The Besties - UFO 50 with special guest Jason Schreier!

Episode Date: September 27, 2024

To pick through the 50 indie games stuffed into UFO 50, The Besties called in support: Bloomberg reporter and author Jason Schreier. We discuss our favorites from UFO 50 and the point of a collection this big. In the back half, Schreier shares some juicy tidbits from his new book on the history of Blizzard, Play Nice. Get the full list of games (and other stuff) discussed at www.besties.fan. Want more episodes? Join us at patreon.com/thebesties for three bonus episodes each month!

Guys, I messed up so bad, I misread the game we were supposed to be playing this week, and I did play USO 50, and that one is... You play as your favorite comedians, Jane Cook. Bob Hope? Bob Hope, Drew Carey. Drew Carey is a good pull.

You go around, you perform for all brave military heroes, and you get points for every laugh you get and points for every tear, because sometimes they say stuff that makes them think of home. But I did platinum it, so is that worth anything? Did you stop all wars by platinuming it? I did tell a joke as Dane Cook

that was so good that all wars stopped. Okay. That is necessary for the platinum. Can you tell the joke right now? Oh yeah, did you remember any of the jokes? Well it's, I mean it's early, so it's like, all you hear is like, ah, ah, ah, ah, ah, because it's like 8-bit graphics.

But the way the little pixelated game card says it, it seems like it probably busted them up. Yeah, and it's the 50 because you're going to 50 different truth locations? The game costs 50, y'all. The game costs 50. Who is that? Uh-huh. I just, I just dropped off on this call.

Oh no. A fifth person is a fifth person. This is how he gets the scoops. He's just on every call. I secretly listen to every podcast before it publishes. Well, I don't think we should. I was hit right there. Right there. That was it. podcast before it publishes. Well, I don't think we should. Right there. That was it.

For everybody who's asking, that was Bob Hope. This is the USO 50 episode. We are doing it. Bing Crosby, come on right out. Ring-a-ding-ding. Ten years ago, we had Bob Hope, Steve Jobs. Now we have no Hope, no no Mackel Ryre limited to Jimmy limited access to the Jimmy thanks cancel culture My name is Justin Mackerel and I know the best games of the week.

My name is Griffin Mackerel and I know the best 30 to 40 games of the week. My name is Christopher Thomas Plant and I know the best games of the week. My name is Russ Froschek and I know the best games of the week. Welcome to the best. These are we talking about this latest and greatest in home. I didn't get to go. It's a you go last. Yeah, you're going to go after it because it's after the greatest.

It's easier to cut out that way. And now he's ruined my whole flow. It's Jason Schreier from the internet. Hey. My name is Jason Schreier and I'm here to shill a book. Hell yeah. The Scoop Smith they call him. Yeah.

Most people write one book and they're like, I get it. Not Jason Schreier, he'll write more. You can't stop him from writing books. What's your, what do you shill, let's shill up top and then shill at the end as well. And then we will shill up top and at the end. It's a shill sandwich here on the besties.

Yum. My new book is called Play Nice The Rise Fall and Future of Blizzard Entertainment, a video game company. So it's not a weather book. It is not a weather book, although I would love to write a book about the weather and each page is just a different forecast to write a book about the weather.

And each page is just a different forecast or like a different day's weather. Has anyone ever written a book? That's called an almanac. Those exist. It's an almanac. Does it have the weather for each previous day? Yeah, it should read up. Jason, you should become an almanac writer.

How many cheat codes for Diablo? Is it this one? Have you got Overwatch 2 pro strats or what's up? We do, it's a guide. It is a guide to all of the Blizzard games. It'll show you how to buy the most cards in Hearthstone. All right. Legendaries.

Yes, it'll show you, I mean, that's the way to win in Blizzard games these days is just spend the most money. So that's it. And that pro tip comes straight from Bobby, right? Are you doing an audio book? We do have an audio book. money. So that's it. And that pro tip comes straight from Bobby, right? You do an audio book. We do have an audio book. It is not me reading it. Oh, it is Ray Chase, best known as the subway announcer

in persona five. Also like Noctis in final fantasy or whatever. But yeah, yeah, yeah. For a second, I thought you got the stand clear the closing doors guy, which would have been really impressive. Holy crap. That would have been great. Stand Clear of video game news.

Well, don't knock this book till you've tried it. OK, so we did. I forgot that this is the way it works is I say the name of the game. Yeah, we're also talking about a video game. That hasn't happened. This week we're talking about UFO 50 Chris plant What's that in detail?

UFO 50 Derek you John Perry many other developers They are all back because they said what if instead of making one video game we made 50 What if the experience of signing on to steam could be a video game? But make it the NES and we're gonna talk about it right after the break. Hey, UFO 50, I can't believe this actually came out because I kind of assumed it just wasn't gonna come out. Can we get like one minute long synopsis of the history? Because I feel like this has been a known quantity for me,

even though I haven't followed it, I do podcasts with people who have followed it very, very closely. Jason, you were probably there when they came up for the idea. Like, what, how... You were on the call. I was on their podcast as they, like, listening secretly. Yeah, it's a cool thing. It's like Derek Yu and this guy, John Perry,

Chris mentioned before, they're these childhood friends who grew up together making games, and they had this wild, John Perry, Chris mentioned before, they're these childhood friends who grew up together making games and they had this wild, ambitious idea to do this compilation of 50 games and brought in a bunch of other designers to help out as well. And the concept is really cool. It's like this idea is that there was this console

in the 1980s that none of us had heard of called the LX and this company called UFOsoft that actually made 50 games back then and now we're discovering them for the first time and there's an entire fictional backstory behind the company and when you open up the game you get the selection screen, the the 8-bit steam as Chris said, and you can look at the description for each of these games and it'll give you like a little tidbit about when it was made and like some funny pithy description like the designer like did this on his own in his attic for a year or something like that and it's super fun it's really cool

to just kind of dig into I also heard because there I know for sure Derek got started in making these smaller games on like TIG source and things like that and kind of got to the point where he felt like selling those sorts of smaller games wasn't a viable property. And maybe the approach was to sort of bundle them all together to make it like more of a cohesive product that people would actually buy.

I love what an analog, the whole package is to basically, the progression of games development on the NES. Like the first game that is on the list is called Barbuda. It's probably going to be a fevered point of conversation in this very call, because I think it's the worst game in the collection and I know Russ really loves it. It's impossible that you can say that authoritatively. It is so rough and so slow and so chunky

and it looks so bad compared to the later games in the collection and that is because when the NES came out people were like, so it's just like a stronger Commodore 64 right, we're just gonna keep making our shitty Commodore 64 games on it right? And so for like the beginning of the NES history you get these like pretty rough games. Yeah but fucking Mario came out.

I will say the the NES thing, the NES thing to me, I understand the easy comparison there. And it makes sense, some of this is like that. But to me, and we did not have one of these growing up, but to me what it feels like is a Commodore 64, where like you had this scale of game that didn't have to be complete beginning, middle and end.

I'm thinking of like, for example, there's one game in the collection where you are hosting a party. Yeah, each part that game's good. You're already house party house. You're hosting a party and there's different types of guests you can get on your roster and you don't know who's going to show up when you answer the door. But you're sort of deck building where the guests can give you like more popularity that you can use to recruit guests or more money that you can use to upgrade your house.

And you're like building a Rolodex of people. It's, it wouldn't be a full game. Like, but that definitely would be a full- It is fully five levels and an endless- It would be like a computer, like I think you would have seen this as like Shareware or something like that a long, long time ago. Yeah, I see what you mean, especially spiritually

in terms of the designers that would be making the games. And I think that some of these games feel very pre-Atari crash and some of them feel very post. And the type of games that you're talking about are the type of games that were being made when, you know, three people who didn't even games weren't a thing, like we didn't know what they were. They could be anything. So people were just like, yeah, I'm going to try to create a

game about party planning. Right. And I will make it. And then I think, especially the back cap of this game becomes much more of the Sega Master System, the SNES, and a few other kind of variations of, okay, we know what a video game is. There's actually like, I think like a sequel in this? There's several. Yeah, there's a couple. Yeah, there's a couple. Campanella 2, Campanella 3. Yeah, yeah, yeah, you're right. And in the way that you can see those games build, I think kind of of gets the best out of them.

There's crossovers too, where like in Pilot Quest, you are fixing up the ship from the shooter type games. Okay, we have to talk at least about a few of the games, ASAP, and Pilot Quest is as good of a place as it can be in Star Am. Yeah, Pilot Quest is an idle game, in a sense. It's sort of like a hybrid between idle and- Star Tropics.

Star Tropics, yeah. Let's say Zelda 1 for a game that people have actually played. Wow. Okay, fight man. Yeah, people listening to our video game podcast probably don't know about Star Tropics. Yeah, hey, welcome aboard, everybody.

I hope you enjoyed the football games on Sunday. So anyway, it's a cross of star tropics and an idle game, where you are leveling up your action yo-yo and then going out and getting more Zordonax or whatever the fuck, and then bringing them back and upgrading your camp. And what's cool and kind of neat is that you should play this one first,

because it is an idle game, but it only works while you're actively playing the UFO 50. So while you're playing other UFO 50 games, the timer is still going up. So it is, but that's just like, I don't know, that's a really fun idea. And that is not something that would have existed at that time period.

This is gonna be a very difficult game to talk about. Can we just go round the horn and just like, rattle off like one of your favorites? Yeah, let's start with Jason as a guest. I want to hear you. What you guys have you guys been a Tatrix? Yes, I found it. Yes.

And that's my favorite one. Oh, really? I beat the entire thing. Holy shit. Level campaign. So that is a game. It's kind of like, I don't know, it's like a cross between like chess and like a real time strategy game. I've never played an auto battler, but it kind of like, I don't know, it's like a cross between like chess and like a real time strategy game.

I've never played an auto battler, but it kind of feels like an auto battle to you. Basically, you have you're playing on two sides. There's a red and the blue. You're on the left or the red and you're trying to take out the blue unless you play multiplayer. And then you can play against two like someone else. And you have little units that get summoned every few seconds and every few seconds they automatically move forward and you have to kind of position them in the optimal way to take out

your opponent's little units and then get to his castle to damage it and take away its health. So then you win the game. And it's really, really cool. You have to kind of balance the strategy of like figuring out that you're going to use these shield dudes to block the arrows with this kind of frantic pace that it goes at, because you won't have enough time to do everything you want to do each round. You just have to kind of make quick decisions. And it's really fun for someone like me, because I'm a big RTS guy. I'm like a StarCraft 2 addict and was like, grew up playing Warcraft and stuff. And so this is up- Who made those games? Oh, a little company called Blizzard that is documented in the upcoming addict and was like grew up playing Warcraft and stuff. And so this is up.

Oh, a little company called Blizzard that is documented in the upcoming books Play Nice, The Rise, Fallen Future of Blizzard Entertainment available October 8th preorder now. Oh, cool. It's really cool. Attachix is probably my favorite. And then the other one I really liked that I'm sure you guys got into too is God, what's the name? Vergain or something.

It's like the Metroid one. Oh, yeah. Gravity Shift. Not that you're not like the Metroid one. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You can gravity shift. Not the, you're not, not the Downwall. Warp Tent. Crater's one. No, it's um, Ver, hold on, let me. Oh, oh yes, the one where you can invert.

It's a Metroid. Yeah, you flip the gravity. You can invert gravity. Oh yeah. It's like XXX, whatever that game is. Vanger, sorry, Vanger, that's the name. Vanger. Uh, what about uh, you plant any, any ones that you, you really don't?

Um, uh, I mean, for me, Seaside Drive was my favorite. Oh, that's a cool one. What about you, plant any ones that you really don't? I mean, for me, Seaside Drive was my favorite by far. Try and describe that one, because that one's really weird. Yes, it's such a sick idea. So you are on an autoscroll, it's basically an autoscroll shmup in a weird way, but you're in a car stuck to the bottom and you can shoot up into the air in kind of like 180 directions or you can shoot behind you or in front of you. The problem is as you shoot, you lose strength.

Your bullets, there's like a power gauge at the bottom and to refill that power gauge, you have to like slam on the brakes and skid out to the back left of the screen. So you're constantly being motivated to drive fast, forward into the thrall of the combat while shooting everything, and then slam the brakes and really crush your car. Reloading your phone card, yeah. Yeah, that's a great way of putting it.

And it especially has that Sega look. Yeah. That it's perpetually, um, like, yeah, it's always, um, dusk is setting. You happen to be in Malibu. The sky is somehow purple and orange, you know? Um, it's, it's so good. Uh, Russ, anyone see you?

What? Games, it really is. Oh yeah. What? From the U.S. What are we doing right now? Tell us about the first one that you like, despite it being so not fun.

So, I'm gonna talk about two games. So the first one that I like that is not fun is called Barbuda. It's the very first Barbuda is cool. I like Barbuda. It's the very first game in the package and it is incredibly unwelcoming because you move at a snail's pace and you have limited lives and there's no saves

and there's a giant fucking map. It's like, it's basically, I love Animal Well. I've talked about it a million times. It is like if Animal Well was made back then because the game is- 90 years ago. 90 years ago. The game is filled with secrets and hidden little things that you really have to like examine the environment very carefully, but because there's no saving

and limited lives and things like that, you start from scratch if you die all the way. When you start Barbuda, you can walk to the left or to the right. And if you walk to the left, the game right and if you walk to the left the game begins If you walk to the right the very first thing that happens is you hit a trap and part of ceiling falls down kills you Like instantly like if you walk if you do the very first thing that you instinctually do in video games You will die instantly and I normally hate stuff like this, but it's so brutal

That I found it intriguing because it's not like it's hard, it's like impossible unless you're doing exactly what you need to do, in which case you start to get these little cracks, like you start to chip away these little like, okay, wait a minute, if I'm able to do this, then maybe, because even the way to proceed is not clear.

I think it's genuinely quite bold that this collection starts with Barbuda, because it is, there's a lot of purposeful antiquity in a lot of these games' designs, right? And I think some of the games suffer for it, but as a whole sort of like picture, if you look at it comprehensively, it's really, really interesting what they've done here.

Barbuda is the most antiqu anticipated, the most punishing. Here's a theory though. What if they don't want you to stay too long in one game? Yeah, I bounce off Barbuda after two tries. You go try something else, right? I think it's intentional. It's like, yeah, okay, not every game's for everybody, right, clearly.

You didn't like that one. But I was terrified. I was like, if. It's like, yeah, okay, not every game's for everybody, right? Clearly. You didn't like that one. But I was terrified. I was like, if they're all like this, and we've been like bumping this game up, like excited about talking about this game, and they're all like this, holy shit, there's gonna be a bloodbath.

I think that's an important note, because I do think a lot of people have said, oh, a lot of these games are designed, like it's a fun experiment, but it's not really a fun game or meant to be fun. And I don't think that's true of these games. I do think that they demaked them to some extent to, like, pay homage to the era,

but I also think a lot of that is, like, part of the design is the tension of, like, every pixel mattering in Barbuda to the point where I spent, like, three hours playing that game. Like, I did not put it down for a while. That's crazy. That's crazy. There is something enjoyable about finding the secrets. And I think one key thing, I think probably the main reason it's the first one is because

it's kind of teaching you that there's more to this whole experience than what's on the surface. And it's very much like, hey, every single little thing is hidden. There's so many secrets in this, which is also true of the grander UFO 50 experience, which it turns out has all this crazy metagame stuff where I'm sure you guys saw the terminal. You can enter these codes. The one of them unlocks like a new game.

I think players are still trying to figure out everything that's going on in this whole package. My theory from the beginning, every time ever since I first heard about this, is that there's some backstory that gets super evil and there's some crazy twist involving the developer. I don't want any more games. I don't think it should unlock more games. I think it should get rid of some.

It turns into UFO... I do want to say, though, when we were talking in DMs about the terminals, and I implied that it was was gonna unlock another 50 games, Chris Plant bought it, Hook, Line, and Sinker. He was convinced. Oh, what a sucker. I mean, it did take years. I like this thing.

I'm sorry, I like joy. I like to dream. Russ, what was your second? Okay, the other game I wanna talk about is called More Tall. It is so, it's probably my favorite from a design perspective, and just like playing it, I think it's fucking genius. You basically start, it's a side scrolling platforming game.

You have limited lives, you have like 30 lives and you play as these little soldiers that you can sacrifice so you can cause them to explode or you can cause them to turn into stone and you use their corpses as platforms to progress through the level. It has- It's like dark lemmings. Yeah, dark lemmings. That's what I'm asking of it. to turn into stone and you use their corpses as platforms to progress through the level. It has-

It's like dark lemmings. Yeah, dark lemmings. That's like this guy, but lemmings is already pretty dark. What's really cool about this is that it has save points at the end of each level. So it'll save the number of lives you had. So you can go back to previous levels and like try to improve the number of lives you used

to have more lives later on in the run. So that feels very modern to me, but I was kind of blown away. There's a sequel to that that is even headier and crazier. Yeah, I skipped to that one. It's crazy. That one's, no, I played them both, but that one was wild,

because that one has like different classes, so you can sacrifice to create a teleporter, for example. That one does not have a safe system though. So that one is way more punishing. They actually allude to that in the history of the description, saying this was the original intent of the game, was no saving. But if you use a teleporter, that's essentially the same thing for that one. I have two quick ones. One, Valbrace, which is a dungeon crawler, that sort of like first person perspective, you're going through

this maze of corridors and monsters and traps and treasure chests. Kind of like an Ultima thing. Uh, sort of. Wizardry. Wizardry, yeah. It's very much in that style. When you do get into combat, it kind of turns into punch out. It's not that like stationary, you just hit attack over and over again and you and the

monster trade blows. You dodge side to side and you can block with a shield and you have to like time out your attacks. You can cast spells using like these glyphs that you have to like that you will find on walls and then you have to input with the d-pad. It's it's just fun to play. I've really enjoyed playing it. My other one that is probably my favorite is Mini and Max. Yeah. Which is one of the last my favorite is Minion Max. Yeah. Oh, that's cool.

Which is one of the last games. That was really neat. Imagine Chip and Dale's Rescue Rangers, where you can run around this very cartoonish world, jump on boxes and pick them up and throw them. That is very much the gameplay loop. But the thing is, you are a girl who has been locked in a small storage cupboard.

And that storage cupboard is the world of the game because at any time you can hold down and you will shrink. Now all of a sudden you are down in this box of the game, right? Now all of a sudden that potted plant you were standing on is now like enormous and you can explore it. But it's also sort of a search action game because there's a ton of like unlockables to find.

There's a ton of abilities that you can find, a ton of mysteries to solve find. There's a ton of abilities that you can find, a ton of mysteries to solve and sort of quests. It is a very, very deep game. And I don't wanna spoil anything, but it goes much, much, much deeper than you would assume after playing it for a few minutes. I put a few hours into that one and I adore it.

I feel like that's true of a lot of these games, much, much deeper than you would expect. Yeah. So I'm really struggling with this as a package though, and I think this is something that we have, I think there's so many individual experiences in this collection that are really, really neat to have. I think I am struggling with the return rate of time that I invest versus the pleasure that I am deriving from the experience.

I think that I am in this weird spot where even if I enjoy a game pretty well, I start to think like, I wonder if I would enjoy other ones more though. I kind of want to see what else is here. And I don't feel really compelled or incentivized to spend too long with any one of the games. And it's like, I don't know that the game wants me to do that either. The game seems kind of ambivalent as to whether or not I keep playing them. And so I find it a little bit directionless, I think, is because if I spend too much time on any one game, it starts to feel like not all of them can sustain that level of interest. Like not all of them are worth that.

So yeah, I don't know how to play it. I will tell you what I did to sort of conquer this. Cause I think the steam comparison is good. You played conquered. I played conquered. What I did was the first time I played this, I basically went through over the course of several days and played 20 minutes of every game, give or take,

10 or 20 minutes, just to like understand what they were. And I used the favorites, you can favorite games. I used the favorite system to basically say like, oh, this is the game I wanna play. This is the game I wanna play. And by the end of the 50, I had about 15 games. And what I've been doing since I narrowed that down is I just use the favorites list.

Like there's a way you can filter by favorites. And I've just been bouncing around a few of those. And in that process, I've finished three of them. Porgy is one that I finished and I spent like eight hours playing Porgy. But you really, I think it's better if you limit the field of view. Because every time you land on that page of 50 games,

you're like, what the fuck, I'm just gonna keep on bouncing around. But I think if you limit the field of view, you end up playing and going a lot deeper into the games and I do think a lot of them sustain. What I'm hearing though is a lot of you creating, I understand what you're saying, but I'm hearing you creating a meta structure

that should have been in place. Well, no, I'll build on what Fresh is saying because I agree with both of you. I think this game is a bit of a mood ring about your taste in video games on two levels. One, I think when we are all talking about our favorite 50 video games and how often one of us says a game

and the rest of us are like, really, that's the one you liked? It reveals what your tastes are. It's not surprising that I picked the action shmup. Because when you fall in love with one of these games, you are having to make way for a lot of problems because they feel like old NES games. You have to make way for the poor controls or the lack of save states like in freshest

game. Not surprisingly you liked it. It's a big weird Metroidvania. So like I think if you have ever wanted to figure out what is your taste in video games you will figure it out on this because you are going to have to be okay with the game being a little incomplete and or reveal that. But then the second part is I think the game on the top level is really revealing of Russ Frustic type of game players, which are people who do not want what you're talking about. They like, here's what the game is. They want the like, okay, it's a mystery and I'm going to have to create a list and I'm going to have to write it down and I'm going to have

to text my friends and we're going to figure it out together and there's a secret code, etc, etc, etc. Where like I aspire to be that person. But in reality, I am the person who's like signs onto Steam and sees 50 games. And it's like, I would love to play all of those. And then I don't play any of them. And I like end up playing, I don't know, Crazy Taxxers. This is like, but I guess I feel, I feel like I'm struggling with the fact

that this game is leaning into like compulsions and tendencies that I don't necessarily love about myself as somebody who plays games, right? Like I would like a slow unravel of these games. So I am forced, forced is the wrong word, but incentivizes maybe, but like a slow rollout where I can spend time with each of the games individually and figure out which ones are like worth my time

and which ones I'm not gonna click with. So the game that I assumed this was going to be like was Retro Game Challenge DX, I think is what it was called, which was a, what was that, a DS game? Based off a TV show. And it was supposed to be like the game channel, what is it, Takashi's Game, I can't remember what the name of it, but anyway, the idea was that

it was this home retro console and there was this sentient game character who led you through these fictional classic games and there were challenges and as you did good and won, it would unlock the next and there was very much a progression to it and that's not the case at all with this game. It is literally drops you and then here's a screen of 50 games on it, fucking go nuts.

I kind of agree with Justin in that I think I would have preferred as a, I don't know, as a structural experience, like some, I mean any kind of structure, right? Instead what I've come to kind of realize is like, I have to be, to enjoy this game, to enjoy this experience, because I didn't guys, like I have to be to enjoy this game to enjoy this experience because I didn't guys like I did not really enjoy UFO 50 for the first few hours I played it just kind of like bouncing around games is like playing a game saying like well I didn't like that so that one's done I'm moving

on from that just scrolling through the boxes and seeing like what's a cool title Grimstone sure oh shit a Wild West Dragon Quest game like I'm gonna play this for a while. Oh, I liked that, but let's see what else is out there. You have to, because there is no structure, you do have to make it yourself. And while I would have preferred the other way around, I also think it's pretty fucking interesting

that it's like a- Oh, 100%, yeah. It's not even like a critique, I guess. It's like, it's so of itself. It's a warning, right? It's like, it's not gonna be, it's not going to be this... It's not gonna handhold you.

There is a version of this game that is much, of this collection rather, that is much more user-friendly, right? That would give you any fucking tutorials, aside from A-jumps and X-shoots, for any of the games, because some of them are fucked up and weird with no sort of exit, but that is very much kind of what it's going for.

And frankly, if you played Spelunky and you expected anything like that from this game, then you did not pay very much attention to the lessons, the hard lessons that Spelunky was trying to teach us. I think the real lesson of this game that it's trying to teach us is what it's like to live in a world without games media and how important it is to have podcasters and YouTubers

and guides to help you discern the wheat from the chaff. It is, it's genuinely cool though. Jason is kind of kidding on the square, but I 100% agree in one sense that I feel like that if I was laying out this collection end to end, and I was saying like, okay, these are the ones that you would enjoy, these are the ones that may not click as well for you.

That experience, if I wasn't a critic or somebody who needed to synthesize my opinion about this package and like consume enough of it to have a viewpoint about it, if I didn't have that pressure, I might be, I think I might enjoy it more maybe because it does reward the time that you spend poking at stuff, right?

It's not, uh, it's, it's not tossed off. It's not like a 50 shareware games collection, right? It's like, there's a lot more thought input to it than that. I also wanted to mention what's very cool is that because it's 50 games and because they're retro games, there's not really a return on investment for many sites, Polygon is one of these, to write guides for these games. This is not going to be a million billion seller game and to write guides would require writing like a 50th of the entire game.

I looked up party house deck building strategies today like, please Christ, I can't get past the third level in party house. Please Google Christ, show me Partyhouse strategies. Yeah, so you really are kind of alone. I'm sure over time that will change a little bit, but even then you're still digging through like random Reddit posts to get strategies for things. There's not going to be a lot of handholding and help. If you try to find information on PilotQuest online, it's really fun.

Actually, it's kind of crazy because there's people just talking about their understanding of it, like their best guesses. I want the AI summation of all the UFO 50 strategy guys. It is genuinely cool, though, the kind of community element of seeing a YouTuber I follow get into this game and be like, oh shit, you gotta play Mooncat or whatever. Well, not Mooncat, no.

Mooncat is the weirdest fucking game in the entire package. Yeah. And that's like, you guys know the Mario Party mini game where you have to, you're like spinning a circle and then you have to walk around with all the buttons do different things. That's what Mooncat is, except the entire game. I mean, this is, but this is,

I'm gonna have this game on my Steam Deck, I think probably forever, because I think I, I've played, I put maybe like seven or eight hours into the whole collection so far. I still feel like there's games I haven't played yet. I still feel like I'm in the info gathering stage of this thing. And while there are certainly, I would say maybe three out every four games, I play it for a little while and I say, okay, that's not really my cup of tea, but that still leaves, you know, a good 13 full ass games that are in here that I genuinely really do like and want to come back to and spend more time with.

And that's crazy. And one thing we didn't even mention is some of these games have multiplayer. Oh yeah. And some of the multiplayer looks great. Since I was not able to play it, I was doing the YouTube thing too. And y'all, Waldorf's Journey? Waldorf's Journey slaps ass.

The Walrus Game, the multiplayer for that game looks like a blast. That was kind of like actually going on YouTube and like watching other people discover it. I was really realizing how much this would be the perfect game when you are a kid and you have friends coming over and you can just pick at it together. Or when you're in college and you have a dorm and you're sharing the space.

But it would be, I think, just exponentially better discovering it with somebody in real time. You can kind of get that. I mean, fresh Jason and I have been like talking on the side of like, hey, I saw this thing, but it doesn't capture quite the same magic of like literally being in the same room as you discover something. Yeah.

Yeah, I think it's a really special game. I agree that it has, I found it quite frustrating at first. A thing that you can do if you are not the type of person who likes the surprises, and you do not mind spoiling yourself, is you can go on YouTube and you can find a video that is all 50 games described in 50 minutes. So it's like a one minute blurb for each one. And like, hey, that can be plenty helpful of at least just showing you like, hey, yeah, I know for a fact I'm gonna like six of these. I'll start with those and then I'll go and hit the rest later because there's definitely something in here for everyone. There truly is. I guarantee there is a game in here.

I can't think of a genre that is not, like there's a MacVenture style first person adventure. There's a game that's like my favorite NES game, Rescue the Embassy Mission. Yes. There's a game where you're having to like do sniper stuff and then do on the ground stuff, it's cool. The point and click adventure one.

Yeah, yeah. It's like Shadowgate, like a modern game. Yeah, it's night murder or something like that. No, it's something manor, like nightmare. Nightmare, yeah. It's really, it frustrates me. It really does, because it makes me feel like I'm, this should be, all the problems that I have with it,

I feel like are like crappy brain tricks that video games have done on me for 15 years, right? Like I want, when I was playing the games, you guys know what I really wanted. What I really wanted is I wanted every time I played fucking five minutes one of these games. I wanted a little Coin you wanted a token to unlock Yeah, I wanted a cookie for playing it yet. I mean yeah Yeah, if you check the descriptions you can like there's a house with like a Tamagotchi thing

I don't really know what the deal is My problem with that is you have to get too deep into the games to get a lot. It's a very uneven time investment. I think that would have been really smart to do for like a midpoint sort of like. A lot of them are mid like play like beat the first level. Yeah, some of them. So each one gives you a gift and then a trophy. It's like two different prizes.

There's a gold disc you can get. And there's a cherry disc. And a lot of those midpoint house gifts though, you would need to invest several hours to get them. Yeah. Yeah, for sure. Especially because of the clunky controls and the difficulty. Right. And it's just like, I don't know if I'm going to enjoy it enough to do that, but I wanted more of that crappy stuff and I don't think it should have that. I think if you- Yeah, I mean, I think the problem with it is that like investing into a game is so time consuming because you have to learn

the controls and learn the kind of the mechanics and the language of that game in a way that like reading 50 books or watching 50 movies would not be. So it's a lot harder to kind of consume everything in this thing, to enjoy everything in this thing because of that barrier. It feels like you're working. You're like doing schoolwork, trying to understand it all. But it also feels to me like we're we're kind of judging this game after a couple of weeks.

And I've also been like kind of like of two minds on it, like very frustrated at times, very delighted at times. But I also it feels like this is the type of game that will be dissected and unpacked and played by people for a year for multiple years. I think everyone should get like if you like video years. I think everyone should get, like, if you like video games, I think you should get UFO 50. I think what we're, I think a lot of what we're bumping up against

is something that occurred to me when I was playing it, and I'm reminded of it now, is a lot of these games feel like they were made ambivalent as to whether or not you kept playing them. Right. Where like a lot of games have to be, I mean almost every game released has to be this self-contained package of like, you want to play it for a hundred hours and it's got unlockables and it's got all the different things that you could want to keep you playing, right?

They want to keep you hooked. And I feel like this game, these games are a lot more ambivalent about like, if you don't wanna keep playing this, just go play something else. Like it doesn't, I don't care. You know what I mean? Which was true to that era, right? Right, games now are purposefully quite friction free because as soon as you stop enjoying a game for a second,

you stop playing it, right? But it's games of that era were not designed that way. But also there's a collection of 50 games. It doesn't give a shit if you don't like one of the games. Go play one of the other 49 games. Like, I agree with you, and I do think it's interesting that there's, and frankly, kind of rewarding that they are not constantly trying to hook you up

to the dopamine trap. Like, there is a certain amount of grit your teeth. The first time I beat one of the levels on Party House, I was like, fuck yeah. Like it was a sense of satisfaction. Because of- How might I get some tips from you, man? Cause I-

You gotta rush money at the beginning. You gotta rush auctioneers. Give four auctioneers if you can. You gotta try and cancel out your trouble members. You do not want to get these parties busted by the cops. Time wasted. Your popularity wasted. Griffin has's a lot of parties. Justin, I think you'll appreciate this sequel,

which I just heard, actually Derek, you told me, there's a sequel coming and it's gonna have like way more seamless gameplay, collectibles and achievements and towers to climb, it's called Ubisoft 50. And I think you'll really enjoy it. Ubisoft five, the hell with the budget from five, five end to end. Oh wait, wait, wait, the budget, it budget for 5, 5 end to end. Oh wait, wait, wait, the budget, it's 4 now, it's just-

Okay, okay, but guys, let me hit you with this. What if it was this exact package, but all the games were locked inside enemy forts, okay? And you had to go rescue the games, you had to scan the fort, you had to get all the weapons. Sneak around, stab the games in the neck. What if you had to kill the game? Kill the games, take their skin, make a bag.

This is, no, this is the Kojima version. Death Stranding 50 is you have to kill the game. Hey, can I say the thing I like about this game? There's the quintet games, which was like a Super Nintendo era. Oh yeah. Action RPGs. Now you're speaking my language, Griffin.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not connected in terms of narrative really, but they use the same sprites and the same sound effects, and it is hysterical when you hear a death sound in a game from 1984, and then one of the last games you still hear them using that same fucking sound. That's funny. It's genuinely very, very rewarding

to kind of see like how the whole thing develops. We could talk about this game for hours and hours and hours and hours and hours. One thing that I did kind of miss is I know that Derek, you worked on this with other people. I would love to know, and maybe this isn't the kind of thing they wanted to know. I think when I started reading about it,

I was envisioning more like we got a bunch of all of our indie developer friends to each kick in a game to be part of this collection. It's a lot more cogent than that, obviously. It's about five or six people. And are they all working as, I guess I was curious if it was a team-based thing where everybody's kind of pitching in on everything or if it's like more.

Yes. From what I understand, Derek and John were like the core team at the beginning. And then at a point they brought in Ojiro Fumoto, who was the creator of Danwell and Point P. Fumoto left, I think to go work on something at Nintendo. This is like back in 2017. Right, this is, yeah. And then other people kind of were like coming on, like literally working as part of like the team for a while. And then I think that there are like a couple games that are also contribution games, but largely the game is made by like that core team. So some of the games, if you like go to the Wiki,

you can even see it like, oh, this one was made by like Derek core team. So some of the games, if you like, go to the Wiki, you can even see it like, Oh, this one was made by like Derek and John together. And this one was just Derek and this one was just John and this one was. And they have credits at the end of the games, like referred like they have pseudonyms. They're not their real names like Benedict Chung, a Chun was, I assume was Derek, but I,

I'm not sure if that's a one-to-one. Yeah, I don't know if those are one-to-one or not, but it's a good question. But I kind of expected the same thing, where every time you played a game, it would be like, well, this is clearly the one from this person. This is clearly the one from this person. I'm kind of glad it doesn't go that way, because it's like how I... What I was talking about, the sound effects and assets being reused, like it really does feel like

you are playing a whole console generation's worth of output from a single developer. And it tells an interesting story, like about games and about game development of that era while you are also, you know, collecting moon gems or whatever in Pilot Quest. I wasn't sure if I was gonna say this, but to give you guys a little bit of an exclusive,

I'm actually working on a story about a culture of crunch at UFOsoft and it's gonna go live in a couple of months. Yeah, no, I'm sorry, Jason. I'm gonna say 50 games of this size over the course of a decade is actually not, that ain't crunch, that's fine. Yeah, good management there. Good job, everybody. It turns out UFOsoft's fine. Yeah, good management there.

It turns out UFOsoft, some real shady stuff. Hey, should we take a break so that Jason can plug in his book some more? Yes. That's the only way for us to get some more plugs is to keep moving forward in the show. Gotta do those plugs. Jason, why did you decide to write a book that would make you sad? Don't all books make you sad? That's a good point actually. They do.

If you want us to be happy, you would play a video game, not like, read some words. Here's what I'm gonna say, and I haven't finished yet. I've been reading it for the last few months, and I'm about two-thirds of the way through, but I do get the sense that there is kind of a happy, theoretically, for most people, for the leadership at least, a happy period of Blizzard that people kind of forget. And then over the years, I mean, you literally group the book this way, over the years, it hits this point of diminishing returns and then a steep drop-off

in happiness towards the end. It depends who you're talking about, the level of happiness. There were people at the very beginning of Blizzard, there were people who were very happy and there were people who were not very happy, like with most companies. And today, beginning of Blizzard, there were people who are very happy and there are people who are not very happy, like with most companies. Um, and today working at Blizzard, there are people who are very happy and people are not happy. I mean, it's not, kind of, it's hard to kind of, uh,

sum it all up in these sweeping terms as fun as it is from a narrative point of view. But it does seem like I think people look on and the book is structured this way, look on the period from like whatever the nineties 90s, early 80s, early 90s, to a figure like 2008, I guess, as the like heyday of Blizzard, and then there's this- Yeah, from a product point of view,

which is different, like the outside world being happy with the product is different than the people inside being happy, two kind of parallel, but different tracks. Yes. From a sort of outside observer, I think the narrative at least is that Blizzard, it was making great games and wasn't the worst company

in the world to work at. And then all of a sudden like, was still making great games, but the quality of life for the people working there started to go down. Then the quality of the games started to go down sort of alongside the quality of the life for the workers. And I don't know how they get out of that. Yeah. Well, so it's interesting. OK, if you were to put it in the 90s, the book kind of

it chronicles the whole 33 year saga here. Right. And so it's got stories. I actually when I started to work on the book, I figured it would be all modern times. But then I started talking to people who were there in the 90s. I heard so many wild stories and anecdotes that I was like, oh, man, this has to this has to cover the first era to the first decade or so. And I think if you were there in the 90s, you could say like quality of life. It's interesting. I don't know.

You could say a lot about the quality of life, because on one hand, you're part of this group of dudes and was almost entirely dudes at that point who are all close friends. You're going into the office every day and your sandals and your t-shirts and you don't have to wear a suit to work and you're playing video games with them during lunch and playing Magic the Gathering and going to barbecues at night or on the weekends and stuff. So you're hanging out together. But then at the same time your life is absorbed into work because you are just constantly at work,

constantly working, especially Starcraft. Starcraft is the game that everybody talks about as like the most legendary crunch that they ever went through, where they were spending like 18 hour days at the office for the course of a year. And Alan Adham, who is the director and president at the time, kept being like, oh, we're just two weeks away from shipping. And that turned into months and months and months of just being like, oh, two weeks away, we're two weeks away, we're two weeks away. So I think that could be like, I think people who were there, they were in their 20s, it was kind of a mix of like excruciating

and exhilarating at the same time, where it was like super fun, but also super awful. And it's certainly not something people could do if they had kids and families and were older. So that's, I mean, I don't know if you would call that like good quality of life. It's certainly one way of approaching work in life. And that's what led to a lot of the kind of classics, the all time favorites, Warcraft II and StarCraft and Warcraft III.

And then around the time World of Warcraft came out, that's essentially what changed the company forever in all sorts of ways, both good and bad. That's when the company forever in all sorts of ways, both good and bad. That's when the company started to professionalize more. So they grew into a company from a company of hundreds to a company of thousands. A lot more women came in. It still wasn't like a 50 50 balance, but it grew closer to like 20 percent women instead of one percent women.

And as that was happening, that's when some of the cultural issues that have been like documented more recently started to pop up because a lot of the dudes, the nerds were getting rich and famous and women were around and that caused problems. And it was a long time before it felt to women who worked there like they were at a place that was equitable and treated them fairly, which to be fair is the case with a lot of video game companies or like any industry that is mostly men. But again, it's kind of like its own kind of track kind of independent from the products. I don't really think that the two are all that connected. I did find it interesting because you mentioned, it was in a footnote,

the fact that like you would talk to one person and they'd be like, oh, you already talked to my husband. Cause there was so much incestuous thing. to one person and they'd be like, Oh, you already talked to my husband because there was so much incestuous thing. It was like everyone was dating everyone there, which is, I guess makes sense, but it's also wild to me. Yeah. Because your life is part of your work.

Like that is people spend their entire, they're wearing a Blizzard hoodies, going to Blizzard campus every day, like spending the evenings on like doing clubs on the campus, like the fencing club or the DND club or whatever. And of course you meet your you meet someone and you're going to like develop your personal life in that too. The problem with that was, first of all, it was weird how much of it was going on, but also that a lot of people high up in the company were dating people below them in the company.

Mike Morheim, CEO and co founder, wound of marrying someone below him who he met at Blizzard. And the list goes on and on from like all the all the names that you know, Chris Metzen and Frank Pierce and pretty like pretty much everybody was at least dating at some point someone who was below them at the company, which created an uncomfortable dynamic for some people. I think the narrative, the gamer narrative, if you will, capital G, is that Activision ruined Blizzard.

Activision came in, the money guys, all they cared about was marketing and money and making more money and stock market prices, whatever it was, and they ruined what was a perfect video game company. Where do you land now on that presumption? Yeah, I mean, that's so simplified that, of course, it's not true. I think what actually happened is that, so first of all, Blizzard, Blizzard paired up with Activision in 2007 and they merged.

And this was before that, Blizzard had been owned by Vivendi, which had its own set of problems. And before that, it just kept shuffling between corporate parents that were each a disaster for their own reason. One of my favorite stories is when they were owned by a company that got investigated by the SEC for massive fraud and the president of the time that company got sentenced to jail, prosecuted of course by Chris Christie. Just wild, wild stories in this book. So when that happened, things went pretty well for a while. Warcraft was still growing. Blizzard was doing well. It was working on these HIC games, making a lot of money.

And then Titan happened. And the story of Titan will be on polygon.com very shortly. And people can read it there. But essentially, this is the game that was supposed to be the next big thing from Blizzard, the successor to wow that everyone was waiting for, including Bobby Kotick, the CEO of Activision. And Titan, due to a whole host of factors, mismanagement mostly, blew up and did not happen.

It was canceled, cost them $80 million. And suddenly Bobby Kotick looked over and was like, hey, what the hell, Blizzard? Like I give you all this trust, I give you all this autonomy to do your own thing. And this is what you rewarded me with, this big failure. Now I'm going to have to get some adults in the room and take a larger role in things. And that's what started leading to the quote unquote Activision takeover, a blizzard where more and more Activision people started coming in. Activision from the very top started putting more pressures on Blizzard. And that led to some conflict. And I think the way that I came away from this book and the

reporting process thinking about this is that like on the spectrum of like, on one side games are art and we must give them as many years as they take because we can we have our holy vision and it cannot be compromised and we must we must take as much time as we need to to release this thing. Two, the other side of the spectrum which is games are commodities that must be released every single year because it's time for a new Call of Duty and it has to come out no matter whether it's ready or not because we got a commercial with Kobe Bryant in it waiting to air this fall so you better hit your deadline. You have these two companies that are both on complete opposite sides of that and they could not find a way to compromise for various reasons and strong personalities. They cannot find a middle ground. So instead, Activision just dragged Blizzard kicking and screaming to their side,

or at least tried to. Didn't really accomplish what they set out to do in terms of getting Blizzard to release games or WoW expansions, most notably more fast. But the two companies just did not mesh. And so I think you could fairly... I think there will definitely be people who read this book and come away from it with a takeaway of, like, And so I think you could fairly, I think there will definitely be people who read this book and come away from it with a takeaway of like,

oh, Activision really caused a lot of problems for this company that I loved. But at the same time, I think the book does a lot of detailing of the internal problems of Blizzard that were not caused by Activision at all. Yeah, I think if someone were to come away and say, oh, it was all Activision's fault, they did not read the book, or not carefully at least,

because it really makes it very clear that there was a lot of stuff going on, and Titan is really, you're right, the tipping point of we're gonna be creative forever, and creativity is all that matters, but if you have a failure and it costs $80 million at a certain point, someone's gonna need to pump the brakes. Yeah, and it's not just the $80 million, by the way,

because if you think about the way these publicly traded companies work, a lot of it is about like setting Wall Street expectations for the future. So a lot of it is like Bobby being able to promise investors that he has this big new thing coming like, hey, and it's going to be a subscription service, and you're going to be making this revenue every single month. I don't know if it was necessarily a subscription

that hadn't even gotten to a commerce. Like the game hadn't even gotten far enough to get to that point. I think at that point, like free to play was really starting to a conversation like the game hadn't even gotten far enough to get to that point. I think at that point, like free to play was really starting to take over like 2013 or so. But yes, the idea was like, hey, you know, the guys who made World of Warcraft, we are making something even bigger. They are making something even bigger. The next big thing that's going to be the wow killer. It's going to be it's going to be the hottest thing because World Warcraft was one of those lucrative games ever made.

Right. And so Bobby wanted to to see what was next for them. And I think you can kind of, like, as much as I hate to ask people to empathize with Bobby Cody, and I think the book details a lot of his quirks, let's say, I think that he was kind of sold on this promise of Titan as the next big thing, and he felt really like Blizzard had betrayed his trust by not delivering on that, and that was a really big deal. Yeah. He was good in Moneyball.

I'll give him that. Excellent in Moneyball. Surprisingly compelling. I'm excited to read this book, Jason. It is a topic that I did not know I was as interested in until you just talked about it, and then I was like, oh yeah, now I do kind of want to know what the fuck was going on.

I think aren't you a wild player, Griffin? Aren't you? Yes, actually, I recently started to get I'll give you a fun little tidbit. So there was this whole idea within Blizzard that they wanted to release. Wow, expansion is more quickly. And if you go back and you look at the history, a lot of which is detailed on joystick, actually, unlike the joystick. Wow. Kind of a subdivision vertical that you guys had. So a lot of history is like Blizzard and Mike Morhaime going on earnings calls

and be like, we're working on getting wow expansions out more quickly. And that was just such a big thing for a long time. Bobby wanted it to be annual, basically. Yeah, but Blizzard did, too. There were people who were like all for like releasing them more quickly. Maybe annual wasn't the right cadence, but at least every 18 months or something, as opposed to every two years, which was the cadence that they could deliver on.

And so there was this idea internally, and J. Allen Brack, who was the executive producer of WOW, he called it To The Moon, based on JFK's, we're going to the moon speech. And To The Moon was this idea that we're gonna release WOW expansions every single year. And they tried so many ways to do that. And Bobby's solution was you can you guys need to hire hundreds

more developers to make this happen, because that's what we do. We call it duty. That's how the machine works is you throw people at the problem. You have them make content and that's how you make it more quickly. And that didn't work for Blizzard for all sorts of reasons. But like it was just such a funny, like kind of maybe not funny, but such a, such a divide between the two companies. And that like one just believed in math and like, you just put this number of people on a game

and you will make it faster. That is how math works. And the other being like, no, this is not how creativity and artwork, that's not how we do things here. And it's just such a strange divide, but to the moon is one of my favorite corporate. So good.

Well, this book is great. When can people buy it? Thank you. It comes out October 8th. So very soon people can preorder it now comes out and there's hardcover digital audiobook. Like I said, Persona five subway announcer audiobook. And yeah, it's pretty I'm pretty proud of it. I hope it resonates with folks. Once again, it's pretty I'm pretty proud of it. I hope it resonates with folks. Once again, it's called play nice.

Do you want to do a nice one now? Don't you think it would be good? I'm worried people will be like, oh, it's Jason calling. He's going to be a stinker about us. I think if you read this book, you will not find it to be like a stinker book. I don't I've never thought you were a stinker. I think you're an incredible professional. I'm saying that the people I talk to in the biz

say you're kind of a stinker. I think they actually said you were a press sneak fuck. What did they say? A press sneak fuck, yeah. Yeah, hey Justin, why do they say that to my face, huh? Because they're afraid of you, that's right. Jason, wait, Jason, were you the press sneak fuck? Yes, right? Yeah, man. That's right. Jason Jason were you the presnick fuck? Yes, right man That's fucking right. I get a shout out in prey. Yeah, the little stinker is an upgrade honestly

That's true no pressing fuck. I like that. I wear that with a badge of honor I would get if it was me I'd get a tattoo go on yeah Well, I mean I think I would be more inclined to get a press knee fuck tattoo than a stinker. But I guess we'll agree to disagree. It's not a negative book. It's very much like a history. But yeah, I would describe it like it goes through so many ups and downs and so many positive and negative aspects of Blizzard that I don't really think

even the ending. I don't think it's it's certainly it ended on a sour note because it ends with essentially 1900 people getting laid off when Microsoft took over, including a bunch of Blizzard. But like, I don't really think it's a book that is just like going to depress people. I think it's a book that people will find really interesting and kind of go through a roller coaster of emotions.

I found it to be like a very light, very quick read. I am kind of a slow reader and this like zoomed by for what it's worth. Is it gonna get harder you think or is it proving harder already to do this kind of like following of a company or like a brand or a what have you as a narrative thread when I feel like so many of those brands and like

Blizzard, I guess, in a sense is part of this where they start to mean such a different thing than they meant for so long, where it becomes almost sort of like a different beast. How do you like track that without it feeling like you're just following a, you know, a logo or brand name? Well that's what makes it a story, right? Like if it was just kind of Blizzard not changing, then it wouldn't be a very interesting story. Well, maybe you want to do the story in the first place was when I first started hearing about the Activision influence

and the kind of corporate takeover of it all, because that to me is what made it like, oh, there's some really interesting kind of people conflicting and having different motivations and desires and goals here. And that's what makes it interesting. So I mean, if there wasn't change, it wouldn't be a very good story. Do we wanna do some honorable mentions before we wrap up? Yeah, I have a bunch.

So I'm gonna go through mine as quickly as I can. I'm gonna start with, sorry to make this all about books, but another book. This is A Handheld History, 88 to 95 from Lost in Cult. It just came out about a month ago. And this is a gorgeous, if you love handheld gaming from that era, you're talking about the original Game Boy and in that space, Game Gear, that era.

This is amazing, gorgeously illustrated book. Lost in Cult makes amazing stuff. And I was totally blown away by the production value, this great essays in here, really insightful things on the creators of the Game Boy, for example, Gunpei Yokai and that team. So I was really just kind of blown away. And that book is out now, if you're interested in getting it.

It's volume two, they originally released the Handheld History which is more encompassing of all handheld history and this is a more narrow focus which I actually liked. God dang, I'm looking at their website, it's Lost in Call, I thought I had a lot of shit I wanted. Stunning, they make stunning stuff. The two other things I wanna mention,

one, if you are interested in UFO 50 and feel like we haven't fully checked the UFO 50 box in this episode, Eggplant, the Secret Lives of Games is a podcast. They are doing a year-long series where every episode is one game. It's hosted by a bunch of game designers, so if you're interested in a specific game or just the whole catalog, they will be moving through. I think the first episode goes up this week on Barbuda, which I'm definitely gonna be listening to. So I'm super excited for that.

And then the last thing I'm gonna recommend is Will and Harper, which is on Netflix. It's a documentary about Harper Steel and Will Ferrell. Harper Steel was the head writer at SNL, recently transitioned and they decided to do a road trip across the United States. And so it's incredibly funny and personal and really, really touching and insightful in terms of the trans experience.

And I thought it was fantastic. So that's on Netflix, Will and Harper. Yeah, you know what else is on Netflix that is touching and incredible and important? It's the Circle, season six, baby, it's back. It's doing some shit from a game design perspective that sucks the moon right out of the sky. They've added this random element called the Disruptor

where you can choose to be the Disruptor, but you don't know if it's gonna be good or bad, and so it's just a game without rules anymore. Loot boxes, baby. It's so, fuck, baby It's so fucked this season so messy people are just lying and then getting caught and then every time there's a group chat People are just burning each other's asses to the ground. It's fucking fire. It's so good. Also, I finished core keeper The 1.0. Oh, thank God. I was so bored of seeing that on your what you're playing It's fucking great though, man. If you like Terraria, play Corekeeper.

It is top-down Terraria and it's good as hell. It really absorbed me. Anyone else got stuff to talk about? Jason, you doing anything besides writing books? I'm playing a game that I don't think I can talk about yet. That's what I wanna talk about too and I can't talk about that. Now Jason. We'll talk about that later. Now you say you can't talk about it, Jason, that's what I wanna talk about too. And I can't talk about that. Now Jason.

We'll talk about that later. You say you can't talk about it, Jason, but I know one guy that's great at getting people to talk about stuff that they're not supposed to talk about. And that's you. Whoa. So if you were you, and I was me, and I was you, and I needed to get to the bottom of this,

let me talk to your wife. Or your girlfriend right now. Off the record. Which one? Let me talk to both of them at the same time on different calls. I kept playing Children of Mordor. It's extremely good.

If you haven't played it, you should play it. Oh, watch the movie. It's on Netflix also. Sorry, Netflix, you're really getting the business on this one, but it's called Rebel Ridge. Oh yeah. Very excellent choice. Is this Rebel Moon Part One?

No, this is the new movie by the director of Blue Ruin in Green Room. And yeah, go ahead, Justin. And yeah, it's a story about, I don't wanna, I don't wanna give too much away because it's really one of those clockwork things that like watching it unwind is really very satisfying, or wind up, I guess you'd say.

But it is about a Marine who is currently not in active duty, whose cousin gets sent to jail. And if the cousin is wanted by some pretty powerful currently not in active duty, whose cousin gets sent to jail. And if the cousin is wanted by some pretty powerful criminals, and if he gets sent to the state penitentiary, then he is worried that his cousin will be attacked. So this Marine is stopping in this small town to pay his cousin's bail to get him out. Basically he's got a lot of cash with him and he runs a foul of the, the racist police force there run by Don Johnson.

Uh, and he takes the money and, uh, strips it from him. And then basically the cousin gets transferred anyway, because Don Johnson really screws this guy over. So this guy though, what's cool about this is this guy's obviously like a very dangerous man with a lot of different, you know, he's got that whole sort of like taken magic, you know, where it's like, he's a guy that can do anything. You get it.

But the movie always exists in the world of law. So this guy is always conscious of what he's doing and delete, like he is in the world of law. So this guy is always conscious of what he's doing and delete, like he is in the system. He's not outside of the system. His assistant helping him with stuff is, she is a legal. City Hall weren't cool. Yeah, she's like wants to be a lawyer,

but she is helping him navigate the like red tape. And he is trying to do it by the book and being ground down by a system that like does not care about him. I was sitting next to Justin on the plane as he watched this movie and just letting out full blown cackles at points. It's so like excruciating the way that they grind this guy

down and like keep twist and Don Johnson is like so good like continuing to twist the screws that when he finally starts to like upend it, it's like, it's so good, but it's not a cathartic. It's not like, well, this is solved. You know what I mean? It's a deep down, like, you see what this guy has gone through and you see what he's had to like, get over on these guys. It's just great.

It's frigging great film. Every scene is like great. The star of the movie, Aaron Pierre is going to have a massive career. He is like exuding like power and cool and is awesome. If you've seen the original Rambo, First Blood, before Rambo becomes kind of a parody of itself, this is more of a true spiritual sequel or reboot almost of the original Rambo than all the other Rambo movies.

It's fantastic. It's fantastic. It's so, so good. You got anything, Chris? I just support that. It's a great pick. Cool. It's called Rebel Ridge. I don't love the name. I feel like because of the rebel moon.

Honestly, I think I skipped it a few times. Also the director had a whole color scheme thing going. That is irritating too. We hate that. Thank you. We did it. I want to thank the following patrons for being supporters of the besties. We have Ben we have Elliot We have Cathal and we have Kazuko

Hello, it started to start getting a little weirder as we went. Thank you for being patrons We have a new episode of the resties that's up. We talk about dead rising remastered Which is an excellent super fun remake of the original Dead Rising, which I loved and I love the remaster as well. So that is already up. We have a new bracket episode coming in next month. And so stay tuned for that. And Jason's book is Plain Ice, The rise and fall and future of Blizzard Entertainment,

which is out in like two weeks. Very excited. Thank you guys for having me. Thank you Jason. Thanks for joining us Jason. Next week. Oh yeah. Next week.

It's a Zelda game. We're doing Zelda. The Echoes of Wisdom. This is a new Zelda game. There's a new Zelda game coming out? Yeah dude. Is it about Zelda? It is.

It really is. Whoa! Now's your time. That's gonna do it for us. Until next time. Be sure to join us again next week for the besties because shouldn't the world's best friends pick the world's best games? Besties!