The Daily Zeitgeist - The Democratized Future Of Gaming 02.20.24

Episode Date: February 20, 2024

In episode 1627, Jack and Miles are joined by streamer, gamer, and super-producer, DJ Danl Goodman, to discuss… The Future Of Video Games & The Practical Impact Of AI and more! LISTEN: Luv 2 Luv by Mike NastySee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me for I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just

starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation, then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports.

Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeart on the iheart radio app apple podcast or wherever you

get your podcast presented by capital one founding partner of iheart women's sports hello the internet and welcome to season 326 episode 2 of your daily night game production of iheart radio this is a podcast where we take a deep dive into America's shared consciousness. And it is Tuesday, February 20th, 2024. Gets me every time. One more way in the future. February 20th, 2024. Hot damn.

Two-twenty-twenty-four. You know what that is? A lot of twos, Miles. I can tell you that much. Hey, it is. Too many twos. Twenty-two twos. Is that a Jay-Z song?

Anyway. Too many twos. Nationalos is that a jay-z song anyway uh national leadership day national comfy day get comfortable okay uh but that's also probably some branding shit uh national muffin day i'll tell you this big muffin is not behind that one national love your pet day and national cherry pie day i think it warrants its own day. Hey, hey. She's my. Hell yeah. And so on. And so on and so forth. You can't remember? What's that song?

She's my. She's my. Cherry Clines. It's called Cherry Pie. What is it? It's like. She's my. Sweet.

My. Cherry Clines. She's my type of guy. I can't remember. She's my type of guy. Can't remember. He's my type of guy. Let it pass in a super fly. Super fly. Well, speaking of bad singing, my name's Jack O'Brien,

a.k.a. This is Hudson News, you fucker. You'll be broke when we are done. Pay your three paychecks for Chex Mix. Watch you cry some more. And then 45 minute guitar solo just with my mouth. That is courtesy of La Caroni on the Discord. Little Kansas. Hell yeah.

Yeah. And shout out to Hudson News Chex Mix. At least they're not consistent. I like that. At least it's not $13 everywhere. Oh, yeah. No. Like I said, $4.99 to LAX.

Couldn't believe it. I don't believe it. I don't believe it. I can't believe it. And I'm thrilled to be joined, as always, by my co-host, Mr. Miles Gray! It's Miles Gray, a.k.a. the Lord of Lancashire. You already know. It's the real NoHo Hank, because I'm from NoHo. And you can take that to the bank.

And I'm also bald. So that kind of also works too. Anyway, shout out to just me in North Hollywood. At the time, I'm not out. I'm in the real world right now. You're out and about in ATL, Georgia. What do we do for you? Exactly.

I mean, look, like I said, I'm on that crypt tonight, as everybody knows. So find me there. Yeah. Well well it's great to have you it does thank you so much for having me thank you so much sound like i got a little jet lag joe namath in there is it are you feeling a little lag no three hours is nothing you know um i can i could care less about my no you know i'm not no three hours isn't bad i'm not like that one doesn't throw me off at all three hours yeah because it's kind of like the difference between like being a scumbag or having your shit together it's like oh i just

kind of slept in late or or you come back and you're like yeah man i'm ready to go at fucking six in the morning yeah i'm not too mad at that i like that i like my inability to deal with time changes being having my shit together i appreciate that no i'm saying the way it expresses itself like like when you're up earlier it's not like I'm like, fuck. I'm all up at like a responsible morning person time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Which is good for me because I'm not a morning person.

Well, Miles, we're thrilled to be joined in our third seat by a very talented producer, musician, streamer, eSports commentator. One of the very first people to work on this show with us. Yeah. He's constantly streaming everything because he is that bitch on Twitch. He's our resident gaming expert. It's DJ Danil Goodman! DJ Danil aka East Coast

Danil coming in live. Beep beep, I'm walking here. It's the man from New York live in the mix That's Z100, Daniel How is it going? Z100 in the house That was incredible

That was good And several other New York related things Is Z100 New York? I forget, I've lived in some I had a Z93 In Dayton, Ohio, Shout out to Z93. That was the cool stage when I was like, you know,

12. But yeah, that brought me back, man. So you're embracing, look, people who don't know, look, Daniel is West Coastan. He was born and raised in LA and now he's living. He's relocated to the Big Apple. And now you're calling yourself... We shouldn't give away. Actually, we shouldn't give away his location like that. He's relocated to the Big Apple. We shouldn't give away

his location like that. That's fucked up. Yeah, yeah. He's in a big city in the East Coast. You're in the Lower East Side and you're on Houston, right? We're supposed to let our guests know

that we have a tracker on them. Yes, my bad. I'm sorry. The thing that caught my attention is you're identifying as East Coast Danil now, huh? It's just kind of a joke because now that I've moved to the East Coast, my friends have said I'm more salty and they call me East Coast Danil any time I push back even a little bit in the display room. Wow. Yeah.

Wow. Wow. Okay. Now that's East Coast Danil coming out. Yeah. All right. Salty ass. Yeah.

Sorry, I had to wear a jacket today.. Sorry, I had to wear a jacket today. All right. Tried to wear a jacket today. Yeah, exactly. My feet became Tim's. It's crazy. Quite literally. Foot is a Tim now.

It's an all black Air Force one. Facts. Oh, yeah. I'm really selling drugs out here with my all black forces. There you go. That's around the corner. Have you, I don't know if you saw, there's like, there's like this whole wave of like older people on social media who are discovering what the all like black on black air force one means.

There's like a teacher. I saw this like principal tick tock, which is like, yeah, my students are like complimenting my sneaker game. And then some people just started being like, Oh, you're trouble.

And she's like, I thought I just had a cool sneaker on. And then I found out this is a goon shoe. That's how it is a goon shoe. That's funny. I was associated with referees and priests. Right. Black on black sneaker. Wait, priests wear black on black sneakers?

They're not wearing the leather shoe? I mean, like sometimes, most often I'd say they wear the like. Etonic all black leather shoe. Medically designed all black. Yeah. Right. Got like nurse shoes or whatever, but I've definitely seen,

I, I remember growing up in the church thinking like, why do priests and referees shop at the same shoe store? How can we never, and how can we never see them together at the same time? Hey bro. I mean, my priest is, is God god's referee you know what i'm saying exactly i don't think i have to tell you this now that you're on the east coast but stay prayed up stay prayed up man stay up bro please all right bro i doubled over i doubled over in my chair

i'd stay prayed up that was stay prayed i mean that's like a week and a half old at this point. Yeah, that's fair. Rather than eat, pray, love, stay prayed up. Stay prayed up. Thank you. Wonderful. Dan, we're going to get to know you a little bit better in a moment. First, let's tell the listeners just like what you're here to talk about today.

I can say we've been having ai and tech experts on yeah and and you know in between all when we're like when is the new gta come out thank you thank you thank you say that fucking loser doctor why do you keep putting doctor in quotes whenever you say it because i didn't know yeah doctor when's the new gta come out then if you're so fucking smart hey sing the lyrics to the asap rocky song that's on the gta5 track soundtrack go go no okay but yeah you know in between doom and gloom conversations about like job loss and uh conversations asking hey you remember in terminator 2 when terminators like

come with me if you want to live remember that is that gonna happen we we asked one i think it was our first ai expert we asked him what made him hope hopeful you know what what's the good thing that ai could bring to the world right and he was like i'm a gamer and i think it's gonna make games sick make yeah and so i'm just kind of viewing that you you are plugged into the world of gaming yes i'm excited to talk to you about like where we're at in this moment you know ai hasn't fully plugged into the gaming world but it seems like there's a lot of cool shit on the horizon on its way so we're gonna talk about that we're going to get a gaming insider's point of view. But before we do any of that bullshit, Dan, we do like to ask our guest, what is something from your search history? Well, recently, my most recent one was IKEA, eKet, help Reddit.

Because let me tell you something. There's no better place to learn about the things you're doing wrong when you're building something on Ikea than to search the name of the device or thing, plus Help, plus Reddit. Because when you're building five of the same cabinet and you fuck up the first one, you're like, I have to see what I did wrong here and come back and try again.

I have to see what Reddit has to say. Did you do? Yeah. I mean, as someone who would do a lot of like promotional marketing and have to like buy cheap Ikea stuff for a display, I know this product well. It's a cabinet. Yes. Yes.

Yes. And the two-door cabinet with shelf. Yeah. Or the even more minimal one, which is like the one cube box that sometimes people would use for like a cool product display. What went wrong with, for me, I believe that is a simple assembly. But what exactly, what had occurred? It is a simple assembly. I will say the square, the small squares are shockingly simple.

They are. are shockingly simple they are but the thing about the two-door shelf one is that if you don't level those doors correctly if you don't level that shelf correctly before you put those doors in you're getting some doors that are like like yeah yeah some doors that are like that you look back and you're like doors that are what did we do wrong off kilter's wind i can't i can't see any doors the doors that are like you close it and one is just a little bit above the other and it's enough so that it's like i can't look at that all the time yeah they need to be level yeah and it's it's only when you go to reddit and search the actual instructions that someone tells you yeah you know how they tell you to do it in this order don't do it in that order don't put the little

things that hold things in place in in the middle only do that at the end when you're holding everything in place you have the doors level then slip in the little black clips that hold everything in place because otherwise you will have it in that level you won't have your doors set in yet and the whole thing could look fucked up and that's what happened so you know a little disappointing argument later we figured it out and then we basically built four cabinets in the time it took us to build the first cabinet okay and you and you and your lovely partner did survive an ikea we did we did for you we did for you uh because i know it was we and you know what we we

we're stronger for it yep damn but it was pouring down love to hear face love to hear that that's for you guys were you able to unbuild and reassemble the one that didn't because I've had some issues with Ikea stuff where it's like well we're fucked now the wooden pin or the little wooden nub that held us in place

is irrevocably fucked I can't get that out we're done. This is just how we live now. Thankfully with a little flat iron or a flat iron screwdriver. What was it called? Flathead. Flathead. Thank you. Flatiron is

wow. So New York pilled. So fucking New York dog. Fucking New York pilled over here. Flathead screwdriver. I was able to pull out some of those black pins and able to kind of recenter the whole thing and then slip them back in. So it was no big deal. It just took a little bit of editing and a little bit of come on. What's that one? What's that one? The Statue of Liberty head screwdriver. Phillips Phillips Phillips. Sorry, I thought it was the Statue of Liberty because I'm from New York here. You got me. I'm screwing it.

Yankees head screwdriver. Yankees head, exactly. I'm more of a Mets head screwdriver. Hey, you're living in the Alboros or something. Anyways, this is wildly offensive to anybody from New York. I would get beat up instantly on these streets. I'm surprised I haven't already. Hey, it's the flateron screwdriver guy

very good man you're gonna park your car somewhere and turn around and then when you come back it's just gonna be on bricks yeah and oh yeah that's classic car they're gonna they're classic they're gonna break down your zip car, man. What's something you think is overrated? Overrated? Fancy chili crisp. I've been seeing a lot of these as I'm doing my shopping. I've been seeing a lot of Fly By Jing. I've been seeing a lot of these other chili crisp companies that are charging like $15 for a tiny little bottle of chili crisp.

And I'm like, please scoot over. Lao Gan Ma only, please. Getting a big old jar for the fridge because as you know being a new york guy now we had to rebuild an entire pantry and one of the most crucial items in my pantry is of course the laoganma chili crisp if it ain't got yo if it ain't got that face on it bro you know i'm saying we're gonna do it we'll do a big face chili crisp jars out here big faces only yeah but it was just one of those things where it's like you go to the store and you see like six different kinds that are all four times as much as a smaller or as like the same size bottle of Lao Gan Ma. Like why?

Why even do this? Why even try and sell this product that is so like far inferior to the OG OG Lao Gan Ma. So shout out Lao Gan Ma. This is more like it's not the thing is but here's the thing it's like it's almost an underrated but it's not because lao gan ma is i think perfectly rated it's that all of this other shit is completely overrated yeah it's just one of those things too where it's like if you're used to buying chili crisp or cooking with it and then like this because i know like the person i think is is from like chengdu or our families from chengdu who does fly by jing where you're kind of like but there is

already a version of that and i get the marketing's better for this but sure okay but that's how so many things are yeah welcome to the new world man amen amen god the logo is like, you know, it's great. Like the woman is just looking without any... Completely deadpan. Joy. Yeah, dead-eyed. Yeah. Like just couldn't care less for me as I look at this.

You know, just like... It's like, why are you interrupting me? I'm making chili crisp. It's like you needed to take a picture for the logo. It's so authentically like just something that could not have possibly been created in the united states right no you know exactly well because you need sort of like this happens like i feel like with my old older asian relatives they don't know how to pose for a picture like pose for one you know i mean they'll

be in a fucking picture but they don't know they don't pose like i feel like every time i take like pictures of my aunts and uncles they're just like and we're looking at the camera and it's over but there's no like cheese like let me do like a fucking right pose or something like that yeah and this one just truly has when you're looking off camera too like like she is on the jar it's like a thousand yards stared no smile like not a not a face that is not currently smiling a face that has not smiled in maybe decades yeah the furrowed brow is like sorry i got my eye on a batch i'm cooking up right now are we done here yeah thank you i need to get cooking there's also there's a european maybe it's, I don't know exactly.

I saw it a lot in Italy, but a European beer brand that I drank a lot when I was young and in Italy. And the guy on the logo appears to be weeping into his beer. He looks so sad. Oh, Moretti? Yeah, Moretti. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. What, he's got a mug like this? Yeah, yeah. He just couldn't look

any sadder but in america like you look at the quaker oats guy and yeah he like he's just like he looks so pleased to see you and it's just like yeah that was probably you know it went through a huge round of design and focus group testing like we make his smile a little bit more serene a little bit more like just letting you know everything's going to be all right and that death doesn't come for us all we just let him and that's what i get from the quaker arts guys like what if we what if we got somebody whose smile was so serene that even though he looks like the poltergeist guy, he kind of erases your memory of the poltergeist guy. And he just gives you happy memories of the poltergeist guy. Amazing.

All right. What's something you think is underrated? This one was easy. Buffalo chicken dip. Now, I know some of you are thinking, I think it's perfectly rated. I think people really like it. And I'm like, I agree with you. However, I see it at far too few Super Bowl parties, at far too few Fourth of Julys, at far too few events where buffalo chicken dip would be a perfect thing to have on your appetizer table. plate dip it yourself you can take a chip straight to the le crusier or whatever kind of pot you have it in literally just like you need to be having buffalo chicken dip at so many of these different

occasions because it is a 100 hit rate dip it combines buffalo chicken taste wings that you know are i think one of the most favorable finger foods there are. It's dip. Chicken wings yesterday. I'd love to hear that. Okay, more on that in a second. It's a dip, so it's so easily accessible, something you can eat as much of or as little of as you want. Just want a little bit of buffalo chicken dip? Take one chip to it and boom, you've had your taste and it's good. It also only has four ingredients, and that right there is enough to make it one of the best dips you can possibly have it is so easy to make it takes 10 minutes

you can get everything at literally any grocery store yeah and it's goaded buffalo chicken dip underrated it should be at every party wow my one complaint with uh buffy chicky dip is it, when it gets cold, it gets, it gets, uh, pretty solid. It makes it hard for my chips. You,

you gotta, it's one of those things that you may have to throw back in the oven. I've done that before where I've, where I've made a big old thing, a buff chick dip. We've gotten halfway through. It's gotten halftime of the Superbowl. We're watching Rihanna and we're like,

I think we need to throw this back in the oven while we're watching Rihanna. We take it out for the third quarter and people are like, revitalize. You're absolutely right. You're 100% right. It gets thick quick. That's the only thing that's the only knock against it. There are times you pull up and you're like, oh, there's buffalo

chicken dip and then you break your fingers. You try to dip something in it and you're like, what the fuck? That's why you should have came when it came out man that's fair it takes management but you know what i think you could say something similar about most hot dips hot dips in general have that quality where it's like it is their melting quality that makes them good and once they get to that solid or that like room temp you're like this this spinach artichoke dude needs to go back a little. It needs to go back a little bit or something like that. Yeah.

It is kind of the quicker, thicker, chipper, chicker dipper. Mm-hmm. Nope. TM. Sorry, I was working that out over here on my math sheet, my scrap paper. I did say four ingredients, though. I'm just going to share them with anybody who's hearing this

and doesn't want to go look it up for themselves or find some overcomplicated chicken dip that's going to tell you to do too much. Yeah. One whole rotisserie chicken, two packets of cream cheese, the regular kind, or whatever kind you want. You can go less fat if you want to. You said packets? Yeah. Like, you know, when you get like one of those, you know, like a square.

Like a rectangular brick. Two bricks. Like a rectangular brick. Bro. Yeah. Hey, use the real fucking language, bro. Two bricks. The Philly. The Philly brick, bro. Two Philly bricks. Two a rectangular brick. Bro. Yeah. Hey, use the real fucking language, bro. Two bricks. The Philly brick, bro.

Two Philly bricks. Two Philly bricks. Two Philly bricks. Two Philly brick cheese. One cup of Frank's Red Hot. One cup of ranch. Your choice. No.

Mix it all together. No? Can't do Frank's Red Hot. Sorry. Okay. Well, okay. Then any kind of specifically vinegar-based

hot sauce. If you want to go Louisiana or Red Rooster or anything like that. Crystal. Crystal. Crystal. Crystal. Crystal. Crystal. Crystal. Totally works as well. That's fine. Sorry. I just had to go Louisiana or Red Rooster or anything like that, also Crystal totally works as well. That's fine. Sorry, I just had to add that.

Am I anti-Frank? It's important. No, I appreciate that. It's important. Blue cheese crumbles. And the blue cheese crumbles are strictly to sprinkle throughout. So you take the rotisserie chicken, strip it down, throw it in there. Then you throw in the cream cheese. Make sure it's room temp so it's easier to spread. Then you throw in the ranch and

the hot sauce. Really mix that up. And then when you're plating it, do a bottom layer, buffalo cheese crumble, or buffalo, sorry, blue cheese crumbles. Another layer, blue cheese crumbles. Another layer, blue cheese crumbles. And if you want to top it off with some other shredded cheddar or some other mix, go off. I don't think it needs it,

but that's your buffalo chicken dip. Throw it in the oven 20 minutes at 400. You're good. And you are going to want to carry those bricks of Philly in a briefcase. In a briefcase. And exchange those for Kerrygold butter pets.

There you go. Like that, which we have discussed is a fair currency. Yeah. The currency of this podcast. And also, yeah, when you buy the bricks at the store,

if they're not saran wrapped in Vaseline, that's not the right kind, bro. You're going to have to cut those with a little pocket knife and take your finger in there. Exactly. And then go, no, it's been stepped on like a fucking tap dancing stage, bro. All right. Let's, uh, by the way, I was hoping this would be our dumbest expert episode and i think we're i think we're well on track we're we're in a good place to make this possible

all right let's uh let's see not that you're our dumbest expert but i probably am let's be real the one where we indulge our zanier sides, where we're not caught in between having serious conversations with academics or high-minded people who barely know us. And we thread the needle of like, okay, don't put them off so much that they're like, that was a waste of my time. T-1000 or the Arnold. Who you got? There you go. Yeah. Who you got?

Hey, doctor, who you got? Are we going to talk about my Nobel Prize winning work? Yeah, yeah, in a second. In a second. And that's why I want to ask you, who you got? You think when she was holding onto that chain link fence when the blast hits, that she could still be holding onto the gate and be like, and then the flesh is coming off her bones?

I think she'd just blow right off the fence, right, doctor? Or is it a Crypt Keeper situation? I mean, I'm giving Crypt Keeper vibes. What do we got? That shit turns her into a Crypt Keeper right fast. Love it. All right, let's take a quick break, and we'll be right back. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult.

And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high-control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed

will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again. Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden.

We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career, you have a lot of questions, like how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes.

Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do, like resume specialist Morgan Saner. The only difference between the person who doesn't get the job and the person who gets the job is usually who applies. Yeah, I think a lot about that quote. What is it? Like you miss a hundred percent of the shots you never take. Yeah. Rejection is scary, but it's better than you rejecting yourself. Together, we'll share what it really takes to thrive in the early years of your career without sacrificing your sanity or sleep. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports, where we live at the intersection of sports and culture. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game.

Every great player needs a foil. I ain't really near them. Why is that? Just come here and play basketball every single day, and that's what I focus on. From college to the pros, Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Angel Reese is a joy to watch.

She is unapologetically black. I love her. What exactly ignited this fire? Why has it been so good for the game? And can the fanfare surrounding these two supernovas be sustained? This game is only going to get better because the talent is getting better. This new season will cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network,

iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. And we're back. And yeah, so I don't know. I have this like two ways of thinking of AI and like technological progress in general. On the one hand, when it's like coming from a corporate overlord

and they're like, it's going to make humans irrelevant. It's going to make everything so fast and easy. It kind of becomes nightmarish and reductive. But when I hear, first of all, when I just hear anybody talking about actually working with AI, the thing that gets them

excited is like i get to play with this thing like it's fun to play with and then yeah like as we were saying before when our ai experts came on they're like they're gonna be like ai is gonna make video games more fun to play like it's you're going to have a toy that can like kind of be your own little playmate that gets better and more fun to play with but just generally i guess before we get into the future of gaming i was curious if you could give us just like a snapshot overview where we at right now 30 seconds go no i'm just joking but well i appreciate please tell jack where he is he's confused yeah where are we at mexico or egypt i'm not quite sure somewhere okay mr president that is where half the games are set right now so you know when you send me the prompt for this episode

it did send me on a interesting path of kind of exploring where ai was in video games and i thought it was important to kind of set up, like you were asking for, where video games are now and actually what the last four or five years of video games have been to get to the point where we are now. Because the short answer to your question is, we are actually on the cusp of AI

really taking a place in video games. We are seeing it ever so slightly in something we're going to talk about later, a very popular game right now called Pal World. And I'm sure that there are some listeners who are saying, oh, I know something we're going to talk about later, a very popular game right now called Pal World. And I'm sure that there are some listeners who are saying, oh, I know what this is going to be about. And some of you are saying, I have no idea what you're talking about. And also the open world Pal Gasol game where you can make different versions of Pal Gasol. Pal Gasol.

Pal Gasol. Pal World. Yeah, yeah. No, I'm familiar. I've been saying they needed to invent this for a long yeah and then you're raising kobe's daughters as your own jesus christ okay anyway no i mean there's there's so much never mind people who don't know what i'm talking about okay anyway i just want to talk about how video games used to be

what what video games were like for me growing up and for most people growing up. Video games were $60, $50 to $60 for one video game. What you played really depended on what your friends were playing. I bought a console because all my friends were playing X. I bought my first console because a lot of my friends were playing Mario and Zelda. And then a bunch of my friends were playing Final Fantasy, but I missed out on that because I didn't have a PlayStation. I had an N64. Then I got a PlayStation 2 because a lot

of my friends were playing Devil May Cry and games like that. But because of that, I missed out on Super Smash Bros. Melee because I didn't have a GameCube. This story is kind of tale as old as time because, you know, I think most kids probably grew up in a one console at a time household. To those who had multiple consoles, you know, props to you. I'm happy to hear that. Most of us were at one thing at a time. You had so many friends, but they didn't really like you.

They were all at your house and they didn't really like you. Exactly. Another thing that was a big part of the origins of multiplayer video gaming was very limited internet connectivity. It wasn't until the OG Halo 2, one of the very first console games to offer online connectivity and multiplayer, that people were really starting to play with each other outside of their couches and outside of their houses. And that's kind of how gaming used to be. Gaming was very much playing on your couch with your friends. It was I have this console, that's all I can play. I got this because all my friends are playing this. It was very limited. It was not very it wasn't a super democratized place because it was so focused on what you had or what your friends

had. And like, you know, I don't want to say peer pressured, but you wanted to play with your buds. So you kind of had to adhere to what was the thing at the time. And that's what gaming really used to be. And over the last couple of years of gaming, we have seen an incredible shift in that dynamic. We have seen a huge push for things being cross-platform, things being on not just Xbox and PlayStation, but also on mobile phones, on Switch, on PC, being able to play with anybody anywhere, thanks to games like Fortnite or even PUBG to a certain extent. We also saw the rise in esports, people being able to participate in the culture of video games without actually having to play them, being able to watch people. And esports even goes into like Twitch streaming and stuff like that. The culture

of video games being something that you can participate in, even if you don't have that console, even if you don't have time to play that game, you can still participate because you have access to what that game looks like, what it feels like, because you're watching pros or you're watching somebody do a Let's Play. We've also seen different genres of video games create a world that works for pretty much everybody. And what I mean by that is there are people that look at video games as strictly things like Call of Duty or Madden. It's like your simulation, shooting, or sports video game experience. But in the last couple of years, we've seen games like The Last of Us. We've seen games like Baldur's Gate 3. We've seen games like Death Stranding.

These single-player experience games that offer some of the most rich storytelling, some of the most avant-garde art ever seen in video games, and some of the most deep kind of character creative experiences allowing hundreds of different permutations of experiences such that your experience playing the same game could be completely different to somebody else's. You're seeing the world of video games open up doors for anybody who wants to get into them in any capacity. It's not just about what your friends have anymore. It's about how you want to experience this new storytelling art form in any capacity you want to. And those are what the last couple of years have really, really opened up for video games.

Another thing that has opened up is the ability to create video games. Another thing that has opened up is the ability to create video games. Another thing that you asked me about, and you know, a little sport, not spoiler, like a little behind the curtain for everybody here, Jack had a bunch of questions that were put into the doc that we have for this episode. And they were awesome, awesome questions. And I do want to get to all of them. But I want to thank you so much. I wanted to lay this groundwork for like where video games have been and where they are now, because that is kind of crucial to understanding why certain things are important or why certain games become important and why they enter the zeitgeist. So what I want to start with first is the genre of the battle royale.

In 2017, a game called Player Unknown's Battlegrounds came out. It was a modified version of Arma 3 by this dude who went by Player Unknown's Battlegrounds came out. It was a modified version of Arma 3 by this dude who went by Player Unknown. I can't remember his real name right now. I could look it up later. I'm not going to. It's not important because his title as Player Unknown is really what's important. The battle royale genre is a game where 100 people drop into an open world at the same time, pick up weapons off the ground and shoot each other till there's one last person standing. When you're that last person standing, winner, winner, chicken dinner. And the reason that game is so important is because it brought us the Fortnite that we know today. Fortnite is just basically that, right? Fortnite is just basically that. But the reason

that Fortnite is so important to this equation is because not only did Fortnite see what was going on with that, Fortnite was part of the reason that was even able to happen. Fortnite is made by the company Epic Games. Epic Games created what's called the Unreal Engine. And the Unreal Engine is how a lot of video games are made. PUBG was made on the Unreal 4 engine. We are now currently on the Unreal 5 engine. And so Epic Games was making money off of every battle royale that was made on Unreal 4.

Basically, it was making money off of PUBG, being like, damn, there's a lot of money coming off this shit. We have to completely transform. PUBG is PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds. PlayerUnknown's Battlegrounds, thank you. Yeah, sorry about that. Okay.

We have to change what we're doing and make fortnight that fortnight originally and its open beta was not that at all it was still this whole building game but it was kind of like a build yourself a big tower to survive waves and waves of these like pixar like looking zombies who are going to attack your base that was the original game it was called save the world then they made the battle right and truly the rest is history. It is kind of, I mean, like a little Minecraft-y, kind of like a tower defense, Minecraft kind of thing.

And the building was just super unique. But that genre unlocks something for a lot of people. Because what that said was, there's shooting, there's building, why are we not mixing genres more often? Why are we not mixing genres more often?

Why are we not taking these kinds of games that exist already and just kind of combining them? Why aren't we like putting two things together to make this kind of new genre of game? Because it doesn't necessarily have to be print and super pretty. It honestly doesn't even need to run well. It's if the concept itself is unique, that's going to make

people want to play it and then the money is going to come in from that and then we can just keep going and that's like a big part of where games are going today in general like mashing up genres mashing up genres all right like taking advantage of new technology like greater connectivity exactly exactly because so everything i got from no. Everything I see from Unreal Engine 5 is frightening. It's nuts. It's nuts how it's such a huge step in how

ray tracing and the mechanics of how lighting is perceived in games and stuff like that. I didn't realize that that was sort of the inroad for them to be like, oh man, look at what they're doing with the tools that we've created. Let's just iterate on this. And so that's because for me, I'm mostly like a tentpole, triple A, sort of, I'm an old head.

You know, like I come from the era of like Nintendo Power and a magazine was like, these are the three games that come out this year. Like, yes, versus now. And I always hit you up too, because I'm so off. Like, I'm not like, I just don't pay attention to indie games or other titles or things that, because in my mind, I'm like free means it's bad. Right. Rather than free means it's also ubiquitous and it's now has the largest user base and they have other ways to make money. But yeah, I have many sort of points

of ignorance when it comes to sort of like understanding like like where this is headed so now because of that it sort of normalized this idea of like well let's take all the elements we know of games and we start making games like this versus like i drew this character during an acid trip and i think this could be like the whole franchise. Yeah. Yeah, exactly. I mean, one of the AI innovations that feels like it makes the most sense to me, I guess, is that it might affect people's ability to like code quickly, write code quickly. That's something that you hear people who can write code talk about. But I guess like which would make it more possible, like easier for somebody with a vision to like build a game. Right. Without the backing of like these AAA companies. Totally.

But yeah, so I'm always intrigued by just hearing about like indie games that are doing cool, like intriguing new things about like what it means to play games. Yeah. But are there, you know, what are some of the games, some of the mashups that you've seen recently that you see on the horizon that are changing video games from a medium where you control a little fucker who runs around on an imaginary world and picks up coins?

Exactly. That's the only one that i know exactly i'm a bit of an old head myself i love it so there's you know i want to say that while there are a lot of these games that are you know true mashups i think it's also important to highlight the games that are still revolutionizing these in just like mainstay genres, single player RPG games, which feels like ground we have tread so much over and over and over. Alan Wake 2, Star Wars Jedi Survivor, a sequel to Star Wars, the last Jedi Fallen Order, one of the best Star Wars games yet. It's like we're still and even Spider-Man 2, the Spider-Man 2018 game and then Spider-Man 2 that came out this year. We're taking this genre of single player game and just keep on refining it and making better and better games, taking ground that feels like it's already so tread, and then still making something absolutely incredible. And by the way, all those games I just listed

were just from last year. 2023 was such an absolutely mind-blowing year for video games. So you said like Baldur's Gate 3, maybe the best RPG of all time in your notes here. What makes it that? What are you

finding yourself doing in that game like what's mind-blowing about it so balder's gate 3 is basically a video game version of dungeons dragons it plays entirely on the dungeons and dragons fifth edition the fifth like extended edition rule set and so what feels like this kind of very like you know rule base sitting with your friends looking through books kind of game experience has been turned into this super deep world with a seemingly infinite number of possibilities when you're playing you create your own character you're choosing from a bunch of different races and abilities and and like you know classes and all this stuff and you are creating your own experience by how you interact with the world around you all based

within the rule set of dungeons and dragons and a lot of people will hear dungeon and dragons be like i'm not about that shit too complicated there's a way that this game offers you so many controls and makes a super super complex multi-book rule set into something that is much easier to kind of control and understand. And that challenge in itself was such an undertaking that Baldur's Gate 3 hit so well that it has just completely taken over the RPG. And by the way, RPG is short for role-playing game. So you're picking your role and playing through it in this world. Baldur's Gate is a three act game, you're playing in three different like places in the game, it's multiple places, but you're going through three acts as a three act story.

And as you play through it, you make choices that completely affect your entire playthrough. And everybody's experience is different depending on what choices you make or where you go. And it's not the kind of thing where it's like, I chose one of three paths. It's anybody who I've talked to who's played the game has played it a different way

with a different outcome. I'm talking hundreds of different ways. Are you playing with people like just other people? Sure. Yeah. Okay. So you can play as a team of four

or, and this is the big thing, you can play by can play as a team of four or and this is the big thing you can play by yourself offline you don't even need to be online and that's something that just feels like it doesn't exist anymore in gaming this kind of like truly single player offline experience when so many other games like require you to be online you can play couch co-op you can play with somebody right next to you like you can just play it together or play it completely by yourself and have this unique experience and play around with these pre-made characters that have their own storylines that you can even romance. You can be like, you know,

one of them is a cleric who can turn into a bear and you can have sex with the bear. You can have sex with the bear. A druid, not a cleric. You can have sex with the bear. You can have sex with the bear. You can have sex with the bear.

I mean, come on. That is on the front of the game. That is with the bear. You can have sex with the bear. You can have sex with the bear. There. You know, I mean. I mean, come on. That is on the front of the game. That is on the front. Anyway. You can have sex with the bear. You can have sex with the bear. You can have sex with the bear. But back to the question you were asking about these new types of games.

You're also seeing these indie games. You're also seeing like different types of games getting a new life to them. I'm sure you guys have heard of games like Pokemon or Magic the Gathering. I'm talking card games. There you go. Leave him behind. You got a deck of cards. Each card is either like, you know, it gives

you the power to do something. Explain mana to him. Explain mana to him. Exactly. Anyway, the point is, card games have existed in video games as well you've had like hearthstone even the magic the gathering has an online game but now you have a new version

called marvel snap that you play on your phone and it's a new take on the card battler you even have a game made by riot games who makes league of legends it's called team fight tactics and it almost plays like a card game that also plays like chess some people call it auto chess and like you may remember from star wars a new hope when chewy and obi-wan kenobi are playing that like chess game where like on the round board the holographic things that is this game but imagine that you have like cards with abilities and you're placing your little tokens on a board and depending on where they're placed you just watch them battle it out it's an auto chess style game completely new never existed before like four years ago

just a completely different style of game you have these indie games like this new one that just came out called lethal company where it's honestly just a a spooky game where you walk around these completely barren lands picking up ingredients to go sell them but there's no map all your communication is through your in-game microphone you're weird spaceman and you could be attacked by aliens at any moment that game is not a genre that exists it's not like oh yes of course just like this other game or whatever it's these kind of just like like concept games that people have the ability to make because there's so much because they're smaller, because they don't take as much work. Another example is this other game, Phasmophobia,

which is a ghost hunting game. You walk into a building with a walkie-talkie and you're like, hello, are you here? And depending on if the ghost hears you, it might respond to you. You can take a picture. Because I ain't afraid of no ghost. Also, it doesn't interest us and that's why we were going to ask

you to stop talking about it because it doesn't scare us and it's why we were gonna ask you to stop talking about it because it doesn't scare us and it doesn't even make us like interested we're just like what's that game what's that game so i can not remember it ever yeah exactly can i ask you a serious question though daniel yes good good ghost okay so like there's this scene in terminator 2 where arnold schwarzeneg, he's trying to figure out what's going on and whether or not Edward Furlong's family is okay. And he asks him what his dog's name is and he goes, hey Janelle, what's wrong with Wolfie? And then she's like, Wolfie's just fine. And he goes, your foster parents are dead. Is that kind of like gaming inside

the Terminator's brain? Is that the kind of AI stuff we can think of? Thank you for asking the question. And this is why we're good because like that's the question that every listener was actually thinking right then how did he figure that out hey go what's your day he goes he goes he goes what's your dog's name and goes how what's wrong with the white fucking straight up gang theory that shit games him right there gamed him right there um the dog's name he just asked him what it was and then he said a different name? Said a different name, but he knew. Are there any, so right now with AI, though,

now back to the non-serious stuff. Like, is AI, A, being used to speed along the development games, or we're not quite there yet? Or are people just using, are they cutting corners with AI? Because I'm still like, because I know in the episode that jack's talking about with dr joel sadoc he was talking about how like the capability like it could make npcs much richer like a much more rich environment when you have non-playable characters have like these kinds of you know chat bot levels of intellect or whatever intelligence whatever you want to call it right But like... Who tricked New York Times author columnists

into thinking that they want to fuck him. Yeah. Hot. Oh my God. But like, what... This AI wanted me to leave my wife. Like, how much AI is being used to either develop games,

like to speed things along, or to integrate that with like actual characters involved, or how much is just using AI to just rip other stuff off and then be like, here's a game. It's AI ripoff. A really contemporary example of exactly what you're talking about, unfortunately, in the cutting corners,

ripping stuff up department, is this game, PAL World. Yeah. PAL. PAL, not P-A-L-U. P-A-L-W-O-R-L-D. Okay, my mistake. PAL World is a new game for Xbox and PC

developed by a company called Pocket Pair, whose last game was called Craftopia. And PAL World is more or less an open world crafting survival Pokemon game. And you open up this game, you press play, and you wake up on a beach surrounded by three Pokemon that...

I'll just say this. If you were somebody who played the first Pokemon and you're like, well, I know the first 150 Pokemon pretty well. I know what they all look like, but I haven't played in years. And there's literally been hundreds of Pokemon since then. There's no way that you could tell the difference between the creatures, the pals in this game, and Pokemon of today. So it's not real Pokemon.. So it's not real Pokemon. No, it's not real Pokemon. No, they did not at all.

In fact, the CEO of Power World's developer, Pocket Pair, he's huge into AI generation. He had a whole series of tweets about how, you know, honestly, using GPT-4 will make game development so much faster. Here, here's a list of Pokemon that I just developed by, you know, talking to GPT and having it you know generate all these images and this is really well documented online of him just talking about how great this generation quality is and it's raising and here's the thing it's raising a ton of suspicion because it's like the ceo of the game

company is like look how easy this is to do and then they release a game that is a survival crafting game which is very popular right now and i can talk about that in a sec but these pokemon characters they just these pals rather they just don't look that different from pokemon dude they're so have you seen that one rdc world sketch no you know okay you know rdc you know rdc world it's like those black sketch comedians that like they'll usually do stuff that'll wrap up like an nba season they'll be like inside the sixers locker room and like they just do kind of character but anyway they had one about pow world and it was like a sketch where the dude was playing the lawyer for them oh he's like dude what he's like

look he's like bro these are pokemon what are you doing literally these are not even this is not and it yeah it seems so blatant i'm like how can you even like i guess like to to someone like i'm familiar with pokemon i didn't play it but i know the characters and i know the style very well so when i see it i'm like how can this stand yeah it's it's the kind of thing where i think it's it's it's one of those things where you see it a lot in movies a little bit. You see it in TV a little bit where there are these concepts that are very, very popular. I know there's times where we've seen two movies that are very similar come out around the same time. It was that movie that was like Ashton Kutcher and Mila Kunis. Friends with Benefits and No Strings Attached.

Bam. Thank you. Two movies that are basically the exact same. The Illusionist and The Prestige. Boom. Exactly. Deep Impact Armageddon. friends with benefits and no strings attached bam thank you two movies that are the illusionist and the prestige boom exactly you're seeing this impact armageddon boom thank you very much classic mac and me boom boom there we go these kinds of details that we're more comfortable thinking about movies than video games yes yes i would keep doing this for 45 minutes i knew i made the right example. Your foster parents are dead. Boom.

This is what's happening with video games right now. This is what happens where there's a concept that comes out. Right now, it's called survival crafting. You had a game like Valheim. It doesn't mean anything, but it's Viking crafting survival. You have V Rising, which is Dracula crafting survival. You had Fortnite, which made their own as a collab with Lego. is dracula crafting survival you had fortnight which made their own as a collab with lego that's lego crafting survival pal world is pokemon crafting

survival another one is enshrouded which is like witches and wizards crafting survival they're all the exact same game that are trying to drill down into what do people really want to play that's some variation of the style of game is minecraft the original crafting survival yes it is minecraft is the og og og minecraft because that was like a thing that like that minecraft took me a little while to get my head around because i'm like wait why are people building though like that's that's not the point of the video game we play something someone else built why Why they build this. Why they build.

But then I thought about that level of an Excitebike where you can build your own Excitebike course. Come on. And then I was like, let's go. There you go. Excitebike course is the OG Minecraft. Thank you. And that's why I started with PUBG in 2017.

Because that was when games were really starting, not easy to make, but there was so much more efficiency in making games that Fortnite was able to be like, oh, this is the thing we need to do. So it's not just Battle Royale, it's Battle Royale with building.

Then Apex Legends was Battle Royale, but it's 3v3 and the maps are hyper-realistic and we're also adding these abilities. And you just had this series and series of Battle Royale games after Battle royale games there was a battle royale game with magic battle royale game with like those top down battle royale was another one of these genres that everybody was trying to tackle and it just this is what video game development is right

now you see people taking a genre that is very popular and just drilling, drilling down. I think I use the word plaguing the video game space with the exact kind of game over and over again until players get tired of it. And then like a year later, the perfect version comes out. It's like, oh, OK, well, that's what we should play. Right. It's almost like it's like the same way we've seen like online sketch comedy and stuff evolve to where I like especially tick tock. Like I just think back like let me just go back about 13 years it's 2011 and we had we had some shit called shit blank people say they use a comedy you know what i mean yeah and it was first like shit black guys say or shit la people say and then it basically turns like oh shit we have a format

now we can adapt to whatever the fuck we're really into and now i feel like that's what's like to your point about these survivor builder games too it's like the shit pokemon people this is a survivor builder but like precisely which totally makes sense because now our you know we have the ability for our tastes to be so specific and because of the ease of development developers are also able to kind of meet people where they're at they're like oh okay i see what y'all want. How about that? I can cook something up. It might not be the finished thing, but it's all building towards this sort of style or I don't know, just the way the ideation has changed.

And I think that's probably because like with comedy before the internet, it was more like, well, what are the people in these five shows think comedy is? And that was informing comedy versus the internet being like, nah, man, everybody can get in now and we can now find audiences for every kind. So I see a lot of parallels with that. Yeah. Let's take a quick break. We'll be right back. I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed. Together,

we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and LA-based Shekinah Church, an alleged cult that has impacted members for over two decades. Jessica and I will delve into the hidden truths between high control groups and interview dancers, church members, and others whose lives and careers have been impacted, just like mine. Through powerful, in-depth interviews with former members and new, chilling firsthand accounts, the series will illuminate untold and extremely necessary perspectives. Forgive Me For I Have Followed will be more than an exploration. It's a vital revelation aimed at ensuring these types of abuses never happen again.

Listen to Forgive Me For I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradente. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline, a new podcast from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. When you're just starting out in your career,

you have a lot of questions, like how do I speak up when I'm feeling overwhelmed? Or can I negotiate a higher salary if this is my first real job? Girl, yes. Each week, we answer your unfiltered work questions. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in experts who do,

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Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is season four of Naked Sports, where we live at the intersection of sports and culture. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry, Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese. I know I'll go down in history. People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Every great player needs a foil. I ain't really near them boys. I just come here to play basketball every single day, and that's what I focus on. From college to the pros, Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Angel Reese is a joy to watch. She is unapologetically

black. I love her. What exactly ignited this fire? Why has it been so good for the game? And can the fanfare surrounding these two supernovas be sustained? This game is only going to get better because the talent is getting better. This new season will cover all things sports and culture. Listen to Naked Sports on the Black Effect Podcast Network, iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts.

The Black Effect Podcast Network is sponsored by Diet Coke. And we're back. Yeah, I think that's a really good point, Miles, about the democratization of all these different forms of media. I feel like with movies, we've seen there was a lot of excitement around, like, oh man there's like all these sketch groups online and like that you know you're discovering new talent that way

and that but i feel like that's like kind of gone away a little bit but with gaming i feel like i could see that just theoretically not not knowing much about the industry at all, but like, that's what is exciting to me is that like, as coding becomes more and more, you know, boosted by AI, like it, it feels like it's going to be easier and easier for people to like everybody to like come up with a,

an idea, like an iteration on an existing game and just like make it happen as opposed to with movies. I feel like it's still still need like good performances right you still need like these things that are hard to get and like usually you need a lot of money so like gaming is still this like writing based idea based thing that I could see in the near future just becoming more democratic than any of the other major forms of media.

I want to highlight one other thing about the gaming space right now that I think is really fun and is what adds to what I started with about how it is so open to any kind of experience you want to have. There's lots of games

that are developed these days that are developed by one person just because they're super excited about this one prospect. A very famous example is a game called Stardew Valley. Stardew Valley is developed by one person.

I wrote down this person's name, Eric Concerned Ape Barone. Now, Eric made this one game himself as a farming simulator, but it's also slightly a relationship simulator. Jack, don't laugh because he's Italian. Eric was laughing at his pronunciation.

Yeah, Barone. Concerned Ape. Concerned Ape. Wait, why is he Concerned Ape? That's just his username, Concerned Ape. It's kind of like PlayerUnknown's. I just can't remember PlayerUnknown's name. It wasn't like an NFT play.

There you go, exactly. Stardew Valley, a game developed by one person, as of 2022, has sold 20 million copies. It's a game that struck a nerve with people who wanted to make a farming simulator type game. And it's just one person who's doing something they love at a time when a genre wasn't exactly like... That is not a game that was

a drilled down version of a genre that was super super popular at the moment that was just something that struck people really strongly another genre of game or another developer who made a game that again was not something that people something people were looking for is a guy named bennett fadi but he's made a web game you may have heard of called QWOP. The running one? The running one. He developed the running game where all you have is QWOP to control the knees and

legs of a runner, and your point is to do a 100-meter dash. And it is so poorly controlled, it is so punishingly slow and stupid that people love doing it because it's just so hard to do. He made another game called Getting Over It, where you are a naked person sitting in a black kettle with a hammer. And your whole goal is to climb up a mountain by using your hammer to propel yourself up the mountain. And the entire time,

Bennett Foddy is narrating why you shouldn't be doing this, and why it's frustrating, and how punishing the whole process is. Where does that fit on the scale of these video games? How is that a battle royale like Fortnite? How is that like a farming simulator like Stardew Valley? It's not. This is a guy who has a passion for making these unique experiences, the ability to do so just by being a coder and with these gaming tools. I think he made it in Unity, which is another engine similar to the Unreal Engine. And he's decided to make this game that has now sold millions of copies. It another one sounds like he also profoundly hates humankind you might say that like a larry david style outlook on yes humanity yes thank you what's wrong with you fuck you exactly you got something better everybody should play it dude wow i i miss looking like jordan belford belfort on quaaludes trying to run on that thing my man yeah it's just one of these things where it's like you know the world of video games almost feels you know less like tv and movies and almost like the world of music where the tools to create it have become

so easy to access that like while you have people who are making who are trying to be the next taylor swift or trying to be the next dead mouse or trying to be the next kendrick lamar you have people who are also just like i made this weird song and all of a sudden that sound pops all that you have people who are 100 gex comparatively or you have people who are just doing something that is complete who is so different and completely off the wall you're sophies of the world you're like you're you know i don't know there's another like very peculiar or like a unique artist right now you get what i mean my point is is that like the tools are so easy to access and democratize john mayer there you go people who are good originally was a version of that right yeah yeah but people who are taking these tools to make

something that is unique to them that is not necessarily being asked for at the time but finding the right audience for it such that it becomes super popular even if at the time it's like what is this even for video games offer that lane and that is something that makes me really excited about the future of video games we just keep getting more stuff like that because the tools are so easy to access right because it's almost like so like when someone makes a game it's like because i know music production and video production pretty well it's like because i remember if you wanted to make music like it's like did you have these old school production keyboards that had half the sounds that you wanted that you were hearing on the thing

yeah exactly do you have that core you got a triton you know yeah you have all that right exactly and then but now you have more like uh effects packs that come out like you know sample like whatever vsts that give you certain keyboard sounds that you didn't have before is that how people are kind of making games too like where these are sort of like modular and you can kind of be like okay i need a little bit of this i need i need version of Massive for lack of a better comparison to making like electronic music. And so I can use that for the physics will be the game engine. And then I can use these other things.

So it does feel like kind of like if you're savvy enough, there is a way to sort of like execute on like an idea because just like those elements are just there versus years before it's like, well, do you have a 700-person team? This is one of the last things I want to talk about.

It's one of the things that... Wait, you're just going to cut the episode short? I don't know. I could go for about an hour or so, but anyway. This is the last thing you're going to talk about. Alright, Dad. This is the last fucking time I'm telling you this. This is the last fucking time.

Listen up, fuckwit. Another question that Jack posed was about Disney throwing money at Epic. I'm trying to see where it was in here because I just saved a place for it. Cut all this. This is all bullshit. Here we go. Okay. Are you reading through my notes?

No, no, no, no. Cut all this. This is all bullshit. Cut all this. This is all bullshit. Cut all this. This is all bullshit. Justin, you know which one I'm talking about. You know. Let's just mute my channel one.

This is me thinking. This is me thinking. Okay. This is kind of going back to Fortnite and the Unreal Engine and all of that and what they're creating with Fortnite. Disney just threw $1.5 billion, which is about like a 4% to 5% stake in Epic. Why are they doing that?

Wait, that's a 4% stake in Epic? Is one and a half? It might be less, honestly. Yeah. I don't know how much stuff is worth anymore. I'm like, that's only 4%. They're an enormous company. I know Shark Tank, though.

If you came out 1.5 billion for 4%, I'd be like, get the fuck out. Wow. It is a huge amount for not that big of a stake. But what Disney is getting out of that is this connection of their IP to things like Fortnite, the ability to use Unreal 5 to help make movies, just like this connection into a world that people are already in all the time now you've heard the term metaverse being thrown around so we love it don't we focus and like facebook wanted to make one blah blah blah wanted to make one but they're not crazy that he got to it first and now like for so many people when they hear meta metaverse they're like they picture mark zuckerberg with

no legs like mark zuckerberg's little avatar floating around with no legs exactly like no this is the future this dude just like fucked it up in the mainstream he just completely fucked it up but it is funny how the branding of that kind of came to him because people don't think of fortnite as the metaverse but when you can be be LeBron James or Sasuke from Naruto or Aloy from Horizon Zero Dawn or Peter Griffin from Family Guy as a character in Fortnite, that is the metaverse.

When you and your friends are jumping into the Fortnite launcher and playing Fortnite, traditional Fortnite, Fortnite with no building, or a racing game developed by Psyonix, the people who make Rocket League, or they're or a racing game developed by psionics the people who make rocket league or they're playing a rhythm game developed by harmonics the people who made rock band or they're making the survival crafting game in collaboration with lego right all within

one game all within fortnight fortnight is not trying to be like the best shooter fortnight is trying to be nintendo when your mom used to say oh are you playing that nintendo fortnight is trying to be oh are you playing that fortnight fortnight is so many different games and it kind of is now not only that like fortnight has their own tools built into the fortnight engine for you to create your own game like if you open up fortnight you'll see the main games, Fortnite, Fortnite, no build Lego, Fortnite, rocket racing, Harman, or it's I can't remember what it's called the rhythm game. It's like main stage or some shit like that. But then you have 15 or 16 other most popular

user created modes that you can just play that are completely different games, all built within the Fortnite engine, like Fortnite is or rather Epic Games is using Fortnite as the tip of the spear for Unreal Engine 5 to show people what you can do with this tool. Right. Are the people who are building those games making money? Like, are they taking... No. Wait, can't you make money

off of, like, a map? You can make money off of... To be honest with you, I'm actually not sure. Okay. Because... I'm not sure. I don't know. Cut all this. This is bullshit, Justin. This is fucking bullshit. Check that. Because if you can make money off of a Fortnite map,

that'd be interesting. But I'm pretty sure they're just user-generated. And it's like, if people are playing them, yes. The only reason I know this is because there is a player at Arsenal in the Academy. He's not in the main team yet. He's a teenager named Ruel Walters. And they're like,

before he got signed his professional contract, they're like, this kid was already making money on Fortnite because he made a super popular map. Really? Yeah. Well, there you go. I mean, if kids are making money off that,

then that's even more awesome. Yeah. So they're the engine that's even more awesome. Yeah. So they're the engine that makes all of this creation possible. Exactly. And they're making a big chunk of the money. But, like, the people who are going on there and being creative are able to, like, get some part of it. Sure. He said in this article in The Athletic, it's like, yeah, because of the creator code or whatever.

Oh, that's different. Oh, what's that? that's different oh what's that's different creator code is basically a way that you can say this person brought me here so if you enter a creator code when you're buying a skin on fortnite there's a little kickback to the creator who did that to you so he's probably streaming on twitch and said use my creator code and then you buy skins it's a kickback to me he said 250 million people played his map in one week that's fucking crazy that's awesome anyway so i was just like yeah i knew there was like some way but yeah maybe not in the official sorry go on right no but still but that but that but that is a whole another thing

that's that's just the it's just these little tools that like fortnite or epic games offers just within the fortnite engine where it's just like oh yeah use my code type in my name so that you kick back to me who you like to just buy whatever skin you're gonna buy right and sometimes those skins are actual people like i said lebron james or even random streamers who are you know part of the community such that me could you yeah well could you imagine this boring skin i could but then you have people like the weekend and then you have peter griffin and then you have pickle rick you just have all of this ip that is within the world of fortnite so that you can be whoever you want in the world of fortnite whenever you're playing any of those games right like that is what they're that is the world that they're creating that they're fostering

that is like it's it's it's wild how like interchangeable it can be you know because there's so many times like I'll be playing a game. I'll be like, man, I wish there was just a Star Wars version of GTA. Right. Like, why can't I just have this look like Star Wars? And that game is coming out. But with the flexibility of these other games, it's like, well, yeah, we can already just map this IP onto it. It's like, yeah, you want to play like Stewie versus Peeta?

Then fine. Do it. There's a Darth Vader. There's a Luke Skywalker. There's an a darth vader there's a luke skywalker there's an anakin skywalker skin in fortnite yeah yeah it's so what have a lightsaber so it sounds like obviously there's like there's ease in which that people are being able to make games and that's you know ai has a certain hand into that is that is like the main risk just like the voice acting stuff because that's the one thing i've saw consistently from like voice acting people who are like get the fuck away from my gigs with ai

because that is a huge huge earner for voice actors it's a huge thing and that was one of the things that i wrote down is what really worries me about ai you know my fears is the less human actors if the ai is going to take over there's no way you can script for it right now it's kind of a meme that if you're thorough, you'll talk to an NPC until you're just hearing the same prompts over and over. And that means that you've exhausted all of the dialogue options in which you're, you know, the person you're talking to, like, there's only so much that you can script with a real person. But for an actor who would then be kind of prompting an AI voice, you're going in doing one day of work, maybe even only like an hour of work. And then that AI prompt is then generating an infinite amount of responses forever.

Right. And that's scary. That's scary. That's taking the human element out of the, you know, the interaction side of video games. And that's something that's like kind of, you know, it's a bridge we're going to have to cross. It's going to be, you know, it's going to be a contract that needs to to be signed it's going to need to be some sort of agreement that we have that's that is you know how we kind of control this forthcoming storm that is ai actors being part

of video games because that is real that is very real what is going to happen yeah right it sounds like more and more the more you describe it the more it reminds me of like the media kind of content economy 10 years ago on the internet where it's like it's very user-driven and like it's like all all these creative people who are somewhat anonymous are driving a lot of the innovation and it's just like kind of a lot of them are doing it for the love of the game and that turned out well i think we you know now we have really great uh websites full of top tier user generated content and no it obviously went horribly wrong because nobody could like really figure out how to monetize that and so they just like killed it i guess so i don't know the difference i was hopeful until i had that

thought i mean i'm sure it'll just continue innovating it's yeah it's it is one of the ideas that was thrown out in like in reading up on AI is like they're like, well, one of the problems we have with AI is that we don't have a body for this AI, this art, you know, chat GPT to go walk out into the world and like start getting data and feedback, like learning with its body and with its ability to move around in space. its body and with its ability to move around in space so that was just another thing that occurred to me as we were talking it was like the npc chat gpt model like in addition to being like a cool thing to play with i could see that being prioritized by the companies the ai companies because that is something they're looking for is like something some mechanism for it to like go out and interact in the real world and like be able to kind of move around on its own and just get like free r&d from yeah yeah in these games it's like a character out in this like open world yeah but there's gonna come a way of thinking like uh they believed i was african-american

due to the outsized use of racial slurs I hear from young gamers. That data set is going to be fucking poison. It's going to be bad. It's going to be bad. Bullshit. Dan, I feel like we could keep talking about this for weeks. Yes. Thanks for coming on.

That's my pleasure. Thank you for having me. Making me less afraid of all the gaming shit that i hear what do you i don't know what any of it means jack did you come out of this is there a game now that's obviously because you're you're up on on the nintendo we are up on it switch that bitch from switch yeah exactly the bits with the switch yeah no i'm all of them. I mean, Pow World, you know, I'm going to be all over this shit. Fortnite, hell yeah, man. Hell yeah, Fortnite.

Fortnite's scary to me because I feel like I just like go in and get shot in the head like immediately. But if like there are all these derivations like racing games and stuff like that is intriguing to me. You'll be like, yeah, we'll all be playing together. Can we not do the battle? Can we just do the racing one? The racing's good. I try and shoot you. LeBron!

You can't shoot me in this. This is the racing one. You said specifically. Hell yeah. Anyways, Daniel, what a pleasure. You said specifically. Hell yeah. Anyways, Daniel, what a pleasure. Where can people find you, follow you,

hear you, all that good stuff? I think the last time I was on the show, I said I am divorcing myself from social media entirely, but you can still find me on Instagram and Twitch at DJ underscore Daniel. And I do have a piece of social media that I did want to share that I thought was really fucking funny. But I also wanted to share a actual game recommendation, something that I am enjoying personally, that I thought was really fucking funny, but I also wanted to share an actual game recommendation, something that I am enjoying personally that I think everybody

who likes video games should play. It's on both PlayStation and it's on PC, and it's a game called Helldivers 2. Now, that game is, if you've seen the movie Starship Troopers, it's that, but a video game, and with all of the humor wrapped in

it. It's so great. You're going to different planets and spreading democracy by shooting bugs in the face. And it rules. Four-player PVE. It is great. Full stop. Great game. What can you download it on?

On the PlayStation Store? On Steam? Wherever you want. Wow. It rules. It's so, so good. Let's play that. My piece of social media is from John Foley at 2008 Philz, P-H-I-L-Z.

And it's the picture of Travis Kelsey yelling at Andy Reid right here. But the text above it is, hold on, hold on. Her sister was a witch, right? That was her sister, a princess, the Wicked Witch of the East, bro. You're going to look at me and tell me that I'm wrong? I'm wrong? She wore a crown and came down in a bubble, dog.

Classic. That was a wild moment. I fucking love that. That's one of my favorite bits of internet content. Miles, where can people find you? What's the work media? You've been enjoying, find me on the app based platforms at miles of gray,

even on PlayStation network, where I usually pop up now and then in between my parental duties. Um, and also find Jack and I on our basketball podcast, miles of Jack. I'm at boosty. Or if you come to the Atlanta headquarters of iHeart Podcast, you will see posters up on the wall,

which is really nice to see. Miles and Jack on Mad Boosies. What else? Also find me on 420 Day Fiancé with Sophia Alexander. We're talking about 90 Day Fiancé. A tweet I like. I do like a tweet. It's from Jesse Dugan.

And this tweet is very interesting because it just, look, it's from the Super Bowl. So forgive me for the delay here on this entire. We're a week after the Super Bowl and we are giving you that Super Bowl content. Sorry, have to.

Because there's a photo of Reba McIntyre about to go to the Super Bowl. She's wearing a fur jacket and cowboy boots. And her tweet was, boots with the fur, hashtag Super Bowl, blah, blah, blah.

And then Jesse Dugan tweeted, okay, this is the first time i've considered that the boots themselves did not have the fur and yeah i think the 187 000 people that liked it were also like so fun holy shit we were thinking of the fur but is it just wearing your boots with the fur coat right anyway we love we love a bit of simple breakdowns of the lyrics. So, yeah. Shout out to you. Damn. Am I going to have to do a Super Bowl tweet, too?

No. You can find me on Twitter at Jack underscore O'Brien. Work of Media, I've been enjoying the latest episode. Uh-oh. He's melting down, folks. Abe Epperson? Uh-oh. The latest, the labe epperson the latest the latest epperson

uh work media i've been enjoying the latest episode of las culturistas sister podcast is has tina fey on it or maybe it's probably the second most recent by now by the time you hear it great to hear from tina fey again great episode. Tina Fey is just, yeah, like fits right in, just hops right into the double dutch and knows all the references, is media obsessed, and it's just a lot of fun to hear. Matt and Bowen and Tina Fey kicking around. So you can go check that out. I don't think so, honey. So good.

That was good. That was really good. She's like, you can't say your honest opinion. Got his ass. What did she say? She's like, your new friends are Mickey Mouse. Ariana Grande and Elmo.

I don't think so, honey. He was like, he can't say his honest opinion on movies anymore. Honesty is a luxury for the world. Honesty is a luxury for the world. Yeah, honesty is a luxury and something about how it's not worth it, basically. Yeah.

To be honest. Man. When are we going to learn that? I think that's what it is. Honesty is expensive. Honesty is expensive. Yeah, that's what it is. So that's a lesson we'll learn one of these days, I'm sure.

Yes. You can find us on Twitter at Daily Zeitgeist. We're at The Daily Zeitgeist on Instagram. We have a Facebook fan page and a website, dailyzeitgeist.com, where we post our episodes and our footnotes. Footnotes. We link off to the information that we talked about in today's episode, as well as a song that we think you might enjoy.

Miles, what song do you think people might enjoy? I think, well look i'm i'm feeling like like i said i'm an old head and i was thinking about timbaland and magoo you know love to love you love to love to love you i love you i love you anyway i just heard a remix on soundcloud that was just like sometimes people do remixes that just give a song a whole new way of like like a new bounce to it that you really weren't seeing. And this is it. It's by Mike nasty.

And it's called love to love, like in the song, but that's L U V the number two, then L U V. It's a SoundCloud only joint. So you're going to have to go on SoundCloud like, like us real backpackers. So you can find that real shit.

But it's dope. This is love to love by Mike nasty, the Timbaland Magoo remix. We will link off to it in the footnotes. Go right there. The daily is like, It's dope. This is Love to Love by Mike Nasty, the Timberland Magoo remix. We will link off to it in the footnotes. You can go right there. The Daily Zeitgeist is a production of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. That is

going to do it for us this morning. Back this afternoon to tell you what is trending, and we'll talk to you all then. Bye! I'm Jess Casavetto, executive producer of the hit Netflix documentary series, Dancing for the Devil, the 7M TikTok cult. And I'm Clea Gray, former member of 7M Films and Shekinah Church. And we're the host of the new podcast, Forgive Me For I Have Followed.

Together, we'll be diving even deeper into the unbelievable stories behind 7M Films and Shekinah Church. Listen to Forgive Me for I Have Followed on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey, I'm Gianna Pradenti. And I'm Jemay Jackson-Gadsden. We're the hosts of Let's Talk Offline

from LinkedIn News and iHeart Podcasts. There's a lot to figure out when you're just starting your career. That's where we come in. Think of us as your work besties you can turn to for advice. And if we don't know the answer, we bring in people who do, like negotiation expert Maury Tahiripour. If you start thinking about negotiations as just a conversation,

then I think it sort of eases us a little bit. Listen to Let's Talk Offline on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Keri Champion, and this is Season 4 of Naked Sports. Up first, I explore the making of a rivalry. Kaitlyn Clark versus Angel Reese. Every great player needs a foil. I know I'll go down in history.

People are talking about women's basketball just because of one single game. Clark and Reese have changed the way we consume women's sports. Listen to the making of a rivalry, Caitlin Clark versus Angel Reese on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Presented by Capital One, founding partner of iHeart Women's Sports.