Kinda Funny Gamescast: Video Game Podcast - The Perfect DLC and the Best Video Game Endings - Kinda Funny Gamescast Ep. 35

Episode Date: September 10, 2015

Kristine Steimer joins Greg and Nick to talk about video game DLC, endings, worlds, and industry evolution. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Kind of Funny Games cast, Episode 35, the first and last ever. I'm your host, Greg Miller, alongside the coolest couple in video games. Touch each other. Sexy like. One and only. Nick Scarpina from Kind of Funny Games. And then, of course, Christine Stimer from Stimer says.com. Tell Daniel to fuck off?

Oh, your wife, yeah. Tell your wife to fuck off. I'll text her. I mean, I'm your boyfriend and I'm right here. I know. I established that's what's happening. Yeah. We're here without Tim and without Colin because they are sick with the plaques, the plaques plague, the plaques, they call it.

This was actually my doing. I was like, they're never going to invite me on any of their podcasts. So what I have to do is while they're at packs, I have to just make sure that they eat something with this strain, this virus. If I can infect them, so three-fifths, Kevin's sick to, if three-fifths of the kind of funny crew goes down, they'll have to use me before they go to Vegas. It was perfectly calculated, and here's why, because it had it been one more person we would have done right one less person

one fewer person I would say we've been screwed we couldn't have set it up at all so you you calculated the perfect amount of people to knock out yeah as a good move on her part and it's great yeah and then but I honestly believe they would have had you rather than me on this I'll be honest with you right there because I am when you hit me you're at below

the bottom of the barrel as far as games is concerned no Nikki we love you yeah I get a lot of nice comments online people supporting I should play games more I should talk about games more but my knowledge of games compared to you guys is so thin. Then. Yeah.

That's Colin Lent say. Then. Does he say it that way? Yeah, he says anything with a T.H. He says, then. Who does? Thuro. You never noticed that?

Really? No. Ask him to say thoroughly. Okay. I'll say thoroughly. See, I can't, but I'm in such a glass house on that one because I'm the guy who says roof.

I just can't. And I don't even know what's wrong. It's fun at some point. Roof. Roof. I think Colin makes, but. Like calling dogs woofs?

Colin, that's funny. I think actually enjoys saying it differently. Yeah. because he emphasis it. You know what I mean? I guess I understand you.

He'll put the extra emphasis on it for no reason. So he'll go, I read that book thoroughly. See, that sounds normally. What are you talking about? That's a thorough. Thorough. Thorough. Thorough fair.

He doesn't say thorough. It's like cool whip. Is anything with an ATA? I can't do it very well. Cool whip. Cool whip. Cool whip. Cool whip.

Cool whip. Cool whip. Yeah. It's like that. Yeah, but with thorough. But with thorough. Thoreau. Thoreau.

Thoreau. Like. If you didn't know everybody, this is the Kind of Funny Games cast. Each and every day, we come at you with a brand new video game topic. If you want the whole show early, head over to Patreon.com slash Kind of Funny Games.

Give us a few bucks, and there you go. You get it early exclusively. I reach it every Friday. Enjoy it before everybody else. If you have no bucks to throw our way, wait until the next week when we put it up Monday through Thursday, topic by topic, until we post the entire show, all on YouTube.

com slash Kind of Funny Games, leading up to putting it on MP3 services and all sorts of stuff. Nick's already look at it. I already did. So to be fair, and so you guys know. I said, don't put them, because since Kevin's not here to monitor anything, we have to have this monitor over here that we can see. And I knew that we were going to lose Nick immediately.

Because if there's one thing Nick loves watching on TV, it's himself. That's true. But the other reason why I'm watching the monitor is just check the audio levels and to make sure how they look. They look pretty good. Well, I realize that the ISO is completely set to her ridiculously high level. There's all sorts of things I'm looking at all. It's just the camera's game is set to a level that. Is that why Christine looks so much tanner than me?

Or she's just really that much tanner than me, really? No, or you're just really pale. Okay, good, as long as I knew that. So it's going to be a normal garbage truck on fire kind of episode where we talk about video games. Also, Portillo is going to come home from pet day camp or whatever in the middle of it. So we prepared for that to be a huge break.

But now, Nick, you kind of stumbled a little bit upon where I want to start this episode. Because I think we have some interesting things. What I want to talk about, and it's going to be a big question that I'll start giving you examples from, so you can all get your little bite-sized mandibles around it here. I want to talk about how the video game industry has changed, changed while we've been inside it.

Oh, wow. And I asked this because we just did packs. Outside of the packs, Rumble being awesome and, you know, evacuating, outside of everybody getting sick, all this different stuff. For me, it was this very telling system of like, man, this is like my, I mean, in the industry, as far as, like, you know, this would have been, this would have been eight years at IGN, right? So I've probably, this is probably my sixth packs. And I didn't go to the first one, and then I got sick somewhere in the middle, right?

Yep. Being there and seeing how much it has changed. And just in, you know, the microcosm of my own. video game career, right? And the fact of like, you know, it was our, it's two years of doing the Pax Rumble now or whatever, right? And the fact that it's, when we first started it was, it was, I remember it was Tim Schaefer and it was a couple other guys from Double Fine, and it was me, and it was Mitch from IGN. It was all, it was developers and press, and this was the one where there were so many indie developers, people I had never met before, and then Smosh Games was

part of it too. And it was just like, the way this is blossom, not that event, but it packs itself into being something that everyone has a part, and it got me getting real nostalgic, for what's happened in the timeline we've been here. And so, like, my career is well journaled here on kind of funny, right? Like, you know, I've been, I started here to write reviews and then ended up now being this video game host, right? Christine, you worked at Edelman. That was your first.

It worked everywhere. It literally worked at, like, every single, almost every job you can have. Well, you were Edelman PR? Yep. And that was the PR armor for Microsoft at the time. Are they still? I think so. I think I get a lot of emails from people who are atelman.

Yeah, because Joe still works there. Joe was my boss once upon time. So, yeah, they still do work for. for Microsoft Game Studios. Then you went to IGN. Then you went to BioWare. Then you went to PlayStation. Let's clarify that.

Okay. I was just going to say, I didn't move to Edmond. She made the ending for Mass Effect 3. Oh my God. Send all your comments here. Casey Hudson's been taking it on the chin for a long time for her.

No big deal. And meanwhile, Nick, you started in this, you fell ass backwards into it and knowing nothing about games. Well, yeah. You thought you were going to get a free pack of cigarettes if you came to this interview. Yeah, no, I honestly assumed

I would be at IGN for just a couple years and just to get my resume pad a little bit and learn some stuff about production and then move on and I stayed there nine years. Were you thinking you'd go more Hollywood? Yeah, I mean, I wanted to work in TV and film, but I just didn't have any ends of that, and I was tired of, like, freelancing.

Freelancing is really hard when you first start off. It gets a little bit easier as you get older because you make the connections, and then you're always kind of working, and then you're turning down jobs, which is what you want, and that's kind of how people grow in the industry, right? Yeah.

You kind of, when you first start off doing anything, you kind of have to take whatever you want. It's the same with writing, right? You write for whoever you can write for. You build your resume, you get your foot in the door, and you start, you know, learning the skills that you need to actually start to be successful. And so I did that with IGN came in. And it wasn't that I'd never played games before.

It was just, there was a period in college from freshman year to senior year where I just, I fell out of it. I just didn't have any money, didn't have a console. Like I didn't play, I call it my gaming dark years. Like, I just, during college, I was trying to graduate. So I was studying. Yeah, you're focused on the jazz. Yeah, exactly. And for me, I had started because, you know, video games, I didn't even know.

to be honest, it didn't occur to me that there was video production jobs in the video game industry. Right. To me, it didn't occur to me that there were even jobs in the video game industry. Yeah, yeah, exactly. Like, that's one of those things where you're like, oh, people,

like, people make these? Right. They disappear at the store. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's the same as people. Yeah, exactly. It's very much the same if you're not really in the film, right?

I mean, you understand that there's celebrities that work on movies. But you don't know that there's... It really doesn't dawn either. There's 200 people working on the film. Yeah, exactly. So, yeah, for me, when I was fortunate enough my friend worked at GameSpy at the time,

which I don't even know if that's an existing brand anymore. GameSpy? GameSpy? Yeah. They still do that game spy like the server for me? No, that's done too. Yeah, so I mean, at the time IGN, which I had never heard of, isn't that crazy? I had never heard of IGN before I took the interview.

My friend worked at GameSpy, which was down on Costa Mesa, and he worked on their back end tech, and if you'll remember, GameSpy, I also had an editorial side. Yep. I believe Will Tuttle wrote for them. Ryan Scott. Ryan Scott wrote for them. We're not doing the history. I'm not going to do it.

Get to your point. Long story short is I was like, oh, these people have an editorial staff. They're looking for someone to help them produce some video, and it was down in Costa Mesa. What I didn't realize was that that position wasn't in Costa Mesa,

it was supposed to be up in San Francisco. So that's when I took the job there. I was like, ah, they're worst places to live in San Francisco. I thought I'd do it for a couple years and network a little bit and see if I could move my way back to L.A. And I'll never leave.

And I mean, it always happened a couple times, too. There was some folks in L.A. that used to run a reputable shop down there on TV that no longer exists. unfortunately that I talked to a couple times. I'm sure everyone did. That's the funny thing about games media specifically.

There were so few of them in 2005, 2006, to outlets that it was like, you'd go to a party and it would be the same 50 people. Right. And of course you'd talk. Right, right, right, right. You'd have fun, and people wouldn't recognize your work, and you'd recognize their work, and you'd talk a little bit. Well, see, now, twice now, you've stumbled upon what I'm driving at here.

In the beginning, before I've introduced the topic, you talked about the fact that you went home last night, or that you don't play video games all at often. People have told you to play more video games. Last night you went home and played limbo. I did. which I think is an awesome, awesome game, obviously, but an awesome step for you. Was it you who were talking about Limbo?

Where's that Tim? It's probably Tim. Because I actually... Tim was also playing Limbo. For some reason. He was like, I think I ran into a game-breaking bug or something. I was like, what's that? He's like, well, sometimes I walk along.

A little worm falls in my head makes me go the opposite direction. I was like, that's not a bug. That's a feature of the game. That is a literal. It's one of the puzzles you need to solve, Tim. I was like, no, there's ways to... I'm like, I can't remember how to solve it right now. We're going to do a bug and uncharted.

I'm going to the light. The light changes the direction. Yeah, yeah. So if you hit a light spot, it's actually pretty, it was beautifully done because the first time you see it, you're like, oh, shit, I don't know what to do. Yeah. So you're forced to go to go one direction. Right. Not the band.

You have to go in a direction left or right. And it doesn't occur to you until the second or third time that it happens that when you hit the light. Because I was like, why did I just turn around? I just assumed that the bug, like just wanted me to turn around. Right, right. It's actually become part of the puzzle is when you hit a ray of light, like a beacon. Oh, come on, no, Nick? every time that I get a little...

He was finally on a point, Christia. You can't do that to him. Yeah. Anyway, so that mechanic's awesome. Yeah, I mean, I came home last night and I was just like, I kind of just... Which is such a huge change for you. Usually you go home and you watch Netflix and eat a burrito. I, okay, so to be fair, Porty!

Party! Portie! Go get Porty! Are we taking a break? Are we stopping this? I might just talk. Go ahead. I don't know, Christine, you decide what we do. Have you played her, yeah? Yes, but I played it a long time ago. I played it when it came on an Xbox. Oh, okay. Yeah, I mean, obviously.

I'm a little late to the game on this one, too. But, you know, this shows how still how little I know about just PlayStation and gaming in general is that Greg was like, yeah, you know, if you're a PlayStation Gold member, I guess it's a gold. Plus, no, Xbox Gold, yeah, PlayStation Plus. He's like, you need you get a free game download. It's free games to download every month. And I was like, oh, cool, I didn't know that. Same with Xbox, too, now. Yeah.

They just did that this year, last year? They've done it recently. They started doing it. So I went on to look for them, couldn't find them. And I think I realized that I had downloaded Limbo a long time. ago so I was like oh I had limbo so I watched that yeah the store isn't laid out super great point of point of clarification from my obviously layman's perspective and I'm sure there there are a lot of people out there that understand the nuance of it because they've they've lived

with the play with PlayStation for the last two generations yeah um well at least the online portion for last two generations yeah they figured it out but to me I'm like this store is it doesn't make any sense the way you search for things is cute at first but then after after a while you're like I don't really want to type this in like this like yeah the easiest thing to do which is stupid and shitty, is to go to the blog and find out what's new, and then go on the store and look for the game and download it. Got it.

Okay, that makes sense. Yeah. So there was that, and I was also yearning for a little, I've been watching Call and Play Mega Man for the last, like, six months. I've been listening to Colin Play Mega Man. When I go to sleep at night,

I still hear the music from the other room. And I'm like, I have to text. Can you turn it down? Yeah. Yeah, you're like, I don't get up, so I just text them.

And I was like, well, I never get up. I'm like, I'm already in bed. You sound exactly like my life. Little are my eye through the day, text me two things. She was like, can you turn the TV down

and bring me some water? Sure, I'll do both those things. So yeah, so Colin's been, Colin obviously played through all, is he back? Hey, buddy, hey, buddy. He didn't pee when I got it. I tried to get him excited out there and pee.

So don't touch him. He didn't, so. Even though I really want to touch him. I think I just felt some glaze my leg with a little bit of man juice. He's so excited. So where are we at now? Because I'm talking about the fact that you've changed,

that this is, I'm talking about the evolution of the industry, but let alone you as a person. Well, there's been a couple. A couple different reasons why that's been happening for me. Partially because obviously you guys are a huge influence in my life now. We all, we all are around each other more than anyone else. And so it's, look at him.

Did you miss us? He missed me specifically. He doesn't care about you guys. He needs a little Nick. Oh. Okay. Is he peeing? No, he's not pee.

He's just excited to see everybody right now. Everybody's brand new again. This is now a bark box video as well. What? He's so excited to be home. He's got to touch everybody. Careful, the tail, careful. Okay, wait, is the tail wag me and he's going to...

They could. We don't know. We don't know what's about to happen right now. He gets very excited. I think, here's... There's a number of factors for me. One is obviously you guys are rubbing off on me. And two, is that more and more, as I turn to traditional media,

there's nothing there anymore for me. Sure. Except for a lot of... Their good experiences, don't get me wrong. There's, like, for instance, Fear of the Walking Dead, I actually particularly like... I like... Episode one.

Having sex. that though that is still a variation on a very common thing if you look at it right to me specifically because I've been so immersed in television and film for my entire life so I watched for The Walking Dead and I'm like oh this is good because it's more of the same but it's more of the same right great cast

I forget the actor's name who was she played the detective in Gone Girl but she's awesome the lead guy's awesome from Training Day 2 but I'm like I don't my wife's like do you want to no he was in Trinity Day as well also no there was no training I actually I think there may have been a training

too, but I could be wrong. So my wife's like, do you want to watch that? Do you want to watch Ray Donovan? I was like, no, I kind of want to just sit here and like just interact with something in a different way. So I realized that I had limbo. Then I also went online because I've been watching Colin

and play Mega Man for the last like eight years. I decided to just go ahead and purchase the legacy collection. Right. And I'm like, cool. So I'm thinking, I'm just going to play this limbo game for like five minutes while it was legacy collection downloads, right? And I'm like, two hours later, I'm like,

I have to see how this ends. We were talking about this early on Colin and Greg Live, but I'm like, This is a really good storytelling. My wife's like, that kid's so cute. What's going on with him? What's happening? And I'm like,

You don't really know. You make it up. Yeah, you really don't. You do make the story up and you get that. And there's a power to it because there is some imagery and there's some juxtaposition of different elements. I don't want to spoil anything for people. If you haven't played it, go play it. You haven't played limbo, man.

Fuck you. Come on. That was great. On Xbox on PC. Yeah. Now it's on the Vita. It's on the PlayStation. And it's beautiful and it's very artistic.

And it reminds me of a lot of different things. So I started playing that. And then, like, three hours later, I was like, I got to beat this game. And meanwhile, a Mega Man collection, I mean, it's got to only be, like, 50 megabytes had been downloaded by it. It was like two and a half hours ago. It was already downloaded. That reminded me of our stream that I just did last week with Britt. You have to lean in as much.

I'm bringing it to you. But we were playing until dawn. And it was kind of just like, well, we'll just, you know, maybe we're almost done. We'll just go a little bit more, a little bit more. And then it was 2.30 in the morning. And we beat the game, but it was a seven-hour stream or something. beat you as well. Yeah, it was fascinating

because I'm like, I know if I don't finish this now, I'm probably not going to come back to it. And so I'm ashamed to say, and I know this is sacrilege for this channel because we like to uphold the letter of the law here and never use guides.

But I turned, I looked at a couple guys just because I was like, I'm a little stuck and I don't really, and I'm like, I'm having such a good time in this game too. I don't want that frustration

that comes with every game. I'm just like beyond that. Our lives are, I don't know if you know this or not, Greg, a little stressful. We're a little stressful. A little bit of free time you have.

You don't want to spend being stuck at something. I got it. I tried it three times. And inevitably, I think the game is designed as you die anyway. You're supposed to die over and over and again. That's the kind of point of it. But I got through it and then I'm like, oh, that was cool. And then I ended up playing one level. I played Cutman stage in Mega Man.

And I'm like, whoa, this game's way harder. Yeah, it's a bit. I was a little bit. I was like, no, I'm sorry. But yeah, so to your original point, Greg, I think the industry has changed in a lot of ways. One, I think it's, he's fine. He's a professional with this. He hasn't killed himself just yet, unlike Kevin.

I think it's a lot bigger and I think it's a lot more broader now than when I started. You have to also remember when I started before I started, I started before the iPhone came out. What? I too.

Yeah. Greg and I started IGM before the iPhone. I think were you at IGMA before the eye? Yeah, you were. I remember when Craig Harris got his. It was a big deal. What year did it come out? Probably 2006, 2007, I want to imagine.

2007, because I started in 2007. Yeah. Okay, I graduated college that year. I remember distinctly because one of our old editors brought it over and we had moved to ask. Remember, like, you kind of, my landmarks for where I was and my career was based on where I was sitting at the desk. Sure. I remember those time period. So I remember I'd move from, away from, uh, over where the PC guys were sitting and then all the way across the office, doesn't matter.

This is completely contextless for everyone. Um, but yeah, that was, that was when, that was before mobile gaming was they had Blackberry. Oh, yeah. And so console gaming was the thing. There was snake. There was snake. Um, well, remember when we were there, Levi Beaconan was the, right? the IG and portable guy. Right, right, right. And I remember him... Not mobile. I remember him telling... Well, yeah, because it was so heavy on GBA and everything else.

And 3DS or both DS, you know what I mean? Yeah. All the DSs. Yeah, all the DSs. I remember him talking to me about the fact of like, yeah, you know, like, something crazy is happening in Japan. Like, people aren't playing handhelds as much. Not how it is now or if they aren't.

Right. As much. And that phone games are going to be there. And we're like two or three years behind them. And I was like, whatever. And then the iPhone came and changed everything. And then the iPhone came and then social media games came. And I really think that, like,

You know, like Facebook games came, like Farmville. And what I saw was I saw gaming go from a really, really, not a niche thing, but seen as a niche thing, to now. I think people play games in the mainstream without even realized they're playing. Of course, yeah. And that's always the argument. Or are they really gamers? Oh, 90% of people play games, but they're doing it. I mean, you know, you guys are obviously a lot more into it than I am.

But from a very casual perspective, my answer to that is always, who cares? As long as there's a game being played. Exactly. And money's being put into that market. We all have jobs. We all have something. Yeah, we just need to be able to say we're the biggest industry and slap our dick around. Exactly.

I mean, we are. Games is the biggest entertainment. We need to continue to be able to say that. As much as much as my... Fractioning it up and breaking it down. I don't know if this is true at all, but I'd like to think that maybe someone... I don't know. This fact I'm about to say it's true.

I'm not saying it's a fact. I'm just thinking like, you know, mobile gaming for some people could be like a gateway drug to... Oh, it is. Yeah. Oh, definitely. You know, it's... It was for me. And that's the problem where, like, you know, like, we...

Because it makes it okay to not do... And that's the thing is, like, for me, it's not about I don't enjoy it. It's about it needs to be okay for me to do it, right? Otherwise, I feel like I'm wasting time. If I'm not an adult, I feel like I'm not being, you know... This was the argument I was having the other day with Colin when it was a one-on-on-one games cast, where he was, he started going in on mobile games. We stopped on opposite sides of the day.

Yeah, yeah. We like that. We like that. We like that. That's ridiculous. Where he went, it was like Vicki Vail and Bruce Wayne. Yeah, he's going to say it's exactly. He passed assault.

What? They want. So can you... Never mind. No, like, the fact that he was going in on it and, like, you know, basically demonizing

but they're terrible. Yeah, and I was like, no, they aren't. I understand there's a lot of crap, but I think there is good stuff that does bring people in. And that's the whole point. Like, the example in our world right now,

and I mean, like, what we're doing right now, kind of funny games, right? We just had this week of Metal Gear exclusives, right? And obviously that brought in a huge audience that weren't the best friends, the people who watch every video

and are super supportive. And a lot of them were the normal YouTubers who just went in the kind, comments. We're like, these guys fucking suck. That guy sucks. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Shut up, assholes. And it was like, I was, Ed Collins, like, yeah, this sucks. And I don't, you know, I don't know if this is a good call for us to do. I'm like, it was a great call for us to do. Because look at the numbers we're getting in and the growth. And he's like, yeah, but I don't

want these people. And I'm like, you're not getting those people. And I'm like, around 100,000, right? And we went up in the, in a week, 10,000 subs. We didn't go 100,000 subs. We went up 10,000 people who had never heard of us who were like, oh, these guys are fun. I want to try them out and see what's going on. I want to try them out and see what's And that's how this works. And that's the same thing with mobile, where you cast this wide net, and you get a whole bunch of crappy games,

but you get a whole bunch of good stuff. And yeah, you know, my mom's playing games on her. I think she was one of the people playing Candy Crush or something to that effect, right? And that she's not going to go buy a PlayStation 4, but there are people who would. Like the Wii was a gateway to my mom getting her first. She bought a DS after the Wii. And that was like, what?

Did she play it? No, she had a horse game. She couldn't figure out how to feed the horse, so the horse kept dying. Now, to her credit, I played the game one Christmas for her. And I'm like, I couldn't figure it out of you. Really? Just a bad, bad game.

Just a shitty ass game. Well, you just walk around. There's no way to feed this fucking horse. It's not like Harvest Moon or anything. No, it's not, that's the whole point. It's not a good game. What was it? I want to know what it was.

Some shitty ass horse game. So do you think it's too much of a leap to assume? And I'm sure there, I mean, maybe I'm drawing parallels just because of my early, my experience is just a packs. But what you're looking at a game like Lowercroft Go. Yeah. Is it, it's, I don't think it's that big of a leap for someone who is a very casual gamer who has an iPhone 6 who's like, I just want to download something cool.

it's four bucks or whatever it was, or five bucks, to download that and go, oh, this is kind of cool. There's puzzle elements to this. And then see that there's a bigger experience on a console waiting for them or on a PC waiting for them, and then think, huh, there's something else out there. And I'm not saying that they're, that's a huge leap for them going and then spending $500.

Sure, sure, sure, sure, sure. Figuring out how HDMI works, understanding what online is. You're doing it. And honestly, you've done it again, trip down to another one of my points here of the industry changing. And the fact, and I think I said this during the panel. I hosted the Lara Croft Go panel, right? And I talked about how the fact of

It's the 10-man team who's working on Lara Croft Go, right? And they're putting out because they love it And they think it's a cool idea to these mobile games They're the guys who did hit man They found like a calling with it And like a freedom to do stuff there And what's fascinating is I've talked a lot on this show

And all of the other podcasts I've ever been on About the spectrum and how THQ fell out There is no more middle You have to be AAA or you're indie Right, right? And what you're seeing with them is Square Enix saying That's correct. Let's make that for us

Right So Square Enix is like we have AAA and we have people making these mobile games. Why bother playing in the middle area? Because they shipped it in a year, and that's not a negative thing. That's not a bad thing to say. You know what I mean?

Like, Mad, and oh, God, they're on a nine-month cycle. They never get to innovate, but these hitman guys did that with Laura, but it's a different game. And so you get to bring that in internal, right, where you see what's happening in the industry, and rather than fight it or, rather than fight it or put all your money or eggs into one

basket, right, you're trying to accept that new world. Yeah, and that's... I'm sorry, go ahead. I was going to say, I'm wondering, though, what audience you are hitting because I feel like there's still cross over with people who are for lack of a better term hardcore gamer. Core gamers. Core gamers and then

but they also play some mobile games i.e. Fallout Shelter. The people who grabbed Fallout Shelter probably aren't your mom or dad. Right. So like what market are you penetrating there with these games? With Laura Croft? Yeah. I think Laura Croft has a great example of that. Laura Croft might do better because it's

Laura Croft. And like Laura Croft people know that name. And they kept it retro. You know what I mean? So I think it is that you're talking about, you know, that it's not beyond reason, but not, it's not going to be the overwhelming majority of players who go out and toss down $500 and get it. But there are going to be those people who are like, oh man, I played Laracroft on my PS1. Like this thing, I have this device. It's number one in the app store I heard it's doing really well because it's doing really well critically, right? You get in there, you try it, you have fun with you. Like, oh, man, I did like Larke.

I remember Tomb Raider. Maybe I want to look into what's happening with you. Sure, sure. There's an nostalgia factor, and obviously they're playing on it. And I think it obviously works really well. for the opposite direction where if you are a console gamer and you're like,

I really need something fun to play on my, my phone, I'm on the packs or whatever, I'm on my train. Then there's not, I don't think that's actually not a leap logic at all

because now I'm considering doing it. I'm like, oh shit, I got a flight to Vegas. Like, I should download that and just play on my phone. And I think you see them, I think these games

do lay groundwork for young people to become core gamers. You know what I mean? Like that was, you know, I feel like young people are already core gamers.

Sure, but I mean in this respect, right? Because like I, for me, My touchscreen and everything else is so foreign. I don't really like it. I played Larcraft for the panel,

and I was like, oh, this is fun, and this is relaxing puzzle game and stuff. But it's like, I'd rather play persona for dancing all night and have buttons and imprints, da-da. And so it goes the opposite where when Ryan Payton originally pitched me Republic, Republic. And I was like, Jen Hale and David Hater,

and it's going to be stealth. And I was like, this sounds awesome. And I got on the plane and played episode one. I was like, it's cool, but I just can't get into this. And then it packs this year. I got to go to their booth, which was, they had such a huge presence.

I don't know if you saw this. It was over in the gung-ho, gun-ho, gung-ho, you know what I'm talking about? The one that looks like, the you that looks like a vibrator. It was over there. Giant Bomb had an expose, I was.

Got it. Went over there and played it with the PS4, and I mean, immediately clicked. And I was like, fuck, this is perfect. I can't wait to play this game. And it's not that it was bad on mobile,

but that wasn't what I was. We grew up with controller. It was like, you know, with the Super Nintendo or anything like that, but now because are playing more things in their iPad. Like literally babies know how to use an iPad, which is mind boggling to me. So yeah, I do wonder

if they'll be more inclined to play things on mobile or play things on their iPad and that kind of stuff like us. I think it's the same argument we're making of like can mobile can we I guess it's two sides of the same coin is what I'm saying. I don't think everybody who's raised on an iPad right now is then looking at

a PS4 and I'm like, man I got to get one of those but you're getting percentages of people who are like maybe it does work the other way where I love Lara Croft Go. Now what's this other What's rise in the Tomb Raider? Let me look into that. Oh, this is something totally different, but interesting. You get those small percentages. There's small wins like us on YouTube.

Sorry, I keep in a record. I apologize. I keep finding another sentence to make my point even more ironclad. It was ironclad. You know, and for me, again, as someone who views themselves as a relative outsider, I think there's a lot of entry points and a lot of roads that lead to that, right? For me, again, the idea of where video is at, where specifically video services like Hulu or like Netflix are at, is that they require an additional piece of hardware

to be in your living room if you don't have a TV that's, you know, newer. So my TV was a quote unquote smart TV that had the Netflix app, but they stopped supporting it. And literally there was a thing that popped up. It was like, this app will not be supported after like August, whatever. And luckily by then I had a PS4, but I'm like, oh, shit. Now I have to acclimate myself to using the PS4 as my media console

for my entire living room. And my wife has to do too. And my wife now knows how to turn it on. And now she probably knows more. To be probably honest, she probably knows more about it than I do because that's how my wife rolls. No. Because my wife has patience.

I'd be like, I don't understand why this stupid store has to like, why am I scrolling through letters? This is where the settings button is for this one thing. They have to turn off. She'd be like, Nick, it doesn't power off. It just powers down and it still keeps working in the background. I was like, oh, oh, tell me more about it. Well, it's on standby mode, yes. Yeah, it's on standby mode.

I don't like standby mode. No one likes standby mode. There's a lot of weird. There's a lot of nuances. A lot of great ideas and just don't pan out. It just never panned out. Well, I just don't like it because it's in our bedroom, and I don't like, like, it still makes a sound.

Your PS4 is broken. Your PS4 needs to be repaired. Look, all of my PlayStation's have been broken. The one in the living room, okay. All of mine. Yeah, yeah. I was going to say, the mine in the living room, yours is always making noise.

It just makes, like, a, well, the thing is, I just don't feel like we really sit there and notice it in the living room. It's a bigger space. But when you're, everything's quiet and you're trying to go to sleep. It's like a white noise machine. Then you're just like, you should love it. Oh, God damn it, there's a fan. but it's not a soothing fan

because I've slept with fans before. Were they better than me? They were. They were much more soothing than me. I don't about better than the bigger. But then also the Xbox is a lot of shit. We have to leave that unplugged. The Xbox for sure makes noise.

We have to pull the power out. My biggest problem with the suspend mode and this is now totally off the topic where we've gone. But one of my big complaints and I tweeted about this and most people like that never happens for me. The amount of times I turn on a PS4

in this house... Your PS4 is broken. Yeah, but yours does it too. Like the years did it last night. Yeah. I was just like, because what we're doing, we move PS4s around this house so much

that if they're in suspend mode and you hold down the button to send them in power off mode, you stand back, you give it a minute, you unplug it, you do whatever you do with the other PS4, you plug it back in in nine times out of ten.

I always shut down it properly. I'm rebuilding the data, it's like motherfucker, like I put you into hard off. Like what else do I need to do? Yeah, yeah. And I'm sure I... You have to sing it.

Yeah, lullabies. You're going to just like hold it with you, bring it with you all the time. Make it feel really just like you're paying attention to it. Like love. Made you feel loved. One of the other things you had stumbled on. Yeah. About how the industry has changed that I thought was very obvious,

and very obvious because you're getting beaten over the head with it this year around, right? You're talking about, you know, oh, you're talking to other people flirting with this. You're talking about G4. You're talking about when G4 was a thing. It was doing stuff. And I remember going to Comic-Conn's in Paxes and my mom or my aunt, really, because my aunt doesn't pay too super close attention. But me like, like, hey, I saw E3 on the TV.

Like, are you going to be? I'm like, no, that's a competitor. They don't really do that kind of thing. And now the fact, of course, that they are gone. And, like, everyone is either on Twitch or on YouTube and now YouTube. You know, YouTube gaming's presence, obviously, was huge at Pax this year because it was, you know, day one, pretty much. Yep. They wanted to get that there.

The fact that, but the fact of, like, like I was saying, Smosh was there. And they had, you know, on the game spot in IGN State, when they'd be doing it, right, they'd have these other YouTubers that I didn't even know about that are just popular with let's play community or rooster teeth themselves running it. You know what I mean? Right. It looks like a let's play panel. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. And that's the thing of just like, I remember.

remember when I first found out about rooster teeth. They're like, and I'm not found out about, but like actually had Tim explain to me what this is. Like I've heard of rooster teeth. I never went super into it. Okay, they make red versus blue. But then when Tim was like,

well, yeah, but they're this insane community. You know, millions of views on every video, diehard fans are like, oh, I didn't even know about it. And now, you know, having flipped that script where I go to RTCHA, or I'm on the gauntlet or I do whatever and have to explain to people.

Like, oh, I'm going to go shoot this thing with Rooster. Like, I don't know who that is. And I'm like, you're PR. Like, that's crazy that you don't know who these people are. You know what I mean? And now you see them, you know, I mean, for lack of the better term, they're one of the big three, right? Because it's GameSpot IG and them on the YouTube gaming. It's like what you're saying.

Those panels made me think of, it's packs this year was a little bit of a mini VidCon, but just for the gaming stuff. Where, I mean, I went to VidCon last year, not this year. So you'll have to tell me if that's changed too. But when I went last year, there was like almost nothing on gaming. There was one, I think one panel. And just a bunch of teenagers. girls screaming after like all the beauty YouTubers or all the more like comedy

you know whatever like Jenna Marbles like those kind of people yeah yeah but there weren't a lot of gaming YouTubers that I saw there I would say that's so I'm kind of wondering if it's like gonna maybe that stuff's gonna start morphing more into the gaming convention versus Bitcoin that's a current point I guess yeah yeah

it's good or go to everything I don't know because there's a thousand cons and everybody has to go to all of them oh bye party he's a million degrees so I'm sure he's no hey where you go okay he's walking I'm going to call the bathroom. It's cold tiles. He's just going to sit his little belly on there. Did he do it? No, but I'm just imagining him doing that. It's a cute image. I love that. I love when that's. I wish it were okay for a 35-year-old man to do that because I would just lay down on that title too. I'm so hot right now.

Interesting. You touched on another thing that I want to talk about a little bit, which was the idea of the concept of Let's Place. And those were something that, if you had talked to me about five years ago or six years ago, when that idea started being generated, I'm like, that's dumb. No one's going to watch someone else play a game. Flash forward is now it's a mainstay. It actually is, you know, it's something that people, and you talked a little bit about will those mobile gamers or those, the younger kids ever translate over to console gamers? I think absolutely yes, they will, because as they're watching Let's Play's on Minecraft,

or they're watching their friends do that, and it's natural if their friends start progressing, they're going to start watching those kinds of videos as well. What's crazy to me and what I have to rectify in my brain is I love the passive experience. I love the experience of a film or a TV show, someone choosing what to show me, rather than me having to interact with the game and figure that out for myself. And again, it's shifting a little bit. But that's why I think the power of the let's play

is so awesome because it is that passive experience and that active experience at the same time. You're sharing it, but you don't really have the burden or the stress level of having to go through the process. Yeah. And I think it's super powerful. Sorry, when we come home and we're tired

and we're like, I don't want to play anything. Right. I need to sit here and not have to think. So yeah, in those cases, it's great if someone we go with streaming and then you can kind of be like, well, cool, I get to play. You're still experiencing.

You're still in that world. There's somebody that I am doing there. You're still getting that kind of entertainment or that quality or that conversation that you wanted before. Right. Because that's my thing. Yeah, when I come home and I'm exhausted and I don't feel like I have it in me to play a game. I would say I want something inactive. Games are inactive entertainment experience.

I want someone to talk at me. Whereas that's what let's plays do feel that void for. And it's interesting too because that's why I feel like a lot of people will turn on a news show or like ESPN or SportsCenter. Even if it's something you don't really care about it. They're on a block of hockey, for instance. You know, like you talk to camp. but you look it's on. Yeah.

And the most of them in the world, they're kind of around it. I feel like I'm still kind of being productive and still indulging that passion. While at the same time, I don't have to necessarily put in 90% of the effort that I normally would have to do. And this is the same thing.

When I was still just game over Reggie, right, it was the fact of, like, I told the chat, I don't know why you'd come here. Like, why would you want to ruin the game for yourself, right? And they were all universally like, we're not here for the game. We're here to hang out with you. You know what I mean?

Hang out with the streamer as well as just the chat. They make new friends and find common interests. Yeah, exactly. And that's why it was crazy because now, I mean, it's different for us, obviously. We are need deep in this. This is our business now. We have to understand all aspects of or at least be up on. And I don't know if you saw this.

Jimmy Kim will put up a thing. Basically being like, I have no idea why YouTube. YouTube gaming is his first time hearing about let's plays. Oh, really? In live streams. And he's just like, I don't know why anybody, there's a quote out from him that's to the line. I don't know.

I don't know. He broke up with Sarah Silderman and not too long ago. Yeah, he was married before that, though, I think. So I don't know if he has kids. Did the kids break up the marriage? did they not love the mom and dad enough? That's what happened to my parents. Anyways.

Because they liked the let's plays more than they like their dad. But it was, yeah, the fact that he didn't understand. He said it would be like going to a nice restaurant and watching someone else eat your meal. No. And it's just like, man, like it's weird that people still don't get it to that degree that, like, YouTube gaming for so many people now is going to be their first time hearing about let's plays and understanding what's happening. That's weird, I know. Not to mention that, you know, I remember when I, you know, years ago when Scott Lowe was like, hey, do you, the epic meal time guys are coming to San Francisco. Do you want to hang out with them?

They're fans. And I was like, sure. who's epic meal time. And then like Harley's now walking around Pax's and, you know, taking a lot of Kevin Smith movie. Taking a photo with Cliff Blasinski at it. talking about Lawbreakers and stuff. And it's just like that never would have happened.

I think back to when Pax, you know, when I first heard about Pax and it was the small show and Andre Seegers from IGN at the time who's now of crap, what's the Nintendo channel he does? Game Explain, I think. Yep, Game Explain, thank you. He was going to Pax to play Mario Kart in the Mario Kart tournament. And I was like, what is Pat?

You know what I mean? Yeah, but that's the thing like, again, You're talking about it and don't get confused because it was smaller back then. Everything was smaller. Everything was slower back then. I think that's one of the most... That's the biggest change in the industry for me is that we have gone from... And I'm oversimplifying this, obviously.

But we've gone from people's attention being focused on traditional mainstream media outlets with IGN and GameSpot and game trailers. A dot com you go to. As a dot-com destination being... That was the cool new thing. Yeah. That's where real gamers went. right you didn't go you didn't like people watched g4 but that was an antiquated traditional experience at the time because you had to wait for a programming block whereas IGM was where you went when you wanted that experience right now and that's what we can get now what we're seeing is it's it's going from a shift of you have your allegiance to that major media outlet to individual contributors are starting to that that's starting to be more and more common because we have the power to build that audience ourselves right and what you were talking about earlier is very very salient point with with metal gear was that yes, a certain percentage of those people stuck around.

But there even is a percentage of those people that still might not like us. It's our job now to prove to them why they should. Yeah, exactly. We're not a resource site. We're not a site where you have to... Like, people would go on IGN and be like, I have to come to IGN because they have the exclusive on this thing.

How do I beat this? How we beat this? Or they're the walkthrough or maybe they've got the piece of content that I want. Any chance are you doing tips and tricks? And I'm like, no. No, no, no. And nobody gets half for that. If you're not.

If you're not... Yeah. But again, it's not a knock toward tips and tricks. No, no. It's just not what we do. That's just not what we do. I think it also requires a much larger team to be able to do those kind of team. It requires a certain type of person that none of us are.

Colin is. But he's dying. But he hates people. He doesn't want to talk to everybody about games. So I think that to me is the single most important factor of what's happened in last few years is that, you know, as a content creator, you go out there and you build your audience and you can do that. And it's really powerful because whereas an IGN or a GameSpot might have a 50-50, you know, like to dislike ratio on what people are saying in the comments. or there are just those people that want to come out, you have the ability to have a much smaller, focused,

awesome or audience that will just support what you want to do. And I think that's been one of the most fascinating things about watching you and Colin is that instead of having to, like when Colin was on PlayStation, when you guys first started, you had to play everything. And now you get to just play the things you love and just show people why you love them. And of course, there's always going to be one or two people that are like,

you can't fucking play metal gear, you're so stupid. But whatever. That's Portillo's voice. between something like an IGN or a GameSpotter, anything versus what you guys are doing, is that IGN, they're big. So, like, it's a little bit disjointed. They don't really have a solid opinion on anything.

Sure. So, like, there'll be an article that goes up, that's, I love Metal Gear, and it's by Greg. And then there's another article, like, the next week, that's, I hate Metal Gear and it's by so-and-so. However, to a viewer who is not looking at bylines or anything like that, they're like, what the fuck is the site?

Like, why? Like, you don't have a standard opinion on anything. And so I think it's easier than people, yeah, yeah. But so now people can be like, well, I like Greg because he likes Metal Gear and I like Metal Gear. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Therefore, I kind of know what I'm getting with you. Whereas the IGN is kind of a mixed bag. You're not sure who's reviewing the game, whether they liked it, what they're, you know, background with it.

He wasn't even a real fan of GameX, yeah. Yeah, so, I mean, I just think that that's probably why people are starting to break out and look at more individual contributors versus the bigger sites. I mean, yeah. I'm talking about, like, you know, the changes of this industry has seen, for sure, that is one of them. And it's the, now, the understanding of the audience that everyone's a content creator.

And that you, if you like people's content, you need to support them. We see it all the time, obviously, the Patreon, subs, tips, or whatever. But, like, everyone is waking up to that fact. You know what I mean? Of, like, yeah, people can, well, I can, I don't need to listen to everyone.

I can listen to the people I care about and get there. I can go listen to the Jim's, Jim Quosition, and see what he's saying about this and feel like I understand. and my money's being put where I want it. And it's true, and that's very powerful, too. Like, when I would read reviews, I would purposely remember, obviously, and you have people that did this, too, they would trust you.

They would be like, I like Greg Miller's opinion on this, because when I played the game that he played, I saw very similar things to what he saw on it, and I got a very similar experience to him that he had with it. So I trust him now. I will go and look for his reviews, and if he doesn't review a game that I like, I'm a little disappointed, right? Yeah. And so that naturally trends...

Why didn't Greg review this? Right, and so that's naturally sort of transferred over to, well, people kind of followed us over here and they're watching what we like on this channel but instead of looking for like, hey, I'm going to play this game, I wonder what they think of it. They're just watching us play games and go, oh, I think I'm going to play that game. Yeah, that looks fun. The reviews

in action, the reviews. Right, exactly. Yeah, as it goes. And, you know, I think that's been one of the fun things for me about this whole thing is that we don't need to necessarily, we don't have that pressure. There's no pressure anymore. Sure. We have a pressure in that we want to come through for people that are watching our content and give them a fun

and entertaining and well-informed experience. But, you know, like this morning, you know, I had to show up because Colin was sick. And so I came a little earlier and made sure we were okay. And that's the pressure that I put on myself just because I really want to make what we're doing as cool as possible for the audience. But in reality, had I not read a couple of those stories, it would have been okay. I mean, it was just fine.

Like, I could have relied on you or we could have talked about something else. We always have that luxury, which is nice. But I don't know. I mean, it's weird. And what's crazy is it's ever changing. Like, it's so fast. Three years from now, we'll look back at this conversation and this one. We won't even, we won't even, we'll have been seeing the trends here, whether it's virtual reality, whether it is, you know, the rise of YouTube gaming. Did you use it at

it again. I tried it again in Pax. I tried Oculus. I still haven't tried Morpheus, even though I used to work for the company. I just never got around to trying it. Shuhay wouldn't let you. You'd come on. I know. They were like, you're not allowed. Take off the visors, timer. But I put, I tried Oculus twice. Once was, I think, a year and a half, two years ago,

at Indycade. And then I just tried it at Pax again. I was just like, nope. Nope, not my thing. No, because it's too heavy on your face. Like, it just, I'm like, I feel like I have 10 pounds on my face. That's not, that's not something that I can sustain for longer than this 10-minute demo.

Sure. So I'm not going to sit there for seven hours playing fallout with a thing on my face. Like, no. And then still made me sick. Yeah, see, I had that problem too. We did Morpheus at, we did Morpheus, man. We did Morpheus, man. We did Mori, man.

We did Mori of Ritey at Comic Con. And I was like, this was awesome. And then I walked to the bathroom, I was like, what the fuck's happening to my face right now? Yeah. As soon as he put it on my hat, I was like, God damn. Nope. That's hard. I got a little claust with the public, too.

That's going to be fascinating. It is going to be fascinating to see, even a year from now, or two years from now, what are the trends? What's going on? Because it's not like it was, you know, everything was so predictable in the 80s and 90s, specifically the 90s, right? When everyone was like, okay, games are a thing,

we know that consoles are going to be... Next system, we have more horsepower. Exactly. It's four years, and then we're going to start seeing another one, right? And then PlayStation, there was like an Xbox six, it was like seven years. What the fuck's happening? Yeah.

So, yeah, it's going to be fascinating because everything's getting exponentially faster out there. So we'll see. We'll see where those. Topic number two. Christine and Nick, what's the perfect DLC? Red Dead Red Dead Redemption, Undead Nightmare, 10 out of 10 IGN.com. You reviewed that. That's a good one.

That's a good point. That's a perfect one. And Nick, how do you feel about this? How do I feel about the perfect DLC? What is the perfect DLC for you? No DLC. Really? I don't want it.

Once I'm done, like I finished Arkham, I saw the night. 1989 bat suit. I saw the Batmobile from the Tim Burton movie. I was like, that looks cool. Why won't you give them the $4 or whatever they want? I'm already done with the game. I beat the game. You don't get, I think, is into, like, I don't get this way about every game. But there are

those, like, Witcher. Super excited about those expansion packs. I know nothing about them. This is piggybacking this. I'm bringing this topic up because of, just as why I'm putting it into our popular mindset right now. Today, the whole Dragon Age Inquisition, the D.C. Ankataku is two years later, so they

wrote here. So you and your companions save the continent of Thetus? Yeah, Thetis. That is? Thetis. I said it right. That's a new one. I never seen anything right. From certain doom. What have you done for them lately? Find out September 8th, trespasser, a downloadable epilogue for Dragon Age Inquisition that picks up two years after the main story ends. What happens to the world saving organization when the world no longer needs saving? That's the theme being explored in trespasser, the final single player DLC for BioWare's role-playing epic game. And then it goes da-da-da-da-da. This is also today they announced uncharted's release date, March 13th?

18th I thought. Damn it. You're probably right. I'm bad at that stuff. Anyways, more importantly, they also dropped the news in there that there's going to be the first time ever

one single player DLC for Uncharted. I was saying in the Twitch chat that I was hoping it would be a therapy session between Elena and Drake. Can they just be happy? They gotta get some shit.

Can they just be happy? Every fucking time this couple's together in these games, something horrible's happening. Can they just be happy together? That's where they need some therapy. Can we open up and they're happy, Nick. They don't lie to each other.

I don't let on my wife, about anything. It scares her. My wife has this new thing. She's like, she asked me this question. She's like, do I need to be worried about this? I'm like, no, no, no. Because I'll let her know if she has to be worried about anything ever.

What have you told her about before? What was, like, when we were getting to quit? Partying, uh, getting, quitting, going, like, you know. Signing people's bras is a perfect example of them. She was like, do I need to be worried about any of this? I'm like, no. She's like, okay. That's it.

Cool. No, my wife. I mean, she married me for Christ's sake. Does she know she knew what she was getting herself. Her life's ruined. But yeah, I mean, look You're crazy, no DLC Well, okay, so for me, like, I don't know

Because you have to understand I'm used to, I love Like, I'm used to two hour Two and a half hour experiences That's how I like my entertainment Right, because of movies Because of TV, because of film Even when I watch a TV show

Or like a 30 minute, like, episodic show I'll watch like four of them And then I'm done I gotta go on something else My brain isn't in the attention to me So you're talking about When you're talking about,

When you're talking about, How long was that game? How long did you play that game for? Because you were big, I think you were a big Guild Wars fan, but you were a big Dragon Age fan, right? I mean, I'm a most, I'm fans of all of the things. Of all of the drag. There's some kind of fucking sword and dragon with a magic.

So let's take Dragon Age, right? How long, how many hours approximate? Did you think you put into that series? The game clock, I think, was around 100 hours. However, I stopped and restarted to get my character right about 10 times. And I played, I mean, I played a few hours of each of those characters before I realized I didn't like them. And real quick, what's your Guild Wars game clock at?

1100 hours Holy shit How many hours are in a year Can someone tell us in the comments? Like that's I mean look again I'm not I'm not in any way I should perform

criticizing you for this That is how you want to spend your time And you love that And that is fucking awesome And I can't take that away from you Because let's be perfectly honest I've watched all of the seasons of psych So I'm not I have no leg to stand on as far as I love psych right

But I'm not I'm not judging you For how you choose to spend your time It's just for me, I get like, like we were talking about Deus X earlier, right? Yeah, they announced the pre-order campaign. Augment your pre-order. You see this today? Sort of on your chat, but I could. Total marketing move of like, yeah, you pre-order the game and you get one, you can pick from,

you're in tier one already then, so pick from one of these three or four bonuses, right? And then if enough people, we, pre-order, we unlock tier two where you pick from these things. And finally, tier five is the game comes out four days early. When is the cutoff? I assume five days before the game comes out. Yeah. Really? I don't know. And it's percentage base, not dollar-dust.

They're showing the number. So it's got to be like, I guarantee they're going to hit that pre-order number, but I guarantee three days beforehand, before they cut off. They're going to be like, we're so close. Everybody pre-order, please. And there's going to be like, and then regardless of whether or not people actually purred it, they'll just artificially bump those numbers up. Well, we don't know the numbers.

That's what I'm saying. Yeah, they're controlling the percentages. You can be like, whoa, oh, just magically went to 100%. Oh, yeah. Good job, everybody. But you were saying, yeah, you want to play that game. You like the first game. I like the game.

But for me, with the way our lives are, with these longer experiences like these RPGs or any of these games that have side quests and leveling systems, things like that, I just forget where I'm at. Like, I leave for two weeks or three weeks to go to Vegas and TwitchCon and packs and, you know, all these other things that are happening.

And I come back and I'm like, all right, I know my character is Adam Jensen. What the fuck am I doing? What was I supposed to do right now? Well, the thing that they've started doing in games now, Witcher did this, and it was annoying as hell for me because I was playing it all at once. Right. So it started pissing me off. I understand why they did it is they basically do a recap

literally every time you load into a different area. Oh, that's smart. It's smart, but it's annoying as how when you are like marathoning something, you're like fucking know where I am, thank you. But yeah, if you had left it for a weekend and then needed to come back, you'd be like, oh, great, thanks. I think Batman did it, do they do something?

They had a screen, they had a screen, they had a screen that would tell you what happened. Scarecrow's doing such and such, go check it out. It's the thing that people are starting to work in, especially for the longer experiences, because they know, like, if you... It's hard to keep track of what's going on. Right, right, right, right. Like, the moment you put a game down, like, it's, I feel like the odds of you.

The list of the thing goes on. Catherine. Trying to pick Catherine back out after a week off. Mass Effect, too. Try to pick that up. I was like, people are like, oh, the story and that was so great. I was like, I have no idea what the story was because I played it over three months. I mean, I know there was like an element zero.

I know you were able to go around the universe. And I had to mine planets for like four fucking hours. They're amazing. But, you know, there was a complaint that Colin had with The Witcher was that he was, He loved it, but they were assuming. So he felt like he was constantly being barbed by side quests. But here's the problem with Colin is that, and he said this, so I'm not talking shit. But he- Don't get shot.

He was like, I have to get every side quest done before the main mission. He does have that completion as that. Which is not how you play that game at all. You do not level up that way. You don't get it really that much more entertainment. Like, it's just, that's not how you play the game. The side quests, you're supposed to just sprinkle in along the way. But if you don't do the main quest, you're like never going to level up.

It's going to take you 10,000 years. Right, right, right, right. And then you're going to be frustrated because you feel like you feel like, you're not progressing, which is what I think happened with him, and then he put it down. And like, I understand that. It becomes overwhelming, right? Yeah.

It's like when your friends constantly- I did almost all the side quests and I finished that game. And you were just totally fine with that. You were like, yeah, because I did it properly, which is that I wasn't trying to do all the side quests at once. I was doing them as I went along. So it didn't feel as like, you know, as consuming.

Right. It wasn't as, looking at a list of side quests and going to shit up to do everything before I can move on. Same with Dying Light, right? At Dying Light, I'm like, oh, it's cool. I'm really getting. into this and like I'm leveling up a little bit and this is great and then you go to one of the towers that you're

like you know the headquarters that you're supposed to kind of be based out of and one of the guys is like hey come here you want to help me move and I'm like no I don't want to fucking help you move and to me that's what all side quests are is just like dudes coming out to you and be like hey bro you got it from some free time help me help me move I'm like no I don't want to help you move I got these zombies man I'm like no man

I think the witcher's a fucking self a gun I mean I haven't played the witcher so I don't know but I mean it was the same for me it's the same with me for that Same with me for Dark Night where it's like, with Arkham City I was like, Zaz was going around killing everyone.

I'm like, good for you, I hated those you killed everyone. Yeah, the phone kept ringing. Eventually, the phone would ring

and I'm like, I had so much stress. Those, like, two minutes of trying to get there. Yeah, trying to get there. I was like, it's too much.

Go, Batman, go, god damn it. Where's the, like, magic fly button that makes you go 10,000 times faster than this? You have to level up to it by doing 50s.

I know, I didn't do that. Yeah, exactly. That's why I was like, Goddamay, you're so slowb-batman. Hey, it's me nightwing, Batman, help me move. Hey, man, you free right now? I got this couch, I gotta get down. They're not working.

Yeah, it's true. But I like those side quests because they had Nightwing. All right, well, this isn't a side quest conversation. DLC, for me, it's, I want, I, you, this is what you're talking about a little bit on Colin and Greg, is the fact that I want single player story DLC. Sure. I want more of what I already loved about a game.

And so that's why, like, when they're, like, you know, Mass Effect 3 had tons of DLC for online. And even Uncharted, two and three did too. stuff where it's like, all right, now we're doing this, put new trophies in, but it's all multiplayer, I'm just like, it's not what I care about. Batman did it. They used to do it with challenge maps, and they still do, but then they did Batgirl this time around. And when they said that, that's when I was like, here's my season, I'll buy the season

pass up front, I want that. Plus, you're talking about more character-driven pieces later on. Sure. But I wonder sales numbers on that, though. I wonder if they choose, I mean, first off, they're trying to push the multiplayer because that's what typically people will continue to play. That's what gets me going to. Keeps them coming back for the experience. Right, exactly, versus a story experience. that is finite. It has an end.

But the multiplayer technically doesn't have an end. You can just sit there and play with your friends as long as you want. So I understand them wanting to beef that up and make it more interesting. I get that's how money's made for them. You know, putting out a new hat or a gun

or a new item or a new map and all stuff because people are still locked into it. But I prefer them to sit. Because I think most, it's not as bad now. I'd like to think most multiplayer is put in games now because the team wants to make multiplayer games of some kind.

But it was for a while where it was. Literally everything. How do we fight trade-ins fucking put multiplayer in it and there was so many half-ass like Tomb Raider, the original Tomb Raider Multi-Ber like, what is this called? I don't mean this is a joke, but isn't that sort of how, didn't Uncharted 3 have multiplayer? Is that kind of how that

Oh, is that? And that was, I mean, maybe that's where it started from, but people really do like that multiplayer. It's good. It's one of the few ones I get into. You know what I mean? I like Massifax multiplayer. I haven't, still haven't played Dragon Ages, though. And that's the thing is like, for me, to stop me from trading in a game, not that I'm going to trade in any of my games because I haven't in years. Most of mine are digital, so. Yeah, exactly.

that's the other point. But like if I was on the outside and you wanted me to stop from it, it's promising story DLC somewhere along. Like last of us even. I can see that. I can see that. They didn't call it left behind, but there's going to be something down the line.

Like, fuck yes, that's what you're great at. Keep doing that. I don't mind if you give multiplayer other things, but take care of this side of the business too. And that's why, you know, you get excited when you look at it and like talk about like even, I think that's one of the reasons

I like episodic gaming so much, like teletail stuff because I get to digest it, think about it and move on and then here it is again. And like sometimes it works against them. Like, I would have bought Game of Thrones as one. I would have given them $60, right? But I played episode one, and then episode two came like, I don't want to play this.

You know what I mean? I figured out that it wasn't for me. And at that point, you lose it, but. Yeah, but that's very democratic. And that's what this way it should be, right? They should be held responsible for the quality of their product, and that should be reflected in sales. Yeah, I don't think Game of Thrones is as good.

No, I mean, I've heard that a lot. At least from the last two of you. But recently there's been a lot of people talking about that. No, for me, I get, while you. you guys like DLC and I get why people like that and it's more of the thing you love but for me I love the idea that someone has made this experience

for me right and I look forward to just going from start to finish with that experience and then once it's done that is how I judge the product and then if there's more stuff later it just doesn't do it for me so that's why I like it when it's different so like the I mean left behind had really nothing to do with the experience

or you didn't take anything away from what you experienced in the last of this game it was a side story but based on one of the characters and just kind of showed you a little bit more about who they were, which I thought was really good. Same thing with Undead Nightmare, Red Dead. Like, that, you know, Red Dead is a complete experience. Undead Nightmare is a fucking crazy-ass shit show of amazing things happening.

Yeah. That have no sense being there, but that's why I loved it so much. Right, right. It was just like the thing that I loved and a really crazy twist on it. Sure, it's like a wild experience that can't give you. Right. Like, that would have made zero sense in the main game. Festival of Blood for Infamous.

You know what I mean? And like, yeah, take this, you've made this world. Like, don't give up on it and start making one that'll be out in four years. Do something cool with what it is now. I don't care of a short. Colin underrated that game. Sucks. Did he?

Can't spell I ignorant. I don't know. Can't spell ignorant without IGN. See well. To me, I think I always view them as sort of like, you know when there's like a TV show like Agents of Shield and they're like, log on to www. Forstashashashashers for the web companion. I'm not fucking watching the web companion. Your second screen experience for the Walking Dead starts now.

I'm like, fuck off. I just watch this show. What's the day, Andrew Lincoln? He's like, they turn a camera on him. He's like, hey, what's up? That's it. That's all you get. You're like, oh, it's fucking Rick Run.

Oh, again. Hey, do you want to know how that biker torso lady in episode one of Walking Dead came to be? Watch the web episodes. You're like, I don't want to know, but I don't want to go on. I'd rather just tell me right now. Be dope, but it was an interstitial, like, before the, you know, before they're like, right before you come back. It's like, hey, yeah, they did. I mean, actually, I'm giving, I'm giving.

I'm giving the web campaign We're just fucking around. But no, I'm with you. It's not the experience. It's not the meat, right? I think you've gotten bad ones before then. Because, like, for me, the ones that I love are the ones that, yeah, we've made this world

and let's do something cool with it and do something still inside of it. Sure, sure. Yeah, I mean, again, but to me, you know, you put it in terms of movies, it's like, the story's done for me. The experience is done for me. I don't.

Yeah, I can, but I'll wait for the sequel. Red Dead Red Dead Redemption and then go play Undead Nightmare. Yes, you are. Did you fucking long. Red Dead. Nightmare is short. Red, yeah, the Undead Nightmare Delce. Redemption was long. Yeah, redemption's really

long. Everybody gets tired right around Mexico. That's when I took a month break or two or whatever. I came back, yeah. No, I powered through that shit. You go. Don't get me wrong. Right there was awesome. It's amazing. That's one of those ones I wish they would say, here's an HD collection of my car. Or whatever, you know what I mean? X-gen version of whatever.

Well, maybe Ex-bone. Backwards compatibility. No, I'm not going to fucking, no. I need to have souped up trophies out of it now. I don't want to have this, none of this stuff. I think DLC is good. I think it's a bad rap. I don't mind day one, DL.

either and I'm just going to say it. Yeah. And I'm talking about DLC that is not like not Prince of Persia, Nolan North Prince of Persia DLC. Remember this? No. The game ended and they put out the real ending as like a fucking deal. You can burn hell,

you know what I mean? And that's the thing is like going back to the first topic of how the industry's changed. I feel we've seen the industry burn itself with this before. And now they're much better about it in terms of like, okay, what's up? Yeah, it's interesting. It's an industry that does tend to learn from the community. Yeah.

Whereas I'm not sure that movies TV really do. No, because you don't have the opportunity to fix shit, right? So that's what's cool about, like, that's what's cool about this industry is like, all right, and this is I'm gonna, I don't want to slotted this example, so I'll bring it up very lightly as like Mass Effect 3.

People didn't like the ending. So they have the opportunity to be like, oh, here's something. Oh, we left out these paintings at the end that really explain everything. Right, but you know what I mean? I know. I was doing this face.

You can't see him. But you also have the opportunity to like, whereas you're watching a film you're like oh that was kind of weird right well you can update that right butterfly effects you can have someone just go to you know you can download something so it's a little easier a little better a little cooler you know you you have the opportunity to kind of fix the plane while it's still in the air with video games actually updated the witcher's combat which is pretty interesting that's interesting and so that's a perfect example of like that probably made it a lot better right i'm talking about more of like over the years versus on a single product sure sure sure you know taking anything literally i don't

really, I'm not that big into movies of TV, I'm not sure, but... Nashville, we love Nashville. We do love Nashville, too. What up Chip? Do you see what I'm saying? Have them being like, oh, we did this TV show and everybody hated the X, Y, and Z about it. So now when we go pitch this other project, we'll fix those things.

No, yeah, which you get a lot of times, well, I always say it might be the same in games too, so would you get a lot of times in TV and film is that you get like the Big Bang Theory, and then everyone wants to make a big bang theory, right? And games do that. And games do that too. Open the World's right. We have all these open world games

Right Everybody make a Facebook game And then that went away If you learned real quick That this isn't real But what I think that you see Obviously in games Is that there's a spirit of innovation

That you don't see in TV Just by nature of it being a digital thing And you're coding And you're making art assets And you're doing all these things And you are constantly forced To figure out how to optimize something For a platform that's ever changing

Whereas TV and film and video I mean you film something That doesn't change that much and that doesn't change that much, right? There's no hardware in that that needs to be optimized for. So your brain and your team aren't constantly having to worry about that aspect of it. You're just worried about just the traditional aspects

that really haven't changed that much in the last 80 years, I would think. Topic three. This comes from patreon.com slash kind of funny games where Kenny Char backed us to get his topic read. He says, game endings that stuck with you the longest. not necessarily the best or your favorites

though it would make sense that your favorite endings would also be the most memorable but rather the endings that were most memorable to you he has two that we can I'll bring up after I don't want to get in your heads I had a chance to think about this and I will go first because I've thought about it because like his examples are good

but like the one that the game ending that I think is stuck the most with me you know one of the ones there's two that spring to mind ones I beat the dead horse on all the time on this one but the one that really stuck with me was the end of Walking Dead season one episode five, like when that ends. I don't know if we want, oh, do we want to spoil stuff?

Spoiler alert. Spoiler alert. It's been out forever. We're talking about game endings. You had your chance. Nick's doing the taps, and now we're in the zone. Like, obviously, it's not even so much, I mean, it's totally the death of Lee and everything else, right? But it's, I remember playing that game in like, I, you finished episode four, I remember, and he had been bit, and it ends. And it was like, all right, like, I'm a big walking dead fan. It's like, are they going to cut his arms? arm off. Are they going to get around this?

Too much time is past. Too much time is past. You know, and you get back and they saw off the arm. You're like, ugh, what a cop out. And it isn't that. And so then you have this entire episode where you're coming to grips with, you're going to die, let alone that you get to the end and then have to, you teach Clementine everything you know. Yeah, it's like, what, seven

or something? Yeah, something like that. I think she just turned seven or whatever. That's how we, that's how the guy gets us. It's like, okay, little girl, here's how you shoot a gun. You need to shoot me in the head. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it's and it's just, it was so well done. and like I'll never forget and granted I'm playing it ahead of time

in the theater at IGN with the lights off and it's me Job from IGN and Casey, I'm sorry Job from Telltale and Casey from IGN and like just like the gun gun muzzle goes off and it goes black and then it starts that somber song and take us back oh take us back

and like I have the one tier roll down Job is full on crying yeah and it's just like I don't cry at a lot of things especially not in well not most things in video games like they What was that bad movie? We didn't see a bad movie, but it wasn't a movie you should be crying at that you were crying at.

I looked over at you and you're like, shut up. Yeah. As I've gotten older, I seem to cry more. Antman. It was an ant man? You cried an ant man. It was emotional. I don't know.

I've now lost my chance. Anyways, I was crying during that game. Yeah. You don't cry during most things you're saying. I was saying, when they, whenever, so at the beginning of Mass Effect 3, when they, like, do the kid and the kid, whatever, blows up. And everybody's like, it's supposed to be this really emotional. And I was like, I hate that kid, he was badly animated. Yeah, I hated that kid.

He sucked. Why? But like Dana at IGN, she was like, oh, that was, you know. And she had a kid, right? And she had a kid. I'm like, okay, maybe this is like a motherly thing, but I don't give shit. And that was the thing that, like, so the, the, my story with the Walking Dead ending being so memorable and being so, like, devastating.

Because I remember leaving IGN, getting a ride home and still, like, racking my brain, going over it, going over, going over it. And then I woke up the next morning and I think it took 40 for, a walk and I had my headphones on. I bought the song right away. That song came back on. Immediately all those feelings rushed back. And even now, I was, I just tried to describe it as like there was a thumbprint on my soul from it.

You know what I mean? It was always there with me. And then you jump ahead to Walking Dead season two, episode one, when Clem, no, episode two. No, episode one, when Clem gets in and meets Luke for the first time and she's eating at the table. And you have the choice on the option wheel if you want to to talk about, like you start talking about Lee. And I started talking about Lee and then I started crying.

Because the moment, because that was the first time it ever, upon reflection of that, Portie's home. He's back. On reflection of that, it was the fact that I didn't cry, I thought I was crying saying goodbye to Clem,

you know, at the end of season one. But in reality, I was crying saying goodbye to Lee. And that hadn't dawned on me, so I was sitting there telling Luke about it at the table. And that's when I started crying again. And I was like,

oh, shit. I thought I was in love with this, little girl because traditionally I hate children. But in real, I wasn't. I was in love I was in love with a big black man named Lee Everett and I still am and I'm in love with Dave Fonoy too. David Hanoi is amazing.

But like that, I mean like that that's the big one that is like I mean, we're talking about what nearly year and a half probably between those two moments and like how much they think about that and how much that had an impact on me and while of the Walking Dead and the other one has gone home which I always talk about on the show where you know I

I didn't really like you that much. Yeah, you're stupid. It was okay. I finished it, remember, the credits rolled, and I immediately walked in and hugged you, and I couldn't tell you anything about it because you hadn't played it yet. Yeah.

I was like... Get out of it. I think you were playing Guild Wars, too. Oh. Because you couldn't... I was like, I'm in a dungeon. Get the fuck out of here. You wouldn't stop.

I remember I had to kneel at the chair next to you and hug you like your torso because you were doing something. I was like, I literally, I'm like doing fractals or something. This is hard shit. I can't be bothered to do it. Right, right, right.

Please go away. What stuck with you, Christine? Well, you touched on it earlier, and I really, honestly, it pains me to say it at Mass Effect 3, and not in a good way. Oh, yeah. Because you were Miss Mass Effect. I still love Mass Effect. I'm very excited for Andromeda, but the ending of Mass Effect 3 put me in a depression that I can't quite describe. And it's to the point where I normally, Mass Effect is normally one of those games where I would go play all the DLC.

Sure. I couldn't touch the DLC for it. I couldn't go back. I even, I played the, um, the alternate ending or whatever, the better ending, I still, I don't know,

like that's not at all how I wanted things to go. And it didn't make any sense to me, like the three choices made no sense to me. So it just, like, sent me in the spin of confusion and bad feelings

because I didn't know what was going on. You were drinking hard, doing Coke. Because everything up to that point was beautiful. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Fucking beautiful. I cried several times

just because, like, really poignant moments or whatever. And I was like, oh my God, this is like, this is so good. This is so good. good.

And then as you're like running down to the Reaper and then it hits you and you're like, you know, half dead basically like calling that. I was like, what? Yeah. Okay. Well, you know, maybe this kind of makes sense, I guess. Like you're going to kill it somehow even though you're basically dead. Yeah.

And then coming up to the Citadel and it's like, lose the man. Like, oh, like what is happening? What's happening? Yeah, I know. How, where's what? Yeah. Yeah. So it just left me feeling lost and confused, kind of.

And I switch and loving that series so much, that's obviously not the way you want to leave it. So that was, that was like the most heartbreaking game ending for me. For things that I thought were really clever, it's kind of similar to what you just touched on with Walking Dead, but with Red Dead,

and I know I keep talking about Red Dead today, but that's a good game to talk about it. But that ending shocked me because I wasn't, you know, you kind of like ride home after the last mission. Yeah, you're like, oh man, this is a weird place for it to end. Yeah, and you're like, okay, well, now, you know, I've got my family.

family and like we're going to make some eggs or something and we're you know I'll teach my son how to do some stuff we'll go around the farm and I don't know it's like it's a weird happy after game which never happens so I was like oh it's cool I thought that that was how it was going to be different I was like oh it's going to be different because it's going to leave happy right right right right and then they just murder the shit out of you in front of everybody and I was like oh no no I was like I sat there I think I sat there like slackjod for a while because I was like are you fucking kidding But then as you know, you take up the mantle as his son. I was like, that's rad.

Yeah, that was a smart ball. And then you can kind of take over. Then you have like the one final mission where you get your revenge for your father. And I was like, I like this. I like this a lot. That was a well-done one for sure. Yeah.

Now, Nick, you're an interesting spot. You haven't played as many games. I haven't really finished that many games either. Now, you just beat Limbo yesterday. I just did be limbo. Did that do anything for you? That had an effect on me, yeah. I mean, that game has, you know, obviously that's very, very subjective.

that don't give you any context to what's going on in the story whatsoever. I guess we're getting into kind of spoilery territory here. We already, I spilled the shit out of everything. You did, that's great. Even though, to be perfectly honest, I don't know how Mass Effect ends.

I stayed blind to it. It's either green, red, or blue, right? Yeah, it's like... And none of them are good. They're all very similar. And I do want to purpose of this, I still respect the hell out of all those developers. Yeah, no.

That's the problem that, honestly, I'm sorry. That's one of the problems with this, the whole conundious. here is that people went so fucking crazy about the ending that you felt like you couldn't say and you couldn't be critical of the ending and not be like not be like I fucking hate all of them you can't immediately preface like yeah guess what I didn't like the final 20 minutes of Mass Effect 3 the fucking 80 hours before it were fucking awesome with the exception of Mass Effect 1 which sucked but Mass Effect 2 was really good sure it was expanding on that sorry I forgot this one point

I just wanted to bring it up really quick so the Mass Effect 3 ending affected me the point so this was recently this was like a few months ago I was just rolling through the internet and I was looking at fan art and I happened to see some fan art that someone drew of Commander Shepard and Caden and it was like a wedding on the Citadel and I nearly lost it at my desk and I'm almost nearly losing it now because I was just like no like I needed that like I needed something I can't stand the thought of like Caden being alone this is really pathetic this is you please talk it's not please talk no keep going you're doing great that's good though like here's Here's the deal though.

Also, Kid doesn't suck. Fuck you. That just means that these stories are impacting, right? Which is good. That means they're having an effect, which is good. And to me, like, I don't know that I've had that experience just yet. Sure, sure.

I don't know that I've actually sat and played a video game. I'm like, shit, that was as powerful as the ending of the dark night to me. Where at the end of the dark night, I had that experience that you're talking about, where I walked out of the theater and the world around me was just a little different. Yeah, just a little different and it'll never be the same again. Right, right, right. And so, you know, you play a game like Limbo, like I finished it last night. And it was cool.

It was very awesome and a very avant-garde. And, you know, it has sort of an ending where, I don't know, do you remember that, do you remember vaguely the ending of Limbo? Yeah, when you smash through the glass, you're your sister, right? You're getting your sister out of Limbaugh or whatever. Pergatory. You're trying to find her the whole time, and she's, like, sitting on the grass and you walk up to her and she looks over and then it kind of. Gotcha. Yeah.

So that's, that was awesome, right? Yeah. Now for the record, you know how I was talking about purgatory and your sister and all that. None of that has explained in the game. Yeah, no. I don't, I didn't know that it was your sister. I remember from pre-using interviews. I knew you were looking for someone. Yeah, yeah. And I knew that by, because the game is called limbo, that you're in limbo, that you're in limbo, that you're in limbo and pergatory. And then if you're in limbo and pergatory is, I think there's a certain age is in limbo, is not the way it's supposed to go. Well, if you're not baptized. Yeah. You're not baptized. Yeah. You're going to. Sure. Pergatory rather. So, I mean, I kind of brought. I think there's, I think there's a synonym. I think there's a synony.

but I mean like this is also I don't really know I don't want to get that wrong and I don't want to offend anyone out that's hyperrillism when I was in Catholic Mass I was way just more fixated on Jesus's abs because he had some killer abs He was fucking cut up like Jared Letto man I never went to church so I never got to experience did your Jesus look like Jared Letto Because my Jesus look a lot like Jared Letto Because he had a more mainly face he had more defined cheekbones than Jared Letto thank you I don't know Jared Lito can have something really like

I'll tell you right now my Jesus did not look at a lot here. So yeah, so to me, that, that defining experience. I mean, I've had games that I really enjoyed finishing. Yeah, of course. Like, I love finishing Half-Life back in the day. It was awesome.

Half-Life two, you're like, all right, right, nah, it's crazy shit happen. And you're like, that's cool. And I can't remember how any of the episodes, episode one or two ended. Ah, that's funny. Because, like, that's the one where it's like, that's the one that people always yell on me for not having played,

because that's supposed to have such an emotional ending. Well, it made a real impact on Nick. Yeah. Well, no, I don't think you said, you said, you didn't play him. No, I played him. I can't remember how they... Isn't there a whole thing with the hand against the glass and stuff? Fuck, I can't remember.

Okay. Not like that. That's when you're like, oh, fuck, a head crab's on that lady. Yeah, I mean, I'd have to go way back. The problem I have with it, too, is like, I feel like, since you haven't, it immediately then had that experience, I could just flood you with games to play right now. And I feel like by even mentioning them in that breath, you then go in with that expectation. Sure.

You get there and maybe you don't have that interpretation. Like, I know the last of us has an amazing ending, right? I actually know the ending, which is unfortunate. Sure, sure, sure, sure. Well, whatever. It happens sometimes. I like sometimes just hearing the stories, too, to me. And I think that there's a certain, you know, fun factor for that.

Right. Hearing how Mass Effect ends, to be perfectly honest, you just save me like 50 hours. That's awesome. And knowing that it has an impact on you, whether positive or negative. Because, by the way, a negative impact is not necessarily bad. A lot of films that I've watched ended, and I'm like, I don't want that. No, I'm sorry. That's not cool.

obviously this is a different experience and what you're talking about because a lot of people were like that just is fucked up but at the same time there's something to that I think it's that people feel more invested in a game

they've played for 300 hours versus a movie they've watched for two oh absolutely but at the same time that's why they think the outrage is a little bit more intense on those kinds of things but there is it also

and let me ask you this what are you looking you're not at the zoo anymore knock it off I can't go ahead of the floor I'm just gonna walk to the other part of the floor you can't see me he's not that smart

he's some of us who's that porty is that Colin here go get him 40 come here you know you look at some of the most the most classic works in literature the most classic works in film and some of them just don't end the way

you want them to end right and most notably and obviously most famously is the example of Vermeo and Juliet spoilers that every time I've seen any depiction of that I'm like I wonder if I'll change this one now you can't you can't because it's a tragedy Taylor Swift did she

yeah she did the song love stories what Taylor Swift wants to do. But at the same time, it doesn't have the same impact, right? Those people have to die. They have to be tragic. And this is what's fascinating about what we're talking about here. It does, because not everything in life is happy. I think that's kind of what they were going for in that aspect.

But they could have done it in a way that to me made more sense. Like, I think it was just how out of left field it was that struck me. I was like, what? But see, but I think what you want, what everyone wants is they want the Dark Night Rises ending. Where you're like, he's, he's, he's, he's. dead. Oh, he's not dead. He's drinking Fernet Blanca, or Frinie Blanc, whatever it was. For Nett.

For Nett. In Europe and he's like, oh, it's great. He gets to live happily ever after. Banging Selena Kyle over here, don't worry about it. Don't worry about it. Sorry for your months of grief. Yeah, what a dick? You get that. Sorry for giving no training to the cop who's about to go out and get fucking murders because he doesn't know hand-to-hand combat like that. He didn't

train with fucking Raza al-Gul. Yeah, yeah. So I think everyone wants that. Everyone, that's everyone's preferred ending, which is like a little bit of tragedy. Oh, it just fooled you. That heartbreak that you just felt while meaningful. Don't worry. It really is a happy ending. Well, this is what you're talking about.

We were talking about, earlier we were talking about how the industry's changed, right? And the drive and I think the fact that you can't, we can't argue, it can't be argued that games are art. But the problem is that when you try to argue with somebody that games are and they don't believe you or they don't agree with you, it's because they haven't played the right games and they don't have that interest to do that, right? So like for you, it would be like, we'll play Limbo. Play Last of Us and do, you know what I mean? Play Limbo, watch my wife watch you play Lerney. Play journey. Play journey. You don't even play all these games that where you are left with an

ending you need to interpret. Or Last of Us is a game that ends and I was like, I'm not going to spoil that one. I feel like that one's too fresh. Yeah, don't do that one. Not for these people. That was the one where it ended and I immediately started texting Neil and I was just like, I can't believe that. And I was like, and he's like, well, that's your interpretation of it. And I'm like, I know, but I mean like, that was a, like, there's a moment at that ending where you're like, you're presented with a choice.

And I'm like, all right, I don't want to do this one. I'll wait for them to tell me about the other one. Oh, there is no choice. This isn't traditional video game bullshit where it's like, now you go A, B, one of the endings. Like, no, this is our story. We're telling you a story. This is our vision.

This is our narrative. You're part of it. And so it becomes like, you've been playing this whole game as like, I'm making the choices I'm going to make and do the things I would do. I'm in control of my destiny. And then you get there, you're like, oh, no, I've just been, naughty dogs, has been telling me a story masterfully. Yeah.

And I think that, you know, for me, for Limbo, specifically, like, to me, that doesn't need to be necessarily a cut and dry. I'm not, go, go, go, go. I was like, someone's got shot. For the reason, I didn't hear that. A door just slammed. I'm really skittish, too, at loud noise is just, F way. So is Portillo. But he looks like he's fine.

That's why we like each other. Let me clarify, I don't need there to be a definitive ending to something. I don't need there to be, like, I don't mind if there's choices that lead to different endings. Oh, no, no, no. I was not. I think you were saying. But I don't also need. also need it to be 100% kind.

I don't need to be laid out for me. Like with Limbo, I know, I'm not... Well, it's not even about variety. It's about... There was an emotion behind Limbo that was there. It was an undercurrent of emotion that you don't... I don't need to know who that girl was at the end to feel what I felt. And I did. I was impacted.

I got to the end of that. I was like, huh? Does your feelings change if you knew she was a stripper. That has no connection to that man whatsoever. Maybe look forward to Vegas. It's a random girl. Yeah. No, I mean, maybe sure.

There is no game stop. Expo Christine. We're just going to the Olympic gardens. Is that a strip club? That's very much a strip club. It's more of a brothel, actually. But yeah, but that's my thing is like, yeah, no context is very powerful.

It doesn't mean. Yeah, it would. It would. It would definitely change it if I knew she was his sister or his mother or him or whatever, I don't know, his girlfriend or, you know, a childhood love or something like that. But to me, it was just someone that I knew that was important to him. And that's someone that he'd go through heaven and hell for

to get to and to save. And that's all that matters, really. And that's why that game was, I mean, I'll remember that ending. Have you read through some of the fan theories? Because it's interesting how simple that ending is and yet how many different interpretations there are of it. So you should go on Reddit and look it up and start reading.

Because it's just kind of, I found it really interesting. Sure, I might, I might. But to me also like the, yeah, maybe I will. Maybe I will do that. Because I would like to see what other people's interpretations of it. And I think that's, when you talk about games is art, that is the power of art right there. Is that it is an undefined thing.

that has an emotional impact on you that is different from you like from the three of us could look at something completely differently and have different emotional impact to it but we still have a reaction to it and that that is limbo was dope that was a dope that was a really good game I'm glad I'm glad you're there's a lot of other stuff you need to play now

you need to play journey I want to play journey I do want to play journey I do it's super sure that's two hours that's totally a movie yeah I will totally do that after watching you you talk to Genova for you know on I longer than the game I was like fuck I got to play this and I love that idea behind it, right? I love just the simplicity of it and that there's like,

there's like not a lot of, there's not characterization. There's not a lot of things that are being told to you. It's just a, it's a piece of art that's moving. And then when it's done, it's done. That's it. Yeah. Okay. I'll play it.

Final topic. Yeah. As always, it comes from you, the community. You go over it. Is he okay? Portillo's been a gift machine this entire podcast. I can't wait to see them all. I mean, he's just being stupid.

He's doing that thing where he's like, I'm thirsty, but I won't go drink. So I want to lick my chops nonstop. As always, the comments, the, the, the, final topic comes from you guys over at kindof funny.com slash forums. You go there, you post your topic. Amy takes care of you. Joanne-in-in-law takes care you.

Everybody's over there doing it. Lindsay's there taking care of you. First one comes from Patty Pinkman. He says, if you have to live out the rest of your life as a computer game character, living as them in their world, who would you choose to be? Cirilla. Corella DeVille? Cirrilla.

Siri. Ah, from the Wisher. Why is that? Because she's fucking badass. She's the lady of space and time. Okay. She's got wicked-ass powers. And let me clarify on one of the good endings is what I would...

She has a problem. You don't know which ending you're getting either. The one that I got. I'm going to go based on the one that I got. I would totally be her forever because she's got the coolest powers I've ever heard of. And she's like basically trained to be a ninja kind of with the witcher power. Like, witcher training. So like nothing will kill you really.

You will just go about your life, enjoying everything and just being all. Awesome. But there's a lot of really shitty worlds. Yeah. No, that's what I was going to say. My initial thought was Mario

because I was like, oh, he's going to be relevant forever. And then I'm like, wait a minute. On a daily basis, that man goes through fucking hell and just terrifying things you're throwing to him all the time.

And then the next week she's kidnapped again. There's fucking weird ass mushrooms with teeth coming after him. Giant mushroom with teeth. Big, you walk over a pipe that you're supposed to fix

and something just comes out and fucking eats you. No thanks. No thanks. I think maybe I would strive for something a little bit more simplified on that one.

I don't know, Greg, what would yours be? See, this is a tough one. You go around on. I think, I mean, like, these aren't my picks. I have a pick. It's not going to be who you think of it. But you're like, oh, coal from Mifference, that'd be cool.

Have electricity powers, all his cool. It doesn't end well for him. Spoilers, he's dead. This was covered before a second son. So I was like, Nathan Drake, but again, he can't keep it together with Elena. Not to mention he kills 15,000 people. Right. Yeah, but he's so good.

Yeah, it took me, yeah, I was like, sat there because I read through a couple of them, and I was like, there's, The point of the point of the video game story is that there's struggle. Conflict. There's conflict for everyone. Yeah. So that's why I picked Siri because she's awesome. And you know who I'm picking?

Because I think it's the right balance of strife and pleasure. You from Persona 4. Just be your character from Persona 4. You get a great family. Yeah? It's actually a really good one. Notico's going to be there. I'm a big bro to her.

I love her. She's a character I love. That's the thing. Resee. is all up on your jock. And the game of court, Nick, I know you'll never play the 90 hours yet. But just imagine,

imagine if Taylor Swift was like, I'm done being Taylor Swift, I'm going back to high school, she's high school age, I'm going back to high school, and she's infatuated with you. That's re-saying. It's like the greatest thing of all time.

Her Dungeons is a strip club. Her dungeons is a strip club. That's hot. Yeah. You know I'm wrong. I was a Chi-A guy, so maybe I go, you know what,

again, I knew I wasn't going to, I was going to bang out with anybody. I'm just saying. But I have cool power. in the shadow world. I have slick dance moves and persona four dancing online. That's a good one too

because literally everyone likes you. Everybody wants to be your friend. I get to live in Japan. Yeah. I get to live in the little, I get to live in Inaba, and then I also get to go back and hang out in Tokyo

where I'm real front with my dumb parents who never show up and say anything. It's weird. Yeah, well, they suck. He's got a good life. He does. Yoske, I got Teddy. Yeah.

Kanji. I got the whole, I mean, it's a great support system. Yeah. That's actually a really good one. That's a good one. Also, I guess I could, I could, this is a cheat, but I'd also be Taylor Swift from DC Universe online. That's a total cheat.

It's a total cheat, but I'm putting out there. That's my character. I feel like it's hard because all the games I play, the character has to go through hell. Like, I'm like, oh, let's think of the top characters. I'm like, oh, Master Chief, no. Oh, God, no, God, no. Fighting an Interstellar Battle. Never take your helmet off?

Yeah, you're never, you got to pee in a fucking suit your entire life. Yeah, can't touch her, you can't feel her, she can't feel you. Unless it's like her. She has her. She's got blue balls. Yeah, but even then, there's like never. Master Chief has the biggest blue balls. Is he sterile?

Is that part of the chief program? I don't actually no. Okay. I don't know. Just checking that. I'm like, I'm like, what I want to be Batman from any of the Batman? No, you do not want to be Batman at all.

It's terrible. God no. Especially the Arkham games are just so twisted. It's like the worst nights of your life. Yep. Over and over again. Pretty much the worst. Yeah, the last one was the worst night of your life.

Yeah. Now, speaking of that. Yeah. You don't have a different day. We don't have one, no. We're going to keep debating. So now. Epic Wolf.

came to kind of funny.com slash forums and says, Hey guys, first time and first post on this forum. Congratulations. Thank you, Epic Wolf. My question is this. I'm a huge Superman fan. I like Superman more than Batman, and I'm pretty sure a lot of people are like me and will pick Superman over Batman.

We are a dwindling number. I'll let you know, but I'm with you so far. However, for some strange reasons, no developers in the history of gaming can create a good Superman game. Why is that? And will there ever be a good Superman game in the future? Because Superman's boring.

You're boring. No, no, no. Don't make me to fucking hit you. Because Superman is boring because he's so powerful. And I felt this way even when I was watching the animated series, the Justice League Animated Series. And I was like, this is stupid. Like, these fight scenes are stupid.

Superman could just murder all of you in 20 seconds. And instead, you have to drag it out because the episode needs to be a certain amount of time. So they have to, like, talk, oh, I'm Superman. I'm going to try to reason with you. Batman talks to you. But I know, I know. But I'm just saying, like, anytime Superman's in a fight, I rolled my eyes.

Sure, sure, sure. Like you could just take them out in the blink of an eye. And then there's no risk. So like literally the only thing Superman is vulnerable to is kryptonite. So the game would just have... Somebody would have to be running around with a bunch of tiny little pieces of kryptonite for you to feel at any sort of threat in a Superman game. Whereas Batman, you are a human.

You can get shot. You can get killed. You don't really have any powers. You have some like really cool gadgets, but... For sure, Batman lives itself better. It's easy. It's easy. It's easy.

It means gameplay-wise, whereas gameplay-wise for Superman, fly around. Flying would be really cool. Yeah, I felt like that's what I was going to say. Like, Greg, I mean, I don't want to spoil anything for you. And one day you'll unleash the world your idea for the ideal Superman. We need to make that video still. Because I have a whole thing laid out on how I'll make it all work.

You told me that. And I was like, that sounds like a really fun game. My only concern is that, like, I don't think the text's available yet. Oh, it's there. To make a Superman game like it should be made. Now flying is got, like, I feel like you can do flying out. Whereas before, I think you're playing. what was it?

And 64-4-4-4. Oh, God, yeah. Like, you know, garbage. But they've got things like infamous where you're basically flying. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You've got the hover thing. So they can do it now. But even that, I mean, like, the problem with Superman is the fact that it takes,

you need to explain to the audience how powerful he is. In the animated series, the original, the Adventures of Superman animated series that led into the Justice League, like, I remember them being very clear that he could theoretically be killed by conventional weapons. Like, a tank's going to hit him and he's going to go down. And, like, you know what I mean? Like, he's not going to just. stand there and take everything. But then, yeah,

exactly. As it goes further and further, that gets lost, it gets buried, the weed gets buried and he is just destroying everything. I feel like, I'm sorry, go ahead. No, I mean, you'd just be, like, if it was anything with soldiers of real people, it would make zero sense. Because you're just, like, paper people, you're just, like, just laser-

I mean, that's playing into my game that I've pitched to Nick and the guys, and I think maybe you were just talked about here or there, no, okay, it's just like, well, I know you'll steal it. He told it lies to me, but it took, to be fair, it took about 45 minutes longer than it should, because I'm like, wait, stop, go back. What is that comic book? And he's like, oh, it's based on this thing.

Just don't play around with the humans. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't have to be. You don't have to do that. Well, no, but yeah, but I think the key aspect of what you were talking about was that in any good story, there has to be constraints. There has to be rules, right?

You cannot have, like, if you look at bad movies, bad movies, especially bad superhero movies, are the ones where the constraints of the world aren't perfectly, aren't very well defined and set up. And so that when the character does something that you haven't really said he can or can't do, you feel cheated as an audience member. And it's the same with games, where,

and the same with Superman specifically, is that you have to, we have to know what his limitations are. He has to have limitations. They don't have to be human limitations that he, like, you know, he gets shot by bullet, he dies, but we do have to know what his threshold is

so that we can then bring a villain and that has a slightly higher threshold for that to be something, what you're talking about, which is there has to be consequences and there has to be something at stake. He has to have skin in the game, and if he doesn't,

if he can't be killed ever, then what's the point? Who cares? But I think Greg has taken care of, that fairly well. Video soon. And when I say soon, I don't mean any time. Soon T.M.

Maybe by the end of the year. Maybe. Maybe. Maybe. Sure. We're not going any more places, really. No. We're staying home.

For most fun. Hello, Portie. Poir looks like he's growing out of your armpit right now. He is. He's always, he's growing out of my wiener's gone rogue. Look at him. He just doesn't know what to do. He's like, he's trying to fight it.

And now he's just like, you know what? He's just going to sit back down exactly where I was. He's just skinny. He's not getting too skinny. Uh, Philip Morsden writes in. Do you think we will ever see remastered versions of the previous Mass Effect games Prior to the launch of the next one like we see with the Uncharted games? I don't think you see prior to the launch, but maybe I think the I thought I'm surprised we haven't remember these listings always get kicked up every so often that the mass effect

collection or whatever and this different things I'm surprised I thought it was going to be for this holiday. That was one of my E3 predictions That you would have time your ed when's in Dramada supposed to come out huh? When's it Dramida supposed to come out? Yeah, I think it's next fall 2016. Yeah, I would So that could easily slip. Yeah. They've been working on the game for forever, it feels like. Sure, but I mean, they want it to be good. They want it to be perfect.

No, I'm, take your time. But it's just funny to me how it seems like there's a new tease, like, every year at E3, and it's like the tiniest little thing. Yeah, yeah. This year it was pretty much, I mean, there was a CG trailer, and then the name was the reveal. Like, come on. Yeah, it's been a while since Mass Effect 3, though, right? Yeah.

It's been like four years. Oh, yeah, yeah. It's been well. Yeah, I mean, that'd be awesome. I would actually go back. I would love to go back and actually play Mass Effect 3, but I doubt that I will. I'll probably just go straight at my drama.

Again, it's for me. I'm like, I'll just read the story and read some blogs on how it ended. Read Wikipedia? Read Wikipedia. I would totally be, maybe not now. It's like, when we were making E3 predictions, I was like, fuck yeah, I'd love to have those games. And now that there's just so much stuff coming out.

You think we'll see anything about it next year? If we're going to see it, we'd have to, yeah. But I don't know. I don't want to put it past them. But then again, now backwards compatibility. That's what I was going to say. I was like, I wonder how much backwards compatibility is going to affect what developers choose to spend their money on because it takes time.

It doesn't take as much time, but you just have to port all that stuff. And if you don't feel like there's going to be that audience for it, because they can just put the disc in that they already have into their Xbox and then unlock it for free. I think people would, I think Mass Effect's big enough so that people would actually consider buying an up-res version of that game. Sure. Or Legacy Collection or Collection Series. I think it would buy just a nostalgia factor, too, just to see what it looks like it runs on the new council.

Right. Um, was it, it wasn't, uh, was it Xbox exclusive? MassFx? The first one was, it's not anymore. Like, they had a collection on PS3. So you still, I mean, so you still have all the, the PA4 audience. It was published by Microsoft. They had a collection with one on it?

Yeah. Oh, my apologies. Or it has, Mass Effect One has released on PlayStation. I can't remember in what form if it was. Interesting. Single or bundle. Singular bundle. Single or bundle.

Next question. Yeah. No, that's it. We're going to do. No, what I'm going to do. I'm going to insert a mid-roll. because this was brought to you by a new sponsor. A new Challenger is approaching.

If Kevin was editing this episode and not me because he's sick, I'd make him put in like the new Challenger text, you know, from what's the game? Smash Brothers, gotcha. I don't know fighting games. I was going to say Capcom like Marvel versus Capcom. A new fighter has entered the ring. And it's draft kings.com.

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It's a lot of money, Kristen. That's a lot of money. Can we get it? What? Can we get it? I know. I'm terrible. Are you good at fantasy football?

No. I am awful. I usually draft well, but then fall out of it by week three. So honestly, maybe I could. Maybe I could compete in this one. All right. Now you got me questioning.

Now, Nick, you're a legal guy. Can I compete in something if somebody's sponsored? Yeah, sure why not. about the contest. Oh, you're okay with it? I mean, I'm fine with it. Right.

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Hurry to drag kings.com now and use the promo code kind of funny to play for free for a shot at the part of $10 million in Sunday's Millionaire. maker event and are kind of funny for the free entry now only at draftkings.com. That's draftkings.com. God bless Expedia. Remember them? Yeah. They did that. They introduced that.

Those were the days. Did you ever think that when you heard that the first couple times that dot com that you would stick with you forever? No. I also, the first instant recognition, I was like, what was it? And you're like, God bless Expedia. I don't like that. That's right.

I never thought the first time I saw the Fandango sing-a-long commercial in a movie theater. That'd be, we had your movie ticket. We are Fandango Fandango I liked the I liked the You go to the movies enough Apparently not

Oh yeah no Fandigo is one of those properties One of those sites Where I'm like This is gonna die And it hasn't No

I use it a lot Yeah It's true So there you go Go to draft kings Because they give us money In Fandango Because we like it a lot

No go to draft kings I don't know I think you probably could By the way I think what you're asking Was if you work For Draft Kings You're not allowed to compete

Probably But you can probably use their service I don't think you can do I don't think if you work at a company, you're allowed to compete in, like, a sweepstakes that they're having because you can then fix it. But draft kings, from what I understand, is, I mean, it's just getting else. I mean, I'm sure if we found someone at draft kings, they might be able to do. That would probably be, like, a federal offense.

They probably wouldn't be inclined to do it. That's why we have to hold them hostage. Yeah. Oh, that's fine. That seems like a gun or with our sexuality. See, that's a real crime. It's fine as long as nobody finds out. Yeah, like watch.

Check this out. Greg. Yeah. Don't leave. There's so much to do. Greg, your thighs. They look so toyed. Toit?

I want to touch them thoroughly. Ladies and gentlemen, that's again the Kind of Funny Games cast episode 35. The first and last ever. Thank you so much for being a part of it. Remember, you can get this episode and every other episode early over at patreon.com slash kind of funny games.

We post them each every Friday. But if you don't got no bucks to toss our way, don't worry about it. Head over to YouTube.com slash Kind of Funny Games. It's so weird. Just a little switch of the Game Over Greggie show verbiage for this.

can't do it. You're doing great though. Thank you. You're doing better than Tim does normally. Thank you very much. YouTube.com slash kind of funny games. Each and every day we post a topic by topic day by day to we post the entire show there and on podcast services around the world. Nick, thank you for not getting sick. This would have been weird without you. Christine. Thanks for including me. I'm always happy to talk games.

Thanks for getting everyone sick. Thanks for getting everyone sick and coming over. Everybody go visit you. Simer says.com. YouTube.com slash timer. Yeah, but Stimer says links to everything. I know. But they don't, you know, when people watch the YouTube videos on a site, You don't really click subscribe there That's a good point

Okay I take it back Fair enough Until next time It's been our pleasure to serve you Here we go I can't even get mad when you You know what I'm gonna It must have been something you're saying

I should have walked away I see I jumped to the good point You did