wonder what it is about Fire Emblem. Yeah, the 3DS one. Yeah, I played it for five hours or so. It's just, um, I thought that was really great. I love it.

I'm also not like a hardcore Final Fantasy Tactics or Tactics goer guy. So it's just one of those. It's the same thing with Disgaya where I'm just like, this is not what I want. I want this very specific square soft style. I mean square soft back, like old style, you know, even advanced and advanced two or whatever on GBA and DS, I think was like way more aligned with what I want. I don't know quite how to explain it.

Firearmament just doesn't resonate with me at all. Here's a question. Speaking of Metal Gear, did you play Metal Gear Acid or MetaVar Acid 2? On PSP, no. I didn't. You should, so Metal Gear Acid 1 was a little, like they were trying to figure it out.

Metal Gear Acid 2 is fantastic. Yeah. It's fantastic. I played a little bit of Asset as a huge Metal Gear fan on the original. Never Bothered with 2. No, two. It's like really rare. They didn't ship a lot.

It didn't do well. I think you can only get it on UMD. Like you have to track it down or whatever. But I played all the way through that game. They figured out the gameplay. It's really interesting, like smart card-based, tile-based tactics game and like just a good, wacky like Metal Gear side story. So track it down.

I think you would actually really like Metal Gear Acid 2. It sounds like it would hit like the thing that you're talking about. Yeah, scratch that itch because it is a very specific itch because it's not just like turn-based strategy role-playing games. I like I played this guy and I appreciate it. People love those games. I'm like this is absurd. Like this is not even remotely what I'm looking for. Even though, aesthetically it looks like it could be a new final-based tactics game.

This guy is different though because that's kind of a never-ending thing. Yeah. And it's also like stacking enemies on the same tile. You're doing billions of points of damage. I'm like, what the fuck? It's like a parody in a lot of ways. But like tactics, especially like War of the Lions. on PSP, which I think is the epitome of that,

you know, the nice translation and all that is just, I don't understand how they, how Square doesn't understand that they can make that game again and sell it even for $60 what they really wanted to. They don't have to upgrade. Valkyria Chronicles is probably like the closest thing that, that anyone has gotten. But these, I don't know. It's just, it, Banner Saga is good in its own right.

I recommend it. So far from what I played, I played it for, you know, four hours last night. I actually played it for a few hours, went to bed, started reading about, One-way trips to Mars Kevin. That's what we were talking about that today and then I just got back out of bed and played it again Because I was just it was just on my mind so So I recommend it but it reminds me of what I really want It's like almost there. Yeah, but it is exceptionally beautiful. It is an incredibly beautiful like kind of mid-century You know cinematic animation style to it like all just like the the color palettes and stuff are gorgeous

Pretty it's pretty to look at I like it So that's what I've been messing around cool. What were you Greg? Well, are we trying to cover holiday break? And when we played in a holiday break, do we do holiday break? We did that on the last episode, but like if you want to expand on anything, like most of my stuff is just expansions on that stuff. Okay. So I ran through the Batman Arkhamite DLC, got all the trophies in that. I was very excited.

I like trophy, Steve Gainer. You might not know this about me. What color of trophy did you? I prefer platinum because again, platinum signify the game's real. And when a downloadable game releases without a platinum, everybody's like, what is this? If Taco Master could have a platinum, clearly, game of the year, 2013 should have one. Kevin Went through,

did all the Batman DLC.L.C. I really like the season of infamy stuff. They added there with Mr. Freeze and Razel Gould and all those things. More,

it's what, I think, when I started it, I expect to find it under the Arkham episodes, you know, where they put all the other DLC content.

In reality, it was jump back into your game and it's just another tab of side missions now with their own little wheel to expand on, which way I was talking about how smart that is.

Jumped, did all of those. Then I went through and did all the rest of the Batmobile challenges, all the combat challenges for all the different

characters and stuff. Had a great time. Loved it. A lot of silver trophies, a lot of rewarding, rewarding things. It was fun to run around as Ben Affleck Batman. See that. They have the... They added... That's great. They added. The Batman v. Superman suit got added long ago now, but this is the first, like, story content to jump in and use it with. I love that you have the t-shirt now.

I do. I got my Batman v. Superman shirts today. I'm very excited to wear them. It's going to be great. So it's like the robot Batman suit? No, no, not that one. Just the one with the, you know, the, he's a stockier, Batman, the big ass on the chest, small ears. Yeah, yeah. So I did that Played Bastion on Vita Got my first game up playthru out of the way I've started the new game plus

But I gotta commit to it But we have some more trips coming up So that's part of that Along with volume Which finally came to Vita But I haven't started again I got down with that on Vita Yeah yeah very stoked about it

Bastion still's awesome Still amazing still love that game I'm excited to platinum Because I definitely went out I'll chip away out over and over again I know the challenge rooms Are gonna be tough later on Because again platinum

Signify that they're real games Even old games can say platinum. See, like Bastion. Just letting you know. Maybe you patch in a DLC, platinum trophy. What else then? Oh, Life is Strange was the big one. Life is strange. Did you finish the whole season? And I platinum it. Uh, yeah, I did. So you're saying that even games starring teen girls

can have platinum? Even games starring teen girls going through growth and personal change, they can have platinum's as well. Wow. Life is Strange was totally awesome. Like I said in the game of the year episode last year. Last year, last episode, if I had played that and had enough time to digest it, I think it would have definitely hit on my top 10 list of the year. But I played it late. I was late to the party,

so there you go. But I highly recommend it. Totally enjoyed it. Thought the story was really intriguing. And that's what I think through me is the fact that playing through episode one when it first came out, I was just playing it and it's like, oh, cool, like she has the ability to rewind time, whatever. And then at the end there's like this bit, not twist, but like big thing that sets up of it.

But it seemed out of a place, whereas in context of all five at once, you're like, oh, This makes sense. And now I know these people because like even ending that first episode, like I didn't have like super strong feelings about Victoria or this person or that person. And then by the time you get through episode two, it's like I'm in this world and I love this person. I hate this person. I want to know this. I don't trust him.

You know what I mean? Like I wanted to see where all that was going and it pays off really well. Really great character piece in terms of talking to everybody. And then, you know, getting to make choices, which I'm always a big fan of. Yeah. Most recently, one I'm excited because this is a fresh piece of hotness I'm breaking off for you right now. Because by the time this post, my embargo will have been playing oxen free. I'm really looking forward to that.

Yeah. Yeah. I've been seeing a lot of, like, I'm excited because I just, I feel like I just started seeing a lot of hits for that, like, maybe like a month ago. Yeah. People seem like they're getting their hands on it and are really excited about it. I'm looking forward to it. Yeah. I'm enjoying it.

I feel my problem is that the bar was set too high over the weekend. I ran and hung out with some people, and it was that classic, oh, this game. If it had been released this year, it might have been my game of the year. And I'm like, holy shit, all, you know, I sit down and play it and I'm playing a pre-release build. So I've run into a few bugs and stuff where I've had to restart things and it's like, ugh. And so it's like screwing up the pacing, I feel like, of what's supposed to be happening. I'm enjoying it.

The story's super interesting. Do you guys know anything about it? No. I don't really know very much about it. It's an indie game. You play as this girl, Alex. You go to this island, which I guess in this part of town, or, you know, this town they live in, right, all the juniors go out to the island.

Island and party and drink their faces off and have like this big you know crazy well what is it what kind of game no I don't mean I'm setting it up I like the face with that yeah what the fuck is it um is it a side scroller no it open world no you're getting colder it is it is a top down is it a racing is it a racing race yourself down I so it's adventure game 2d you walk up you can go up things like there's trails you're you're in this like force preserve wilderness, right? So you get to drop But it's a 2D adventure. Out of time. Exactly. You walk up, you click on things, you do things.

There's a radio you have to play with all the time and do different things with. I don't want to ruin the game for you. But yeah, you go to this island, going to party it off. You get there. Not a lot of the other kids have come or whatever. So it's just you in this small group that you're going to party with or whatever. But there's all these personal relationships already that you're as the, you know, there's a new brother she has, a new stepbrother who's like hanging out with her for the first time. So he's kind of like the entree that we learn everybody's.

you know, kinks and how they're all connected to each other thing. And then start expanding on it. And then there's this thing where everything gets crazy. And so then now it's like, even with like, this door, I think this door should open and it's not opening because I think something's run. I'll restart it and I play through it. And there the door open fine,

which is not going to be in the retail bill, you assume, to be very clear. Even with like the little hiccups, I'm like, fuck, I want to keep playing this. And it's not supposedly that long.

You know, I was trying to play through it last night. And I was like getting up to like, it was like midnight and we're coming off of, as recording this, the live stream where I'm exhausted. So it was like, I could power through this, but I'm gonna be garbage all day to day. So I stopped.

I'm looking forward to beating it tonight and seeing what's happening because the story is super interesting. And I want to know and there's clearly something happening with like other players in it. It's not multiplayer. But like, there's something going. There's a lot of what the fuck's going on in this game. I'm excited to beat it to find out.

That's really where we're going with that one. That's awesome that I've seen from it. Yeah, art style is awesome. Yeah. Voice acting's really good. Yeah. You know, you're walking in and like, you're interacting with the characters

and then like your your word choices pop up so you have three above your head and then X is always action or I'm using a PlayStation controller but you can use whatever one you want to it's Xbox one PC by the way and then you choose it and then it goes then it's branching dialogue and you start going and having all these different conversations

and people seeing you differently or so on and so forth it's exciting I like it I think the bar was set too high and I'm worried about reviews doing that when the time comes you know what I mean that they come out there and it is this game's getting amazing score and I don't know if that sets it. But again, it could just be me having a bad experience with it.

Yeah. Because I'm also then, you know, sitting on my bed playing on my laptop, being like, why isn't this on a fucking console? Why don't I get a goddamn console? Be like a schmuck. No Steam. I don't care that some friend just signed on. No, that doesn't happen on the other consoles. Yeah, I've never seen that on.

I know how to turn it off on the other consoles. I don't understand. I don't know how. It's called Google. Steve, what about you? So I've been playing a lot of gone home on a. Xbox one and PlayStation 4. I know.

I've been spending a lot of time testing, fixing, getting that stuff through cert. But it's out right now. In the time that I've had, when we haven't been having to firefight various things, I picked up Rainbow Six Seed

when they did a free weekend on PC. Somebody who I knew who had it. No, actually, I got a code from somebody on Twitter who had like an extra one because it was like a referral thing, whatever. So I have never been like a mass. massive fan of the Rainbow Six series. Like I've played a number of them.

I did like Rainbow Six Vegas on 360 and, but you know, I'm not like a hardcore like old school. Like I played the original Rainbow Six million hours. But I did play SWAT four, which was an irrational game from between System Shock 2 and Biocococ. And it was like similarly like a squad based.

You go into this place. You have to like deal with the terrorist and like rescue hostages and all that kind of stuff. So I had seen stuff about Rainbow Six siege. I thought it looked, it looked cool. Like the things that are really emphasized in it are there, you know, you go into this facility. It's like an office or like an embassy or a bank or a house or something. And the terrorists have hold themselves up inside.

And it really focuses on like environment destructability. So there's a whole lot of like you can, you know, repel up a wall and then bust in through a window. and then send out your little camera bot to see where the terrorists are. And they're all hold up in the next room. But you don't have to go in through the door. You can put a charge on the wall and blow out the wall and get behind them and take them all out before they know what's going on. So it's like very strategic in terms of like you can plan ahead.

You can scout the environment. And then you can, you're like if you hear a guy underneath you, you can just take out your machine gun and start firing into the floor. And it blows a hole in the floor and you can take the guy out. So like there was an awesome gift on Reddit. the other day, right? Where it came up to one of the boarded-up doors and they always leave the bottoms on boarded or whatever.

Right. The drove his car in just as he came through and turned, he got through the barbed wire. He saw that two guys were just about to come through. So he bopped out, came over with the machine and shot through the two planks and just like headshoted both them. Holy shit, that was awesome. Yeah. So there's a lot of moments like that.

And I'm, I'm, the reason I picked it up on the free weekend was because I had basically thought it was like pretty much like a multiplayer only game pretty much. And it is focused on multiplayer. But they have classic, like, offline, well, not, you have to be online. But they have single player terrorist hunt, where it's just like they spawn enemies and sometimes like a hostage or another objective in the space. And you, there's just a lone lone wolf go in and just like, yeah, very methodically. Like try to find everybody, not let anybody get the drop on you, you know, repel up to the roof and then down the other side and come in through the window. And like, it really gave me that feeling of like that swat for feeling of like that swat for feeling of like,

like, okay, like, I'm, I'm just going to have to really like take this one step at a time and be very intentional about how I approach this problem. And it was really hard. That was one thing. It's, it's tuned for being co-op, even in that mode. So when you play it single player, it's really hard at first. And it was cool to play it over the course of the holiday we break and just feel myself getting better at it over time because it's like you have to learn how the AI is going to act. You have to learn how they're going to react when you start shooting, you know, or when you X, Y, Z. You know, you're sort of

like, okay, I can be better at this because I know these guys are going to like swarm me if I do this, so I need to like be ready for it, you know, or even like learning to read the environment, because like in hostage extraction mode, part of the game is like, you don't know where the hostage is. So part of it is like you got to scout

and try to find the hostage. And at some, you know, when you start out, you're like, I guess I just have to go in every room and see if they're in there. And then after a while you start to notice like, wait, they always, fortify the area where the hostage is going to be and so then you start scouting you're like oh there's a lot of barbed wire here

so that probably means the hostages like pass this barbed wire oh yeah they put up some shields okay this has got to be where he is you know and you kind of are learning how to be effective at the game and now I have a pretty good like rate of like just finishing

a mission solo when I started and that was super not true at the big rescue and motherfuckuckers left and yeah and it's cool when you when you do rescue a hostage solo. You can only use your sidearm. And so you're like carrying them out with you. And there's some really cool moments where you're like, you're guiding the hostage and the guy pops out or in a corner. You just like use your sidearm, take him out. It just feels like really

harried. You're probably like a quarter health at that point because you're taking a couple of hits. So anyway, I've enjoyed that game a whole lot at this point. It's cool. It's scratching an inch as it was. You know, those squad-based first person tactical games, there's not a lot of them. And when you can get one that kind of does the version of it that you like, it's really nice. Yeah, Rainbow Six has like a certain draw. Siege. I mean, I only played siege before it came out and it was, it was fine. I don't, I, 99 out of a hundred times I don't want to play online anyway.

Yeah. But Rainbow, I've said it before many times. Rainbow 6.3 when I was in college was like a way of life for me and my friends. Like we, we adored that game. And like I used to say, and people that have listened to us for a long time, know it in Rainbow 63 and the single player, I used to kill my whole squad and play it by myself. I thought it was more fun that way and harder that way. I was like really, really obsessed with that game.

But by the time it came to Vegas and stuff, I just, I just wasn't, I was like totally off the wagon in terms of multiplayer games. But I totally get it. It's even the same way with like watch people play Battlefront or something where it's like, I get it. Just not the itch I have right now. It's not what you're looking for. So earlier before you're doing the show,

we're talking about you playing Call of Duty. Calling Duty. Yeah, I want you to tell everybody. So that's true. When Cod Blops Trace came out. As they called internally. When CB3 came out. earlier this year

I played it I played the beginning of the single player campaign and so when I play some games I have found that there will be like a gore filter checkbox

and I usually just try playing the game with that checked to see what it's like and I actually played so I actually played through the entirety of Last of Us with the Gore filter on and I liked it a lot

because I did the whole game, went back, did it, and then I went back through, I was like, okay, I'll start a new game and put on with normal go, and I'm like, wow, I'm, the tone of this game feels a lot better to me when you aren't just seeing dudes heads get smashed in half and blood go everywhere. Like, it has that sense of restraint that you're like, yeah, I get it. I fucking wasted that guy, but it's not, like, gratuitous, you know? And so, like, sometimes I just like to play games that way. Like, here's a pro tip. the game Limbo Xbox 360 and now PS4 It's everywhere

Yeah yeah But it came out like five years ago now or whatever Four years ago Let me check of it as a platinum trophy Put your phone It does way in Miller And so that game has a gore filter That game is gory as fuck man

And the thing is I played it From the beginning with the Gore filter on It is way better and way creepier With that turned on Because what happens when like the spider tries to save Exactly so here's what happens So in the default game you start it, you meet the spider, the spider spears you, and then your body's on it. It's like,

ugh, gross, you know, and then it ends. When you turn Gore Filter on, you're just standing there, and the spider goes, and as soon as it touches you, it just cuts to black. And it's just like, oh, like, it's like you just imagine what just happened to you. And it's like just way spookier. So, yeah, like, like pro tip, if you haven't played Limbo, start it up and try playing with Gore Filter on because it's like, it just feels like it fits with like how Stark that game is. So anyway. Steve Gainer's goarless games. So I was playing, yeah, the Blobs three.

And so at the beginning when you're starting up, there's a checkbox that's graphic content. And you can turn it off. And so per this discussion, I was like, I'll try turning that off. Two amazing things. One, this one's the less surprising one. They turn off blood when you shoot a guy. But they also blur out any, like, fucked up torture scenes or whatever, like in the scripted scenes, which is not that surprising, right?

But what's really good is that one of the very first thing that happens in the game is you as a player, you go up, you, you, you like interact with a console and you turn on these security cameras. All the security cameras have fucked up torture happening on them. And in the scripted scene, they just zoom in on the cameras, so it's the full screen. So one of the first thing that happens in the game is just like giant pixels cover the entire screen. like this and it's all you can see and I'm like nice good but the very good and

extra funny thing is they filter out all the swear words and they don't do it by just like bleeping them or muting them or something they do it in network television TV edit style so all of them are like if the guy was going to be like these sons of bitches are flooding

they're like these sons of guns are coming for it like really and this the whole whole game is that and it's fantastic. We need to do a less play of that that's hilarious. It makes me really happy. I played a good amount of that game just the solution

be like, just like this piece of junk. I know what you said, Doug. So I was really glad that was the creative decision they made. That's awesome. I haven't been playing too much again a couple days ago we were talking about what we played over the break. My biggest

things were amplitude and freedom planet. Two games that I recommend very highly and if you don't know what they are You should check them out specifically Freedom Planet. You probably know I know amplitude but I don't know about free So freedom planet is so I got a little excerpt from Wikipedia about exactly what it is because I want people to get hyped on this So freedom planet is a two-dimensional platform video game created by independent developer Galaxy Trail a studio set up for the project by designer Steven Didero So it originally started as a fan-made Sonic game So he was making this and he wasn't they weren't happy with like Sonic 4 episode 1 and 2 and all that they're like we want to Like everyone else.

Exactly. Yeah. Like the way 50 Shades of Grace started as a Twilight fan? Exactly. Okay. Exactly. The player controls one of three.

Straight face. Exactly. Protagonist, the dragon lilac, the wildcat carol or the basset hound mila, aided by the duck-like torque. And torques the homie. The player attempts to defeat the evil lord,

brevin, blah, blah, blah, all this stuff. Evil Lord. Now, while the game focuses on fast-paced platforming, its levels are interspersed with slower action scenes. Those slower action scenes are boss fights that are awesome. It's like I don't know if you remember how cool the boss fights and Sonic the Hedgehog 3 were calling

I remember anything being cool in a Sonic that Jock 3 were awesome and they're right back here and Shots fire so eventually he lost interest in creating a derivative work and Reconceive the project as his own thing and he visited the website devian art. I don't know if you've heard it It has a lot of connections to one Sonic the Hedgehog. Yeah, so I like that there's that connection and shadow the hedgehog oh definitely any any Hedgehog there's probably some dick picks over there. Greg the hedgehog. And it got artists, Zio Ling, who replaced

the existing cast of characters with their own. So it's kind of like Sonic and Tails and Knuckles each have a thing. So they each have different playstiles and stuff. Anyways, long story short, this fan project for Sonic then turned into its own 2D platformer that I would like to being the Shovel Night, Subve Land is

to Nintendo what Freedom Planet is to Sonic or to Sega. And it's really cool because it's like it looks and kind of, I showed you earlier. Yeah. And it looks like Sonic, you know? But it has all these like nice kind of just Sega isms about it. And just the music sounds very kind of like classic Genesis. And like even with the Saturday, like there's a Knights level.

Like Knight's Inspired level. So it's very, it's like it's a nice throwback. And I've just been playing through it. And it keeps getting better. The pacing's a little weird. Is it on, is it like PC only? It was Steam. It came out last year.

And it just came out on the e-shop on Wii. Oh, okay. On in October. Okay. So definitely checking out. A couple people have been tweeting me saying that they Played it after the stream and they're like this is fucking awesome. So I'd highly recommend it. What's the point? I mean with all due respect Why are they stranding it on Wii? Are they gonna bring it to I don't know it was a Kickstarter project and then you know that was a goal or something?

I don't know that all of that but I do know it just got on there and they announced a freedom planet two So I'm assuming that like they're trying to make this a thing But I don't know what the history is with shovel night like why was that on we you first and then Well, I think it was an ode to Nintendo but but they'd always had intentions of bringing it every eventually. I think it was also kind of because Way Forward always had a strong connection to Nintendo and they came from way forward that the Drivenilerers the Shalala did

and everything. Yeah, Sean and those guys, I think. I think it was them being true to their connections and then being true, I think, to the spirit of, you know, one of the great games of the last generation, of course. Yeah. So here's a question, to be fair, why is it called Freedom Planet? Is there a planet where everyone's free on it? I'm not exactly fighting for the freedom of

the plan. It's very based, like the art style is it's like very old school, Chinese kind of just a Chinese An old Chinese looks so everything's very just like Like mythology? Yeah, yes exactly Okay, okay That was the word I was looking for

And it's cool because it's not based on the Saturday morning Sonic cartoon but it really Kind of looks like it and the story of it Has that same stupid Did you ever watch? So you've got to go fast? You need chili dogs? Is this one here? No, that's the The other cartoon. That wasn't Saturday morning Okay, sorry. There was two cartoons the 90s for Sonic. This is two

deep of Sonic 90s cartoon lore for me. So one of them was referred to as Sonic. You could be lying, I wouldn't even know. Saddam, which is SAT A.m. The Saturday morning cartoon, that was like a much deeper one. That one was the one you're talking about. It was like goofy in the corn dog or the chili dogs.

That was like a, you know, 4 p.m. on Fox show. That's more kitty based. So the Saturday morning was like a true drama? Yeah, I mean, it was like, as deep and dark as Dr. Robotic dies at the end. morning shows get, but it was like, it was a precursor of like the, the serialized HBO style television that we'd become used to. Well, the story of Sonic, even in the games, is that these

like robotic dudes come and take over the animals and, like, and enslave them. Exactly, and it's kind of, the cartoon is more that flavored, where it's a little darker and it's about machines taking over and all that. And there's this whole cast of characters in that show that, like, there's like a princess and a bunch of stuff that are definitely not in the Sonic games,

But it's cool and it had a nice feel to it. And this reminds me of that. Like that show is part of the reason why I like Sonic so much. And the plot of this game is stupid as fuck, but in a good way. It's very 90s and it's not just a throwback to the games. I like that's a throwback kind of to everything. And the planet in that show was called Planet Freedom. Okay, there we go.

You had a very, very, very good answer. That was a long walk you brought us on. What did it? Yeah. But I mean, again, that's why I think the title that, but I do want to bring mention. to the fact that I think that the show was an inspiration for this game because you see it. You see it. It's not just like a shovel night was to the games, but

this is, I think it's like the Sega what I think of Sega being in the 90s. And I really like it a lot. Definitely recommend it. Okay. And the other thing is Amplitude, my God. Like, I'm trying to platinum that game. I want to now. At this point, it's like a desire I have.

See, even games that are kick-started. I want you to know I'm not on this team, team trophy craziness but I want to make it happen with Ampitude. There are some games where it's like, I assume amplitude really challenging to platinum because you have to like be good as hell at it I imagine so like I can see how if you're really into it you just want to be able

to like and that's my thing is like it's so good and the speaking of bars the way that they kind of score you is on bars okay nice nice nice nice nice so it's like you can three bar the songs and I have three bared every song in the game so I'm on my way I'm getting there I'm making some damn progress here

but I still haven't four or five three three is the max yeah so I've maxed out all of them So I'm making some progress The problem is there's a super difficulty To unlock and I still haven't unlocked it Because you have to beat the entire campaign on expert Without dying

Or with unlocking all the songs And it is impossibly hard man I feel like it should have been a little easier to do that But my boy Jimmy Champagne Hit me up on Twitter and he did his video That he posted and I watched it last night And I was so busy last night And so tired but it was one of those things

I haven't played the game for like a week And we've been doing stuff And I saw this video I'm like I need to stop what I'm doing it I need to play more of this. Jimmy Champagne. Jimmy Champagne. It's worth pointing out that we're in that time warp.

So I will have all the trophies and gone home on PlayStation 4. Are they out yet? Are they out yet? No, I haven't seen them. Have you seen them? What are you trophies? Tell me all the trophies. I designed for your game.

Why aren't they up yet? Where am I code? Why don't have a code yet? This game, just give me the, what's going on with the game? It's out right now. Making games is hard, man. Go bad on PS4 and Xbox 1. Bustin balls today, Greg.

Ball busting. Oh, what's because you and you were such good friends. Yeah. Anyways, I really recommend Amplitude. So please go support with friends like that. Yeah, go support Amplitude so I can get DLC. I'd appreciate that.

And Freedom Planet because you've got to go fast. And Freedom Planet too. You do got to go fast. And gone home. And gone home too. And if you want a pallet cleanser, download a Mario 3 or Super Mario World so you can see that. So you can know what a real good game is.

Exactly. I'm with you on that. All right, guys. Topic. Topic two. Topic two. virtual reality. Specifically,

discussing the price of VR and the neogaf thread that is entitled All VR is dead on arrival. Yeah, which I don't agree with. So Steve and I had a little bit of a conversation over at lunch today, although we kind of cut it short because I don't, you know, as Greg always say, save it for the show.

Yeah. You don't want to burn cast. No, no, no, no. My theory on this is, and it's been the same, and we've talked about this, you know, ad nauseum on PSI Love you and on Colin and Greg is and even on podcast Beyond I mean we've been talking about this for a long time is that we just been talking

about VR for fucking years. We just want to throw Kevin out a window we've talked about VR so much. The 90s are back y'all. VR, the promise of VR is real. I believe it and you know, I'm not in the gimmicks. I think, you know, I was a huge Nintendo gamer most of my life

until we because I, and even Greg often tells when in the beginning of our relationship with 2007-2008 I was like such a we Apologist. It wasn't even funny. Eventually, you just realize that waggle, for instance, and motion control is probably not the way you want to play games. I honestly feel that touch-based games have a place, but they're limited and you're not

going to be able to. That's not the revolution that we need either because you can't really effectively play a shooter or a platformer. There are some clever digital controls, but they're not, it's not tactile, right? When I played VR for the first time, E. Valkyrey years ago, I was like, this isn't astonishingly fucking good. And I don't know if the burn's going to be slow or really slow. I don't think it's going to be anything more than slow.

But I do think that VR is going to stick and it will be around. I don't think it's going to replace the way we play games now. As I've said, for decades to come, we will play with the controller in our hands looking at a TV. I don't think that's going to change our computer screen or whatever, a laptop, whatever it's going to be, or a phone or a tablet. But I do think VR, the promise of VR is real. And I think that... And I think that... I'm saying hateerism on your face.

Oh, no, sorry, sorry. Nick just walked by and gave me He started dancing in the doorway sexy Nick Why do you hate good shows Nick? Why are you ruining my cadence, Nick? You're not even on this show When you're interrupting me

That's all like I'm I don't know I don't care I don't know why the door would be Shut or open Okay good Thank you Nick

Goodbye thanks Nick Good job So anyway the point I was trying to make was that Virtual reality is good. Yeah, is that fair? I think there's going to be a lot of forced nonsense with virtual reality. You have to look at in terms of PlayStation move or something like that, where there's some things that prove that PlayStation move could work,

but it ended up being a gimmick. I always talk about sports champions as being a far superior Wii Sports. But it was old and raw at that point. Like, that's not what people want to do it. Like, sports champions was actually really impressive, especially the second one in terms of the way it felt. You know, using, you know, both of them to shoot arrows and something like that, which is way more immersive.

but it was too late. I think sorcery and medieval moves are the two examples of games that were actually really fucking good on PlayStation move. But for all of those games, there was a lot of garbage and it died. I think with VR, there's going to be games that are not going to be good and games that are going to be good,

but it's the practical utility of VR beyond games that I think is going to get these things in the people's homes and games to me are just the beginning, as we've talked about in the past. So when I saw Oculus's price, I wasn't super surprised because Palmer Lucky was being super cagey even with the pre-order announcements, and that telemarked.

graphed everything you need to know that that was not going to be cheap. But then as an audience member told us in a very succinct way, as we talked about in Colin and Greg Live this morning, we pay, we would walk in, we wouldn't blush at spending $2,000 on a brand new, beautiful

curved TV, right? Like one of those really new beautiful, you know, LEDs or something like that. We wouldn't, we wouldn't think twice about that. You might, you buy a $500 TV if you want. But if you want high end tech, you're going to pay for it. And so is it really that surprising that a fucking virtual reality headset that you're going to put on your head and has two OLED in it even though I don't think

that's the that's the reason it costs so much and all these kinds of things is it surprising to pay $600 for it no not really I think so I think that our expectations certainly on p.s I love you with PSVR we might we might just have been wrong about what we expected these things to cost I guess I mean the only thing I'd say about that is that in oculus's case it's $599 US dollars on top of the cost of a really powerful piece sure and we're talking really powerful PC it was one of those things where I was on the side of like, come on guys. Like, it really can't be that bad. And because I'm just assuming that even a normal PC can use it are laptops, which are ridiculously

state of the art last year, granted. Yeah. I would imagine would be able to run it no problem. They have this like compatibility thing that you can run. And I ran, there was two out of five things that it was like this PC can't do it. Granted, it's a laptop. My desktop at home might be able to. But I was definitely surprised that our laptops wouldn't be able to use it.

That's the problem with it. And I think that speaks to what they're going. for though you know what I mean I think that's been Oculus's deal from the get-goes that I think it's been appealing to the same way the PlayStation VR headset appeals to hardcore PlayStation fans I think Oculus appeals to hardcore PC fans I think it's very much an early adopter thing yeah you know and I and I think that it's not really surprising that it's pretty darn expensive for the first time it's ever available I don't think I don't think they're trying to say this is going to be something that millions of people are going to buy right now yeah and it's just not targeted like

I think they're consciously not targeted that. They're like, if you're super invested in having this experience, you can get it now. Yeah. If you want to not be the first, you know, to jump in the deep end, a couple years from now, it'll probably be a couple hundred bucks less. Yeah, exactly. And I think they're conscious of that. They just want to get it out there before they can sell it for 300 bucks.

Yeah. And over on the MA, he was saying that, you know, they didn't want to do it cheap so everyone can get it. They want to do it right. And it's like, it's going to cost more. But at least it's the experience that they want. want to give. And I think that is a good thing.

In terms of talking about the TVs and stuff and the pricing on all that, it's like, you're right. Like those things, we would spend that much money. And with any tech, like you do got to spend money. Whether it's an iPad or a phone or this or that, the difference is like you'd spend $2,000 on TV.

This isn't a TV. Like, $600, even to me as somebody that splurges on tech. Like, I want tech everywhere. Everywhere. Like, I'm the type of motherfucker. Yeah, I'm the type of motherfucker that it's like, oh, there's an iPad pro. Do I want it?

You know, like I questioned Apple fucking watching all this shit. And it's not just Apple products. It seems like that now, but it's not. But with this VR stuff, it's like I'm interested in it. But $600. I'm like, oh, shit, that's a lot. It is. But the thing is that.

See, here's the thing. To the TV example, like you buy a TV that could, you watch anything on Netflix on it. Anything on Amazon on it, you can plug your Xbox, your PlayStation into it. You can plug your DVD player, you know, Blu-ray player into it. whatever, right? So that investment gives you access to anything you might want to watch or play on it, right? And the thing that I feel like no one's been able to answer when I've asked about it is like, I understand that VR as an abstract experience is like cool and inspiring, but like, is there actually a killer app for it? What is the killer? Why do I need? What do I want to do with this thing? Yeah. And people are like, Elite Dangerous is really cool. Evalchre is really cool. It's like, is it a massively over. overpowered PC plus a headset so that I can have like the one experience of sitting in a couple of spaceship cockpits because I feel like I feel like what they did is like years ago they started putting the dev kits out and I think what they wanted was to give people a lot of lead time to be

like by the time this goes commercial I'm not asking that question I'm like oh there's all these games that only people who had Oculus headsets have been able to play and god I got to get to him oh it's finally commercially available now I can do it and I feel like even though it's the early adopter first pass more expensive than most people are going to want I still think it's kind of a bad sign that I'm like if I spent that money what would I even be doing with it why aren't there why isn't there stuff ready for me to like use on on this thing yeah I mean it's funny you said killer app and I think it's like even less than that where it's just it's not the killer app it's more what are all the apps like it should be all of the things right and right and it's weird that

we haven't heard too much about that and so earlier we were talking at lunch about the VR and it being 2D, you were saying that VR needs to be 3D, I never really thought about that. Because we always talk about the just, it's a good way to just shut off and be able to play a game. Would we even be able to play just a 2D, just a game, but not even using the VR capabilities of it, but just looking at a 2D screen? It would have to, it's the way that they're planning on doing like Xbox 1 streaming to Oculus, where it's basically like there's a virtual screen that's in front of you. So it still is in a 3D space. Yes. So they have to put a 3D plane in front of you that you can like.

look around or whatever it can't there is no concept of just like a screen like you like you know how when you play when you play a video game when you play an FPS and it's got the reticle on the ammo counter and all that stuff that's on the HUD you just can't have that like because there is no concept of like that where that should be in the space yeah it has to be in it can it can be 2d elements but they have to be in 3d space so it has to be like in the depth of the world compared to and like in an FPS for instance you need to like have a body so that you reference yourself to. There's just a lot of ways that you can't just say, take game X and throw it in

VR. It really has to be designed for it. I think that's what I think that's kind of what the like, like, we remote analog is, you know, like things that made the Wii remote worth having were like Wii sports, like games that were like, this game is designed around this, you know, you didn't want to really play Zelda with Waggle, you wanted to like play a game that was about using that thing. And I think that's what VR has to be. And yeah, I'm not, convinced that what VR is actually like inherently good for that nothing else can do is like broad enough that there's going to be enough to it that you're like oh yeah I got to keep having more and more and more and more experiences on this headset so I got to have one you know what I mean I think I feel like that's the guitar hero rock band curse you know you're like everybody has guitar hero rock band peripherals even either in their closet or at their garage Or at Goodwill. Because you bought it eight years ago.

You played a bunch of guitar hero. You played a bunch of rock band. You played rock band four. You played rock band Beatles. You played and you're sort of like, all right, I think I've done everything I can do with these pieces of plastic. And I fear that VR is that on a like consumer mass entertainment level. I think VR is a lot more, has a lot more potential for like practical uses, like training. doctors and doing like flight training for pilots and like I don't know like I mean it's not like this is

my favorite use of it but like probably like controlling a drone that you're flying over Afghanistan or something right and also there's the whole thing that like when they announced that Facebook bought Oculus the like the first thing that Zuckerberg said it was like it's like your lakes I mean courtsided a Lakers game and like yeah you sit in the seat you put on the headset if you can be watching like a live event and be able to actually like follow it like you're actually there. That seems like something that is cool, but that seems like something is more like for public exhibition. Like you go somewhere and have that experience.

You don't necessarily want to be like, I'm going to gear myself up so I can sit on my couch and put on a headset and watch basketball tonight. You know? Yeah. So I don't know. I'm, I'm skeptical of the long term like broad appeal of it. Just the potential for like how we're picturing it being like a consumer entertainment, like in-home device. But I'm not saying that's

like, I don't know, that's my perspective on it. I don't know if I see the version of like, oh yeah, everybody's got VR in their house. Like 20 years from now, it's like how everybody has a TV. You know, I don't. Yeah, yeah. I know. Yeah. For me, I think that I agree with you, and I agree with Colin, too, about it being a slow. Like, I don't think it's

going to be a failure, but I do think that it's going to be slow, but every experience I've had with it has been amazing. Like, a lot of them, you know, they're not perfect. But every single time, I am asking what else can I do? And there has been answers so far. But are they just cool novelties the one time you play them? And that's the thing is so far.

They are just cool novelties. But and here's, I've said this before, but my big problem with it is I remember when the Wii came out and I was like, oh, man, Wii sports is so cool because it's, it gets my gears turning of what do I want to play with this. And it's like, I want a lightsaber game. I want, you know, I wanted Zelda. We all said we wanted Zelda. But a Zelda design, but not really, though, you know. And like, that's the thing is they kind of like, we're like, oh, this is. In Zelda made for this, it's Zelda, this is in it.

Right. And I always wanted those things that never got them. And I think I'm in that stage now with this VR. It's like, you know, we play that horror demo that we, the kitchen. Yep. And I was like, this is incredible. I can only imagine what a real horror game would be not just this little slice. Or then we, at a PSX I played the until dawn rush of blood.

And I'm like, this is awesome. This is so much fun. But it reminds me it's fun in the same way mobile games are fun, where it's just, like, oh, this is cool. It's a cool little distraction. I don't really need a full game. It's like, it's a light gun game. Right. How fun are like a game games? They're a ton of fun once. Yeah. You know.

So nobody makes them anymore. Yeah, exactly. So I don't know. We'll see. Yeah. Sorry, Colin. No, you look like you're like, no, I'm, I'm just, I'm just listening. It's shot. It's, it's a little shocking though, because I feel like your games are what VR is, is made for. Like, that's, that's the, that's the, that's the incredible thing to me is like gone home in PSVR or is exactly what I want. See, I don't, the thing is, I don't think you're...

It's your game, though, so you would know better than me. I feel like, so there's just this thing where it's like, I think that there's such a disconnect between controlling your head and controlling your body when you have a VR headset on, that like, it really simulates you sitting in place

and looking around. And I think there's tons of amazing experiences that can be about sitting in place and looking around and interacting with what you can see when you look around or like, et cetera, et cetera, right? But I mean, just having played games that attempt it, like it's so disorienting and, um, just like suboptimal to be trying to drive your body and look around

and remember which way your body's facing, which way your head's facing. It's like the, the, the, I, so here's what I'd say. Um, I think that we as people have like, millennia of experience of like projecting our attention and consciousness into a frame right your paintings in frames television video games right like i think that we are actually really good at being like i'm sitting here but i'm thinking about being there you know what i mean and i don't think that vr is enough of a step past that that it makes such a difference that it's like worth all the limitations that it puts on those experiences that we already have. You know what I mean? It's just

sort of like I feel like it does seem like it would be really cool to just be in the gone home house, you'll walk around and look around and it feels like you're really there. But I think that what you actually start thinking about, you actually start thinking about how you're not really there. You're like, I'm looking around, but I can't walk around. I'm looking around with my head. This is so real. Wait, but I have to move my feet around with sticks or WSD or like, I don't know, however those handy controllers work or whatever. And like I think that we have a set of games, you know, like first person shooters, third person action games, et cetera, that like they've been designed for decades of like

screen and controls and being geared towards that. And I think that until we get to the point where there's some, you know, there's some more like holodecky kind of version of like you can look around by looking around with your head and you can walk around by walking around with your body, but you're just seeing another place while you're doing it. I think that disconnect is just too strong to really just let you navigate a space like that. I feel like that's this, because that's what I,

when I played rigs at PSX, right? And I put on the headset and I'm looking around with the headset. And I think that's how, then you shoot that way, right? But then to move, yeah,

you were using the sticks. And it wasn't moving where I was looking. It had to move where I was going, right? Totally disorienting for the first round. And then the second, when we came back from halftime, I'm at a little bit more of it.

And so my counter to it is I really feel like it's just, we have to learn. It's the same way when we move from Dpad to analog, or even now when you hand somebody who doesn't play games, this thing, right? And they're like, yeah, let me play in there looking. Yeah, or getting into like mouse keyboard when you first start trying to play an FBS. That just doesn't make sense, period. Everybody knows that. And you're right. You're totally right.

And so maybe that is more of it. Maybe it just has to become a convention and it has to be refined and it has to become more into. intuitive than it is now and it is totally viable. Yeah, I mean, that was, that was what I was thinking is what Greg was saying was that I don't even remember learning dual analog sticks, but at some point we had to. Oh, yeah. And we were really introduced to like single analog sticks and all those kinds of things. Although dual logistics were coming out on PS1 and, um, no, I totally remember learning

FPS controls on Halo one. Yep. And just being like, Halo and time split. Like, yeah, absolutely. So I, it's jacked up for a while. So I think to me, and my, because I agree with you that I think it's, it's, the, the, the, the experience works best in sedentary. kind of way is like if you're in a valcreen you're in a cockpit well you don't have to worry

about moving yourself so so so you're we have to worry about the locomotion propulsion of the ship you don't have to worry about moving your own body and I think that that's really vital but um yeah touch him uh but uh but uh to me it's like to me it's we have to unlearned to me it's we have to be difficult for gamers that have been brought up for almost 20 years now with dual analog sticks is we have to unlearn using the right stick right right stick is now your head and the left stick is the way you get around and if you can just it's not going to be easy and it's going to be really actually impossibly hard maybe for some people, maybe even us, but I think that it's it's one of those situations where I'm I'm more concerned about the ceiling of ideas

that come out of really creative people's minds to utilize it best in terms of video games. Because I agree with you that the practical applications, I was just reading something about Carson Palmer and quarterback of the Cardinals, just talking about how he's excited about the idea of training with a virtual headset, like virtual reality headset and like what does that mean for NFL teams. All of these non-gaming effects are virtual. tourism or or wouldn't have been cool when New Horizons was going to Pluto and Sharon that like you could have there could have been a 360 degree camera on that that you could have just been there and looked around and

just seen it you know absolutely so those those those things are obvious but I do agree with you that maybe the gaming application is most obvious to us yet hardest the hardest problem to overcome but I still think it's going to be it's contingent on it's contingent on people coming up with ways to make us believe and I think that um I'm not even remotely clever enough to come up with anything that doesn't already exist. But I do think that maybe in 50 years when we have these things and they're way more complicated and we do have a locomotion solution and walk around all these kinds of things, maybe that is the realization of what we want, what we want with VR.

VIR has been around for a long time. It's not like a new technology. I mean, the promise of VR has been talking about since really the 80s. And it has been a lot of technology advancement that has, like, made it more viable for sure. Like, just the hardware and software in the 80s and 90s couldn't keep up. with what you needed for this. And we're still getting there,

where you still need really powerful hardware for it to be viable, but it's like, you know, just eons past where we were, yeah, 20, 30 years ago. Yeah, you know, things 3D of like the red and blue and now where it's at and now where it will be. Yeah. Like, it's crazy.

Even like the 3DS, I remember when that first happened, I'm like, you're telling me that I can see something 3D without glasses on. Yeah. Like, that blew my mind. Yeah. And it still kind of does when you look at it. Yeah.

You're just like, really? It works. Yeah. And you hardly ever see that. It's really cool. What is, I'm curious about in your own studio though.

Are there people that disagree with you in terms of your? Like when, when you must have got an Oculus or P.SVR. Maybe not PSVR, but an Oculus

thing to fuck around with. Yeah. At some point, did, were there some people that you worked, were there some people that you worked with

that were like, we're sitting, I don't know how you guys make decisions there. I mean, it's your studio, but, but,

there's some people like, we should maybe try. And, and then there's some people that agree with you where it's like, it's maybe not going to work for our games.

We don't really have any boosters at the studio for VR. We're all sort of cool with just like, let's just make the game. Let's make the game in the form that we, because the thing is, here's the thing. You have to do a lot of really specific things to have even a, like, quasi-acceptable version of this kind of game on VR. So, like, you can't patch it in later. You know, you have to, like, there's no way to, you have to be very invested to do it at all. I think we're all sort of like, we want to do the thing that, you know, goes on your screen and

use a controller and it's, it's cool. I think that you have to have somebody that is passionate about it and is obsessed with it. And it's like, we have to have this experience, you know. And so that's, I think it's just on our priority internally. Do you find that amongst, like, your peers at other studios or, you know, other indies, but also maybe other, like, do you find that that's the consensus? Or do you find that, do you know anyone that you're close to or that you're friends with that, that wants that believes or do you find that the consensus is there's some i mean there's people

that i like that i know in the industry that i follow on twitter who are like making you know vr games and are are are big into it it's just like you have to go you have to go all in on it yeah there's like a ton of learning you it has to be like your mission statement and so i think on that level on like a development level that just means it's a high barrier entry because you're like okay we're not making a two-d platformer we're not making something that we know how to make. We're not making something that has an install base of tens of millions of people. We're making something that is like for this very small group of people that have this hardware that's all about that. Like, you know, like games like, uh, um, keep talking or. Yeah. And nobody

floats. Yeah. Um, you know, it's like awesome. You know, like that's, that is like a genius version of like you're sitting, you're looking, you're interacting with this thing. They also shipped a non-vr version of it afterwards, right? And that's the thing. You know, you if you're going to make it a VR thing and has to start from VR and you can like strip the VR back out of it but you can't go the other way you know what I mean so um I think like even just on a practical level just like people that are kind of outside of Oculus as a company there's a lot to you're cutting off a lot sure if you if you go all in on that because you're not making something that just somebody can pick up a game pad and play and so you just have to be like that's the

investment we're making we are passionate we're obsessed with thinking a VR experience. So I think that's, I think that's part of why we haven't seen the critical mass of like, oh, there's all these awesome VR games. I'm just waiting for that commercial headset to come out so I can play them, you know?

What do you think about the stigma of just having something attached to you? I feel like there's almost no consumer entertainment of any kind that breaks through where you have to have some shit strapped onto you. Sure. Like headset glove. Nobody wanted to use the Wii wrist strap. The wrist strap was too much. The controller was fine because you just drop it.

The wrist strap is no go. When they pegged it right through a TV, that's when people start wearing. Kevin makes a point. People wear headphones. I mean, the big thing about it is I don't think, I think,

again, we're talking about two different things, right? I think we're talking about this subset hardcore gamer audience that's into it and wants to do it. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean,

mainstream wrist straps, that's what the Wii was going for. And granted, I didn't wear my wrist strap either. But I mean, like, it wasn't amplifying my experience, right? I think even if you're like,

look stupid and you put it on that first time and you play that game or that experience that clicks for you right i think it'll be the thing where it's like it's going it's going to continue to be it's like a virus somebody you have to get you get touched by it you get infected you understand and then you'lls you keep going there's a weird fear to vr too i don't really know how to put this in words but like when you you it's kind of scary even not playing a scary game you've been playing like some stupid like you know the like a colorful like bright game you put that on you're still aware that you're in a room Yeah, you're cut off from the outside world. Yeah, and it's kind of like when you, if you can't hear what's outside you and you can't see what it's outside you, I've had multiple times with PSVR on where I was just like, oh, there's people around me.

Nick's around me right now. Right, right. That's scary to me. You know what I mean? Like, seriously, though, and it's just like there's very, even if you're home alone, that's kind of scary too. Sure. You know, and I've thought about that. The first person whose house is going to catch fire while he's in a VR heads and go, what the fuck?

You know, not hear the smoke alarm, I know. Granted, if you're locked in, if you have your room closed, you have headphones. Exactly, exactly. No, no, no. There's a little bit different where I've had multiple times where I've felt this really weird intense fear. You can't just look over your shoulder.

Yeah. You have to look over your shoulder and take the helmet. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't know. No, that's a legit thing. I mean, there's a whole bunch of things to get through and learn with with this. You know what I mean? Like, it's not, it is a completely new experience.

That's why it's exciting, I think. I mean, I believe in it far more than I've believed in move or any of that stuff. because early on I kept saying it's going to be another move, it's going to be another move, it's going to be another move, where it comes out and it's cool, and the launch lineup sucks, and then it doesn't sell,

and so then nobody else makes games for it, and so then everything gets abandoned. I mean, the thing is I fear that it kind of is that. I know, that's still the fear, but I mean, no, I mean, but like, I fear that may be true.

You feel this in your soul right now. Yeah, yeah, yeah, because like, I mean, it just, it feels wee remotey to me. You know, like the Wii remote came out. Everybody was like, holy shit. We're all going to buy a Wii.

And then the lightsaber game never came. PlayStation got in on the PlayStation move. Xbox got on the Connect. Both Xbox and Sony super late, though. Yeah, but I mean, but Oculus is out now.

PSVR is still like in early stages. No. They say June, buddy. I mean, okay. Sure. I meant to say yes, definitely.

I don't know. I mean, I'm just saying like it's not yet, right? So we don't know if it. No, I know. But all I mean is it feels to me like, there's a big

bubble around like the promise of VR via Oculus and I think the Vive and PSVR and it's in like Google Cardboard I don't know are all trying to like get in on that and I have not seen the proof in the pudding that it won't

be Wii remotes 10 years five five years or no 10 years or not goodwill just a shit ton of them next to the guitars I don't know I don't know no it's gonna be interesting that's why I can't wait to see what happens is here how it all nuts out. It's Wii remotes all the way down. All right, guys.

Topic three. I want to talk about Tacoma. Now, here's the thing. This is a new segment of this show. When we have gentlemen like yourself on, that create these games. Or ladies. Or ladies.

You're correct. Nicole Tan answer my calls. Yeah, come on. I want you to pitch us on why Tacoma is going to be awesome. It is going to be the killer app for V. Oh. That's what he was waiting for the whole time. You know what I have discovered, the killer app for me.

Tacoma. We're not doing a VR version. So Tacoma takes place on Space Station from the creators of Gone Home. Colin sold. You got Gone home, you got space. Yeah, gone home in space. I mean, I'm done, right? There we go.

Next topic. I guess, here's the truth. I haven't worked on the elevator pitch very much. I don't have the like part one, part two, part three. Nailed it. I think that on some level, that's because we are still really internalizing what the heart of that experience is. But I'll try now. So Tacoma is a non-combat, first person story exploration game.

It takes place on a space station 60 years from now, 65, 70 years from now. And I still think. it in terms of Gone Home, right? So a game like Gone Home is all about environmental storytelling. It's you and the environment. It's you and a house, right? Like Firewatch is you and a forest. You know, everybody loves, everybody's gone to the rapture. It's like you and this village, right? And in some cases, there's characters that you can hear from or that you can see, you know, what they've done or, you know, environmental storytelling is all about inferring what has happened to these characters in the past, right? with Tacoma one advantage we have

is that we're setting the game in a fiction where there is this digital technology that is surrounding the characters they're on this space station Tacoma and speaking of VR AR augmented reality is like a part of their everyday life

and so a big part of the experience if gone home was just all about finding the evidence of what happened to people and putting the pieces back together on Tacoma, the crew was having their experience recorded by the station constantly. And so you go into the space and as you're exploring, you're not finding just the messages, the notes, the artifacts they left behind, but you also see these recreations, kind of like holographic recreations in your augmented reality rig of what actually happened to them at different points over the course of their posting on the station. And it's not just, okay, you can stand there and watch them do something, but because it's being placed in space in your fictional augmented reality rig,

you occupy the space with them. You can walk around the characters as they're interacting, as they're having scenes, as they're going through what happened before you got there. And beyond that, what's important to us is the each, like wing of the station, each, like major section of the station, And each recording in that space is all of the characters that were there going about their business, going through their scenes. And so you as a player, you're not just finding them sitting there and watching, but characters might be having a conversation and somebody else comes in, starts talking, somebody else leaves.

You are in control of saying, okay, that person left. I'm going to go follow them and see what they're doing. But I know these people back here were doing something while I was gone. and you have control as a player over rewinding, fast forwarding, pausing, controlling, basically, time and space as far as like your relation to the story, because you can say like, wait, I saw this, but I know those characters are over there. I'm going to move the timeline back to this point and then I'm going to move myself in space over here. And yeah, those two things are happening at the same time. So what does that mean? And basically, we're trying to push ourselves to make you involved in reconstructing this story in a,

different way that allows you to have that very intimate feeling of like sharing the space with the characters while these things are happening to them while they're experiencing what you're just kind of seeing echoes of but also to fully interactively be placing yourself within that whole kind of like structure of what happened to them and putting those pieces back together in like a traditional you know environmental storytelling kind of way but with tools that we wouldn't have had in Gone Home that I haven't seen in other games like this. So that's why I don't have a sexy elevator pitch. That was good.

I have a cool, like conceptual neat thing. I would like to get that down to 20 seconds, but we'll see what we can do. Augmented reality, Gone Home in space. Yeah. And we are working with Microsoft on it. It's going to be first on Xbox One and PC. And it's cool because they were kind of like bringing out HoloLens around the same time as we started talking to them and we and they kind of separately we had together and we were like

we can actually like do this in a hollow lens like you could put on a hollow lens and see a character in the room with you and be able to walk around them um I don't know if it's ever going to happen but it's kind it's just cool to know that like this thing that we started doing just purely as like a far future like you know fictional thing it's like if we were able to you could actually do that with this thing that we're like working on right now um so it's just, it's neat to see that like, it's speculative fiction, but it's not complete fantasy. You know what I mean? Mm-hmm. Jumping off the Gone Home cast from last week.

Yeah. I left all that out. So for this one, how soon after you finish Gone Home do you move on to this? And is this the first idea you guys were working with? You talked about how far gone home, right? It was that you wanted to do the narrative storytelling in the space and the, okay, let's do it in a house and do this. Was it like, let's do it again in space, space space? No.

The game is called Tacoma because it was originally going to take place in Tacoma, Washington. And we went pretty far down that road for the first few months of development. It was another very grounded story of people that lived in Tacoma, Washington, at a different time than gone home took place. And it was about finding out about their lives. And we were working on it, getting it on screen. And I was like, it was way too familiar. We shouldn't be doing this again right now. It took a little while to realize, like, okay, this is closer than I thought it was going to be.

I really don't think that, not just because it felt like people would be like, oh, that's just the same, like, you know, player base. But because we expanded our team on this game, you know, we brought on new people. And it started to feel really tangibly weird that we were making something. It was very much like Gone Home. And like part of the team had worked on Gone Home and part of the team hadn't. And there was this feeling of like, oh, you're the guys that made Gone Home and we're doing that again. And you know how to do it. We've never done it before.

so you know it's like kind of insider outsider kind of thing to it and so I I was I've told this story before but I was my wife and I went to crater Lake in Oregon for our anniversary yeah and you can you can take a boat out to an island in the middle of crater lake which is called wizard island and so we were hiking on wizard island pretty much one does yeah the best Wizard hat on Wans And I was talking to her about it And I was like You know I think this thing we're making

It's a good idea But like it's getting too close to what we've already done I think we can do that again and blah blah blah And I think we you know we want to make the same kind of game But set in like a different place where it could work like It would have to be like an Arctic base or like a You know a derelict ship in the sea or like a space station And she was like oh space station sounds cool

And I was like all right And so we talked about it more and kicked around the ideas of like what would be cool about that and kind of by the end of that trip i was ready to take it back to carla at fulbright and pitch her on it and then like you know we kind of like got our heads around why is this interesting why is it worth doing this why wouldn't we do some other setting or like what are the risks you know what's going to be hard about this bubble and and got to the point where we're like yeah this does make sense this is this is something that is different enough to be worth doing and brought it back to the team pitch them on

it just kind of went from there but i think the biggest thing is you you know, we just wanted to get to the point where all of us on the team were facing a bunch of big questions that none of us had answered before. And we all felt like we were in the same boat of like, none of us had made a game exactly like this before, you know? And the cool thing is it's given us these additional kind of like interactive storytelling tools that we wouldn't have had otherwise if we had just stuck with what we thought we were going to do in the first place, you know. Yeah. We got a couple of questions from Twitter. Dude, K. Paul DeBoss wants to know. What are some pieces of storytelling that influenced Tacoma, like film and literature, etc.?

That's a really good question. Some of the obvious ones are like the original alien, right? And so the game is about these six people that are stuck on this facility together. They're isolated. They're kind of like been shoved off on their own. And it's not the greatest assignment in the world. They all kind of like, they didn't get there because they're like the cream of the crop as far as the company is concerned. Like something means this is why they got this posting.

And so the wire is like an influence because I'm like they're kind of like they're kind of like McNulty's, you know, crew that got shoved down to the basement. Like they all did something that means they're here for a reason, but they're trying to do a good job and they have to rely on each other. And so that was that's something that I've come back to. Breakfast Club. That's about six people stuck in a room together. They have to learn how to deal with each other. The interesting thing is that we've had to really learn a new kind of storytelling for us. Like not the whole like rewind, fast forward, AR figure kind of stuff.

But our stories that we've done from Minerva's Den to gone home have always been like very focused. There's been like a protagonist. You know, like in Minerva's Den, it was C.M. Porter. He was the guy that founded this place. He had this whole thing. There were other characters, but it was like, and similarly gone home. It was about the family, but it was really about Sam, right? Sam had a story and went through the game.

There was one story that went through the game. And we kind of, when we started out, we kind of approached it, approached Tacoma that way because we didn't know any other way. And it has been a real learning experience to be like, how do you write something differently for it to be an ensemble? story for it to be about something that affects this whole group and it's relevant to all of them and that you can see who they are through the lens of like this shared story instead of just like here's the main character we're following their story everybody else is kind of like

secondary so that's why we've been going going back to these pieces of media that are about like a group of people that all have to kind of be in it together and how they get through that you know it's exciting i'm excited to play it one of the things i'm curious about is you know by the time people see this, I guess Gone Home is finally coming to console or whatever, after a long tortured kind of thing or whatever, but yeah, fingers crossed. Was it important for you to kind of partner with one of the first parties in order to kind of make sure this game gets to a wider audience of console audience? Because people have been begging for Gone Home on console for a long time, and it took

it took some time. So was that kind of a no-brainer that you would kind of go with Microsoft or Sony or both? Yeah, I mean, Microsoft was just was the right partner for us because, like, we we thought it would be great to to have like a strong like invested partner at one of the platforms, right? Because like, I don't know, whatever. I was on stage at E3 last year. Like that's not the kind of opportunity you get if you haven't kind of like thrown. Well, unless you're making fallout or whatever.

Right. But like if you're an indie, you kind of have to like be, you know, have a deal with somebody to sort of be like we're going to invest in you. We're going to be on your platform. You're going to help us get the word out about our game. ways that we couldn't otherwise right and Microsoft is in the position where they're they're trying to they're working hard right like to to get up in in the in the marketplace right like sony got a big head start and the folks at Microsoft they're like okay we got to like really invest in making unique experiences beyond Xbox to give people like a really strong reason like i've got to have

I got to have an Xbox. You know what I mean? Like this is on it. This is on it. They're doing this. It's got backwards compatibility, et cetera, right? They're trying to sort of say like, here's our arguments for you should like not write off Xbox. It's got like all this great stuff on it.

Right. And so when you are an indie that is, you know, trying to have as much to have like as strong a partner as possible, the platform that is working harder is going to just is just going to be more invested in. like making you successful, right? Because Sony has they're fine. But you know, we're starting to see a lot of really interesting, cool Xbox one

exclusives like Oxenfree, which is Xbox and PC. And you know, like Cuphead is coming out. We're, you know, going to be part of that. And just being partnered with the group that's like, we're going to fight for you. We're going to work for this. We're going to do everything we can.

It's really important to us for you guys. to be successful and be part of this, like, identity that we're, that we're building for the platform to move it from where it is right now. It's, it's just a, it's a good match. You know what I mean? If you're trying to kind of, like, have as much support as much visibility as possible. And then the folks at Microsoft are just really cool. They're just good, like, the team that we're working with, really experienced, really good,

really good people that, like, they helped us, you know, like, make our E3 presentation, our trailer, like, as good as it could be, just with, like, great feed. They know how to make an impression. You know what I mean? So we've been really happy so far just being able to work with them. And it's always, I mean, it ain't such a bad thing to only have to like target one console at a time and be able to get it done. You know what I mean? So that's an advantage too, you know, just on the development side.

Of course. Yeah. Look out for Nate Ahern over there though. I don't trust them. Oh, Nate. I don't know what that mean. I just said that weirdly. It's like.

Another cool question comes from Andrew Taylor. He says, What kind of challenges are there when making a game set in space? Oh, boy. There's a lot. I mean, honestly, because, like, I think a big part of it is that it's so unfamiliar. Like, that was one of the advantages of gone home was, it was so familiar. You were like, I can feel like I've been in this house before, maybe.

You know, you're sort of like, I know what this place is like. I recognize this on some level. and a space station is in a lot of ways totally alien. You know, it's not like a place that you've been before really, except maybe if you've like gone on a tour of a submarine or, you know, something like that. With a space camp. Yeah, exactly. And so I think that that's the challenge is sort of like us being like,

okay, this is a totally unfamiliar environment to the player, to us, but also to the people in the fiction that live there. And so the cool thing is part of what that motivates us to do. do is be like with that being true with this being like an isolated space facility with all these technological requirements how would these people make it feel more like home and feel more like a place that they don't feel like they're just in like a weird lab all the time and how do we get that across to the player because that's going to make it feel more like a real place to the player at the same time you know yeah there's also gravity and all that kind of stuff that's different yeah cool

yeah my I'm just I'm just I'm I'm curious, I mean, I know devs hate these kind of questions that are working on a specific game, but is this, is this what your studios, is this what you want your studios identity to be in 10 or 20 years? Is this the kind of game you have a diverse interest in other games? As many developers do that make, you know, maybe make one type of game, but you know, you play your shooters and all these kinds of things. Do you guys want to make like something else at some point? Or is this, are you always going to have a story driven, like narrative driven kind of mentality? I don't really know, you know, like, I don't even know really like what. I don't know. I don't, I don't, I don't, I don't, you know, I don't even know what the next step after this really looks like. You know what I mean? Going home to. Okay. Back to the Greenbriars. I think it's one of those things where I can't say the answer is yes.

Because I just don't know what life after Tacoma really even consist of. You know, it's one of those things where we have to get enough distance from it to even know what we want to do next. You know what I mean? Because if you're like, okay, we finished Tacoma, we got to make something else right now. It'll probably be pretty similar. Right. you know but I mean if we're fortunate enough that the game can do well and then we can get some distance and be like what does it really mean to keep making games past this um I think that that's a

really you know open question um I think that we probably I think there are some things that would probably be consistent I don't like I doubt will ever really make like a violent game I doubt will probably ever make like a hardcore like skill based you know reflex twitch game or something like that i would guess probably not i think that um the core people who are involved with what we're do with what we do we're just like we're interested in smaller maybe more like contemplative experiences on some level i think there's a lot that you can do with figuring out how to focus in more and go smaller and kind of say like how can more relatable or or just how can how can how can how can how can we give people experiences they haven't had before um in a way that fits kind of what our

what are what our what our what our aesthetic interests are you know what I mean but I don't think that necessarily means the only kind of game we ever make is a first person story exploration game but I don't really know what else it's going to be so I guess I'll find out yeah I'm always fascinated by I mean gorilla is a great example we've talked about them a lot. It's like, it's like, FPS, FPS, FPS, third person action RPG. Yeah. You know, and I'm like, where the fuck did that come from? Yeah. Well, and like, like, and that's great and I'm excited about it. So I'm always interested in like, you know, I think you even look at stuff like, you know, naughty, naughty dog, right? Like they've,

they've done third person action games forever. But like Crash Bandicoot to Uncharted to Last of Us. It's, it's the same basic form, but such different, you know, aesthetic goals and kinds of mechanics and and things they're achieving without saying, oh, we're an Audi dog, we're going to do a turn-based space RPS now. You know? So I think that there's this whole spectrum of like being able to do something you've never done before without necessarily saying and now it's time for a submarine sim. Right.

No, understood. Yeah. Are you prepared to confirm or deny that Tacoma is in the gone home universe? Yeah, it is. Oh, thank you very much. All right. We're good? There you go.

That was much easier than I thought it'd be. Before we move on to topic 4, do you have any final questions about Tacoma? Still shooting for this year? Yeah. Good luck. What is that? What is that? What is that?

I'm seriously, I'm seriously. Good luck. I know it's hard to make in video games. That's the way I read it. Do you have any closing words about Tacoma? No, I mean, thanks. Thanks for giving me some time to talk. It's cool to get to start to be able to kind of go in depth with it.

We're going to be showing more of it later this year. How awesome will it? be. I'm going to give it 9 out of 10 platinum trophies. That's really awesome. That's great. The 10th one was gone homes.

Ladies and gentlemen, as always, topic four is brought to you by the Kind of Funny forums. Go to kindof funny.com slash gamescast topic to leave your topic for the show, just like all these beautiful kids did. All these questions.

Big beautiful kids. The big beautiful kids. They're big? They're big. Okay. Yeah. We're good. This is directed directly to you, all of these questions.

The topic is, okay. It's about, it's about, okay, okay. Mm, doggy wants to know. What do you have to say about your games, not being called games by haters? I replied to him with a haters going to hate a JPEG. It was the one of the guy going like that over a puddle. Yeah. So just picture that.

Yeah. No, I don't know. We talked about this, I guess, on the gone home cast. It's kind of funny games, the podcast services everywhere. So I won't go, I won't go deep on it. You should grab the gone home cast that we just did. But I don't know, I feel like saying something isn't a game is one way of just saying it's like, it's outside of what you would traditionally consider like a game, right?

And I mean, obviously a dishwasher isn't a game, right? But when you're playing like an interactive experience on your game console, um, hopefully it means that we're doing something to expand the territory of what people think of as like being a game you can play. Um, but if you want to hear like the deeper, dorkier version of like what makes it game like to me. I think we talked about that a little bit more.

I don't, I don't like, I don't take it personally or whatever. I think it's just like, it's just a way of saying this isn't for me. This isn't an experience that, like, connects with me, right? And the shorthand for that is this isn't even a game. And, you know, like, I'm not the kind of person who I would...

I'm happy to just saying I don't really like something as opposed to saying it's not a whatever. But, you know, it... There's a... The cool thing about what's going on with games now is they are just broadening constantly. There's more kinds of games constantly. There's, you know, Minecraft begat survival games, you know, like survival crafting games. We're not really a thing, you know, while, and now we've got those. Now we've got, you know, like, VR is going to make these games that we just didn't have before.

So hopefully there's just, like, more cool experiences for everyone as we keep going on. Our boy, Maximum Cortez, he wants to know. How do you feel about your haircut? Oh. Oh, I mean, this is more of a question for the kind of funny crew. What do you guys think of my hair cut? It's good. I like it.

I like it. I like the old hair, too, though. I want to say. So that's why I want to know, you know, I went through a lot of different. types of haircuts in my life. And I felt differently about some of them. This one I'm having right now. Okay.

No. I think, Kevin verbalize. Oh, I like it. Okay, all right. Well, because I glass haircut, not so much. Okay, that was what it was? All right. I was I'm talking about the long hair to the side one?

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because I saw it on my peripheral vision, just Kevin just going, I was like, what, hey, how you're making fun of Nick? Kevin's the epitabit of massive distraction on this show. You always catch me your peripheral vision. I've asked for a curtain for a long time. Greg hasn't answered at all and that makes me worried.

I like the hair fine. I miss the glasses. Really? Yeah, I'm a big glasses fan. I mean, we do have two out of three glasses haveers right here. Yeah. I can understand that.

I got Lasic. I got laser shot in my eyeballs. I can't wear glasses. You're from the future. Did they do that on Wizard Island? That would have been a magical spell, not a laser. Yeah, exactly. Maximum Cortez also wants to know.

What are your expectations for your games going forward? I guess. Yeah. Colin Ardy. Yeah. Collins thing. Fabio Arapi wants to know. I would like to know

his most anticipated games of 2016. Dishonored 2. DeSX, Mankind, Divided Firewatch by my friends at Campa Santo. Xcom 2 is sounding really awesome. That's a good four. That's a good start.

I can't wait for Firewatch. And I want to play Oxen Free when it comes out in like a week. Well, I mean, whenever this is. Yeah. it might be out now but yeah I'm looking forward to checking out Oxen Free when it hits Confus 90 wants to know

Do you know or have you seen Ken Levine's next game I don't think I really know anything more about it Than everybody else does I mean he's talked about how it's like this sort of like Replayable story experience It's sort of talk about narrative Legos etc but I haven't I haven't gotten to seen it

I haven't gotten to seen it I'm great at talk of No I haven't gotten to see it or anything. I know that, yeah, they've been working on it for a while. I mean, they kind of went from the big team to small team thing. You know, I think they're like...

You're ahead of your time. They're like 20 or fewer people at this point. And I think they're, you know, like 2K is giving them the time to explore how to make something that they haven't, haven't made before. Basically, um, I'm certainly interested to see what it, what it ends up being.

I'm sure this is an annoying question that Greg probably already asked you in the, I have touched. I have touched Ken's beard multiple times. So... What's the review on that? How many platinum trophies? That's like... Can you go up to 11 out of church?

Sure. Yeah, sure. Buck it. Is that where you got your powers of creativity? By touching his... Well, as... Last time we met, went in for the hug, and he said,

I think we velcroed a little. Velcroed. So, yeah, some sparks for thrown off. There might have been some transference. That was a good Ken impression. Yeah, I love it. I spent a lot of time around him. Why has gone home not on Vita?

Oh, I didn't ask that. Oh, you didn't know? Dude, at this- Fuck, Greg. It's been two and a half... You have one job. Years of me begging to get trophies and gone home. It's on PS4.

Good enough. Like, the war is over. It was hard enough getting it to run on... Run well on consoles. I don't even know about... Beat, probably... About handhelds.

But, I mean, I don't know. Yeah. Let's take it one step at a time. We're doing two consoles right now. taking it two steps at a time. Good. We'll go from that. I'll respond as GeoCorsi would with remote play. Every game's on V.

And that's actually true. And I think probably being able to lie in bed with it on remote play be a good match. Yeah. And speaking of all this, Jeff Meyer 87 says, can you ask about the challenges bringing gone home to consoles and how they got it done? I mean, we, part of why it took longer was Unity 5 coming out made things a lot more viable to get onto PS4 and Xbox 1

than Unity 4.X. So, you know, the engine being upgraded helped just because compatibility with the new consoles was greatly improved. Performance was improved. Features were added, et cetera.

And then the other side of it is when we kind of jump started the process back up, we brought the port in-house and our programmer Leon had done the ports in studio, so we've been able to like be there, you know, like making sure that it's, it's what we want it to be, you know, like every step of the way.

So, you know, and there's the first time you as a studio, not like somebody working at a AAA studio, but as like an indie studio tries to get a game on a console, you learn a lot. There's, you know, just like just all of the testing certification approvals, all of the, all that stuff, you kind of like, you, you jump in and you're like, okay, we'll know how to do this next time. So, you know, it's, it's been a big learning experience. It's been, um, it's the challenges everybody has probably just trying to get their own game onto, onto console. There's a lot of stuff you got to get right, you know. Emmett Watkins Jr. wants to know, what do you think is the next twist on the teenage last coming of age genre, like gone home and life is strange?

Oxen free coming to Xbox one and peace. There are a lot of questions I want to know about what's happening these kids' lives. There's also teens in Firewatch. Yeah, but they are just drinking. Yeah, I mean, they're nude teens. Yeah, they are. My favorite. Kevin's a new it.

But they're only in silhouette. They're very far away. You don't get to it's fine. No, I actually, I mean, I honestly am looking forward to seeing what Oxen Free is doing with it. Because, like, it's cool that we've gotten to a point in games where you can be like, man, there's sure a lot of games. about just like teens being friends with each other and talking like really we've got too many of those because you know like and and so it is really cool that more people are able to broach topics of just like

oh we should do something about like this time in our lives you know that that's awesome to see so um but i you know and we're seeing like when when we're doing the gone home cast um Greg mentioned uh Emily is away you know Nina Freeman who works at fullbright as a level designer just a couple months ago released Sibble, which is a game about being a teenager online, playing an MMO, falling in love with someone else that you're playing this online game with. So I think there's all these perspectives into just like, what does it mean to kind of reexamine your youth through interactivity, through games, through different formats, you know? Yeah. Real quick, I'm sorry. I should have done this because when I think it was Marty

pitched me on Oxen Free a long time ago, the way he did it was freaks and geeks meets lost. And I left that part out. That's a better. That's a good. That's good summation. Martin's leave everybody. I don't know where he works. Fatty Man wants to know in what ways can games like Gone Home be expanded on to add more interactivity for the player?

I mean, I guess that was kind of what the Tacoma thing was about. Because I think that, I mean, I think that something that's really important about gone home is that most of the most of the action happens in your head, right? Like it's about giving the player the interactive tools to like fully explore everything they would want to explore about this environment.

but then like you're putting all those pieces together off screen. I think it's kind of important that it isn't about like changing the story by playing or the story being different every time you play because of randomization or whatever. Like the value of it is just you being given this box of pieces and in the mental work of like organizing them into something that makes sense to you. But I hope that something like Tacoma will add additional layers to that where you're like not just I can kind of watch what these people did, but I'm arranging myself in the timeline of their experience and having another tool for picturing, oh, here's what this must have been like before I got here. But I mean, I think there's something really cool about just kind of like giving someone a place

and letting them just find out what it's about. Like, you know, there's plenty of real life stories of just like, oh, there was this, you know, this house we found it just seemed like the family never came home. One night has been, you know, abandoned for 20 years. Just like being in there, just going through and just trying to find out who these people were. Like, that's amazing, you know. So I think just giving players like the fidelity to really feel like they're able to be that person in that role and really have that amazing discovery. I think is powerful on its own, you know.

These next two questions are kind of similar. We got a little sausage party. Yeah, we do. Who wants to know. You mean in this room, right? Yeah. How do you feel about creating games that are designed to make people weep like newborn children? And Ryan Parker wants to know, how does it feel now that you've made one of his favorite games at all time?

Aw. Aw. Those aren't that similar. Well, both in terms of how do you feel about these things? I feel like I love to lap up gamers salty tears. So making people cry is wonderful. No, I think that like, so to that question on the real, for real. answer that question. I think that if anything, I don't think of some people who are like, well,

if you can make people cry, that means you made art. Yeah, if you made people cry, that means it was like a real like experience. I think there's a lot of ways to make people cry because you know how to make them cry, not because they actually felt something legitimate, you know? And I, and so I think and hope that if people had that strong of an emotional reaction to gone home, it was because they felt like they really made a connection with these characters and what happened to them. And like I think that I hope that it's

it's a good. I feel like a lot of people when they say I cried at the end of gone home, it was like out of like relief. Sure. That like this person that you had grown attached to and cared about is going to kind of be okay in a bittersweet way. I would much rather be able to say that that's the like intense emotion someone had than like we got you with like you know all of the kind of emotional

you know like yeah um so i so if we can if we can make something that people had that reaction to because they like cared and believed in it then then i'm i'm happy um and so the second question i just say feels good thank you very much does it ever weigh in you i mean like because we talked about a little bit with like you know minervis den comes out and everybody's like it's the best dc of all time and then you go and you make on home right and people it's giving nines and tens i guess we kind of see a little bit of that in the original you abandoned the original tocoma idea right is it constantly on your mind of like I don't want to let people down I don't want to disappoint people I think I think we just don't want to repeat ourselves because players won't be excited about what

we're doing and we won't be excited about what we're doing to get it done you know I think that that we try to listen to ourselves as best as we can and say like do we really feel like this is something that we've never done before and that we have to get out there because and if that if the answer is yes then hopefully that means people will play it and be like wow okay this was worth playing. Like I needed to play. I need to tell my friends they got to play this thing because there's nothing else like it. So, you know, I think that it's more about not becoming complacent and not being like, oh, last time we did that it was good, so let's just do it again. Gotcha. You know what I mean? For the final question, I'm going to take things in

a really weird direction. The Arctic sloth wants to know, if you were a serial killer, what would be your calling card? Of course, Franklin Seizmore shows up and asks it. I would drop a Greg Miller headshot on every dead body so that Greg Miller would be arrested in my place and go to prison forever. I don't know if they just arrest me on that. They would. They're like it must be this guy. I read the synopsis for this thing called Making a Murder,

and it seems like the justice system and police force, they're pretty much on top of everything. It wouldn't happen. It wouldn't be that easy. I'll find somewhere where they don't try that hard. Ladies and gentlemen, that topic was brought to you by Audible. Do you love books but find that you never have time to read them? Well, audible.com is the perfect solution.

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And just for listeners, audible.com is offering a free 30-day trial membership. So go to audible.com slash KF Games today to start your free trial today. Again, show your support for kind of funny games and get a free 30-day trial at Audible.com forward slash KF Games. That was for you. You know how I feel about that. I do. I hate forward slash. Just slash.

No one's using the other slash. No one comes. No one's making, no one's writing a URL. No one. Except for Nick. In the 21st century. Pino.

You know, it's a whole thing. Steve. Yeah. Thank you very much. Thank you guys. This has been fascinating. This is one of the better games cast.

Yeah. Overall. This one was really worth the dollar. Yeah. This one's worth the dollar. It's been really fun. Gone home is worth the money too. Go get you gone home.

All right. And, yeah. I love you guys all. Very, very much. We'll see you next week. See you, your sons of guns. What the fuck's truck?