The Press Box - Ep. 245: 'Achievement Oriented' on Video Game Agents and Boss Battles

Episode Date: January 27, 2017

The Ringer's Ben Lindbergh and Jason Concepcion talk to Blake Rochkind, a video game agent for United Talent Agency, about how his job works, Hollywood's appetite for movie adaptations of video games, VR's bright future, and his favorite games from last year(0:50). Then they bring on Josh Hano, the creator of new platformer 'Nefarious,' to discuss video game tropes and games that let the player be the bad guy (36:22). They also welcome eight former guests back to the podcast to pick their all-time favorite boss battles(53:15). Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The people have spoken, and Jeff Ross has returned for Roast Battle 2. The four-night event features top comedians getting verbally violent until just one is left standing, featuring a star-studded lineup of judges, including Snoop Dog, Sarah Silverman, and Jason Sedakas. This is a battle you won't want to miss, not unlike the big boss fights we're about to be talking about. The four-night event begins January 26th, the 10-9 Central, on Comedy Central, and don't miss the live finale on Sunday, January 29th, the 10-9 Central, to see who gets crowned the king or queen of cruelty. Hello and welcome to Achievement-oriented Channel 33's video game podcast.

My name is Ben Lindberg, and I'm a writer for the ringer.com. And on the other line, he's the hidden boss. It's my colleague, Jason Concepcion. Hey, Jason. Hi. So I got Overwatch. I'm so excited for this. It actually arrived.

I sent you a picture, and then I proceeded not to play it. Oh, you didn't play it at all? I'm taking this in stages. So it took me, I'm going about this ritualistically. It took me months to get the game. Next week I will remove the wrapper. The week after that, I will remove that little sticky strip with the barcode on it that prevents you from opening the box. The week after that, I will play Overwatch.

No, I'm getting there. I'm getting there. There's tangible progress being made. However, I did play Nefarious, which is a new game out on Steam this week. It's a platformer where you play as the bad guy. You take part in reverse boss fights. And we're going to talk to the creator of that game, Josh Hano, in the second half of this episode. And as part of that, we're also going to weave in little snippets from a bunch of our former guests who will be talking about their favorite boss fights and describing what they were and why they like them.

And then you and I will probably pick a favorite boss battle or two. But before that, we have another guest to get to. His name is Blake Rockkind. He is a video game agent for United Talent Agency, which sounds like a really cool job. Wanted to have him on to find out how cool it actually is. Hey, Blake, how are you? Hey, guys. How are you? I'm good. Doing all right. So I read a bit about the history, the short history of video game agents. And there was a good piece in Polygon a couple years ago about how things got started up at CAA where you worked for a while. And it sounded like the first generation. of video game agents was sort of an accidental generation.

You know, there weren't video game agents before that. And people who just had some interest in gaming or new people in the industry just kind of fell into it because they were there at the right time when their company was maybe looking for new business. And I'm curious whether that was the case with you or whether you came along late enough that you could actually aspire to do this job because other people had done it already. Can you give us the background, the career progression for how you ended up here? Yeah. So you kind of hit it on the head with how my understanding, at least, the answer is I came on a little later, but my understanding of how it started was, you know, in typical Hollywood fashion, people started to see that video games were making a lot of money and they said we

got to be in this business. And I think the first iterations of sort of representation in the game of business centered around sort of representing IP, trying to make the video game IP into movies, vice versa, maybe even working with actors to try to get them into video games. And my sort of mentor and boss, Ofeer Lupu, who has been doing this much longer than I, he was at CAA. And I know that that's where when he arrived at CAA, that was sort of where their head was at. And I think he had the foresight to see, you know, the value in this business long term was going to be in the creators of video games. And back then, that was a pretty bold statement because we certainly

didn't have really the indie space back then. There were very few people had sort of set themselves apart as creators, but they sort of stuck at it. And I think now it's a, it's a very healthy business. So to answer the question specifically to me, I came around 2010. And it was definitely in that sort of second generation, I'm a big gamer. This was no accident. I actually read an article in Fast Company about video game agents, and I thought that was the coolest thing I'd ever heard. And I applied for an internship at CAA.

I was hired on there eventually as an assistant after the internship, and then moved over to UTA with Ophir and got promoted about four years ago at this point. And we were just joking before we started recording about how there aren't many video game agents on Twitter. and you said that there really aren't that many video game agents, period. I mean, can you kind of come up with any ballpark estimate? Like, does every big agency have a video game wing? Are there smaller boutique video game agencies, or is it really just something that the big shops have?

I mean, can you quantify it all how much it's grown in sort of the decade or so that it's been a thing? I would guess worldwide there has to be less than 50 agents. And that's probably on the very high end. It's probably closer to 25 agents globally, just period, in the business, sort of doing what I do or anything even remotely like it. I would say with the advent of VR, Hollywood's obviously taken a huge interest in VR. So the answer to your question is a little more complicated.

I would say every major agency is at the least sort of dabbling in the VR space. You know, we have a dedicated video game practice. CAA does. And there are other various boutique agencies out there. But it's not some massive thing because the truth is, you know, first off, it's relatively new. There are people who have success in the video game industry without agents. It's sort of not that the industry wasn't built around sort of the agency model the same way that Hollywood was.

And to be honest, there's just not that many people or studios that sort of justify representation. So I don't think there's the same need for agents. You mentioned that you used to, when you first started out, video game agents mostly dealt with IP. I think people kind of have, like a general audience kind of has. a vague idea of what agents do in the sports milieu or in Hollywood. So what do you do, what's the day to day of an agent for video games? Do you mostly do creators? Do you do teams?

Do you do studios? How does someone come to you with a project that they need financing? You know, how does it work? Yeah. So the answer is all of the above. And the simplest way to put it is in the same way that directors are represented, actors represented. My job and our job is to get people financing to make video games. That is what I do day and day out. I would say that's 95% of what I do. That can be individuals in very rare

cases. I would say there's not tons of individuals that sort of command the type of deals that would require an agent's guidance and representation. And then there are studios, which is the bulk of what we do. And then there's sort of a third bucket that can oftentimes be a blend of the two. So sometimes we can end up representing an individual and then they leave and sort of start their own studio. And we help them start that studio and then subsequently represent that studio. Typically our buyers, quote unquote, are the publishers, the ones that you guys are probably very familiar with. And depending on what the team is or what genre they're operating in or what business model they're following, also sort of some of the what we call strategic investors, right? So Tencent, Smilegate, Nettys, some of these companies that you probably hear from time to time invest.

in or bought X, Y, Z, video company. Those aren't appropriate for everything, but sometimes we speak to them as well and do deals with them. In terms of how they come to us or vice versa, I mean, especially us at UTA, we are just two guys. It's myself and my colleague O'Fier.

And we have made it a point to sort of represent what we believe are sort of the cream of the crop. So people who generate their own IP, valuable IP, people who have had previous success, we help them hopefully have, even greater success. So oftentimes, it's not really totally unknown people who show us something that sort of blows this way. We end up representing them, although that does happen from time to time.

But it's usually taking somebody who's had some level of success and trying to take that to another level. So it's not just somebody walks in as like, oh, I've got this great kind of like working model of a video game or a concept. Get me money. Very rarely. It's not too different from the other big agencies and how they treat any other sort of talent, right? UTA, I would say rarely would take on a completely unknown artist who had never done anything unless they had a script or something along those lines that was completely mind-blowing, right? And so it's the same thing. There have been cases where we have sort of wrapped clients out of seemingly nowhere, but most of the time it's people who have either been behind big AAA projects that you guys are familiar with or studios who've made

great indie projects that you guys are familiar with. So, you have, Yeah. And what are your clients typically looking for aside from money? I mean, that's probably most of it. But what else do they want in terms of, I don't even know, working conditions or equity or who knows what? What exactly is it that you can get them that they can't get on their own? Or what do they want when they approach you and say, you know, this is what we hope you can do for us that someone else couldn't or that we couldn't do for ourselves? First thing is creative control, right? Now, any deal, if you do a publishing deal, there's always the opportunity that the publisher can cancel the deal if they don't like the direction of the game. But I think it's important that any creator wants to be able to make their vision come true. So yes, money is an important part of that. But so is, you know, IP ownership. I think more and more, especially in today's day and age, when there are tons of companies out there who sort of just totally self-fund, self-release.

amazing games that then become sort of a valuable IP out of it and they can do sequels. So I think if you're going to take someone else's money, IP ownership is definitely something that you want to try to retain time. So, you know, everything's a factor of time and money, right? So people want the right amount of time to make their game. You know, and publishers today, you know, beyond just money, in a world where you can sort of put your game on Xbox and PlayStation, maybe not as easy as you can in the app store, but still much easier than you could in the past.

I think a lot of developers are looking for help with some of the less sexy parts of game development, right? So localization, quality assurance testing, marketing, PR, even submission to the platforms, because like I said, it's not as easy as the app store. There is sort of a relationship building thing there and sort of back-end paperwork that you have to do in order to get your game out into those stores. And some publishers are, every publisher or most publishers have the money to fund games, but there are some publishers who are much better and much more understanding of the indie relationship.

So you started out in kind of the traditional agency business. What's the different, one of the primary differences working in video games? I really came in just for video games. I was an assistant first, but I can tell you just from the standpoint of just dealing with my colleagues and knowing what they go through. You certainly have less egos in the video game business. I wouldn't say zero, but it's not as crazy as maybe you've seen on entourage or, things like that, which can be more accurate than you would think. You know, something that I butted up against when I first got promoted, and I know the people

who came before me butted up against much longer before that, has been sort of in the video game industry, agents are not sort of just accepted. It's definitely gotten better in the years that I've been doing this. And I would say it's almost become a complete non-issue because I think we've done great work for our clients. I think that the people on sort of the buyer end have now realized our value as well, sort of making a smooth process and making deals that are sort of mutually beneficial for all. But there was and still is to a certain extent sort of a, you know, oh, you know, we don't need agents on

this. We don't need, you know. And that's something that, again, it's less and less, but it's, it's definitely happened. And also even just explaining what I do, right? I came on this podcast and you guys asked what I do because if you say, hey, I'm a film agent, nobody asks you what that means. They've seen, you've seen enough movies to understand it. So 100 years of cinema behind. behind that idea. Exactly. Exactly. I was listening to friend of the podcast, Chris Sullen Trap's podcast, Shall We Play a Game?

And he had Ronan Farrow on recently. Yeah, I actually, I listened to that podcast and I listened to that episode. Yeah. So he was talking about how in the sort of media circles that he tends to move in, video games are looked down upon or not looked upon at all, really. And I wonder whether that's the case in the circles that you move in with sort of these more established industries kind of under the same umbrella as your division within a larger company is the video game division looked on as sort of, you know, small fry like upstarts?

Or have you had to sort of fight for respect in that way? So on the, on the social side of things, I listened to that episode and I know Ronan sounded like he hangs out with an older crowd. I would say I'm 28, whether it's my colleagues, friends, I think I'm, I'm, I'm, on the upper end of a generation that you find video games to be completely normal. I grew up with video games. Most of people I know grew up with video games. Now, a lot of them sort of fell off as they got older and some didn't.

But I think you'll only see that become more and more normal as sort of the Minecraft generation grows up and sort of inherits the earth. And eventually we'll have a president where you'll be able to go see what their gamer score was on Xbox Live. And I very much look forward to that day. And professionally speaking, one of the things that I love, love about UTA is we do not feel like small fries at all. We find that the company is very interested in what we're doing, is very supportive, you know, and always wants to hear, you know, when we have something exciting to share. You know, Ophir works very closely with Fumito Ureda, and I can't tell you how many people wrote him congratulatory emails when the last Guardian came out.

And that was a very cool thing and a very supportive thing of our colleagues. So in that respect, it's great. How is e-sports kind of change your side of the business? Do you guys deal with that at all? Yeah, that comes up all the time because where there's money, you know, there's going to be some sort of agency interests. It's definitely some of the agencies exploring. There are things in that space I can't talk about currently that are in the works. You're signing me as a professional Overwatch player. Yeah, exactly. Are you an Overwatch, are you an Overwatch fan? Oh, yeah. Oh, big time. Oh, nice. Yeah, me too. I'm excited about the Chinese New Year event. Yeah, I'm hoping for my Reinhardt skin to drop.

Hasn't happened yet. I didn't get the, I play Zanjada, and I did not get the Christmas skin. I didn't get the Nutcracker skin last time. Oh, man. The Christmas skin, I am not proud to say this, but I dropped probably like 30 bucks on loot boxes until it popped up. Yeah, I dropped 15 and still didn't get it, and I stopped. So, yeah, there's definitely interest in esports, both at UTA and I'm sure the other agencies as well. and I know that there are esports agencies sort of in existence.

You know, me personally, I'm, you know, I do this because I love video games. If I wasn't an agent, I would be doing something else in the video game space. And the truth is, most of the video games, with the exception of Overwatch, actually, Overwatch totally took me by surprise how much I like it. But most of the games that I am interested in personally and professionally tend to be sort of narrative focused, linear with a beginning, middle, and end. And so on a personal level, I don't have an extreme interest in e-sports. I would love it.

Nothing would make me happier than if one of my clients were to make a game that was popular enough to become an esports. That would be incredible. But I always, you know, when this does come up all the time, one of the things I say is asking a video game agent, not that you were asking me if I was going to be an e-sports agent, but asking like a video game agent, if they were going to become an e-sports agent or start representing esports players, wouldn't be that different than asking a television agent if they were going to start representing NFL players. You know, both of them are on both modern family and football. are things that you watch on TV,

but they're totally different sectors of television and entertainment. And I think that e-sports is no different than that and will only prove to be sort of this totally separate business that exists in the larger video game business, which is large enough to encompass a multitude of businesses. You know, virtual reality as well will probably become its own sort of vertical business.

So I gather that optioning games for movies and that sort of thing is not the bulk of your business, but I assume it's something you've been involved. in along the line. And can you tell me kind of what the interest level is right now with movie studios, you know, are they scared off by the track record? Do they still see video games as a fertile ground for potential adaptations? Are there any misgivings? What's the state of that side of things? Yeah, I would say for a while they were scared of the track record, maybe two years ago. And I think right now, for various reasons, we're sort of in an upswing and interest.

I field a lot of calls just from other people in the industry who somehow find my information or their colleague tells them to call me. And they'll ask me about a video game and whether or not I think it's a good IP and whether or not I think it would make a good movie. Oftentimes it's because they saw a commercial for the game. If you're seeing a commercial for the game on TV, it means it's probably too late to pick up the film rights. But I do believe that there's a upswing in interest for a few reasons. One, obviously, the comic book movie genre has, I don't want to say peaked, but it's been

around for a while and that well is sort of becoming dry. And I think people see video games as sort of the next thing that can sort of be that well of IP because the reason people like comic books besides the fact that there's a story there, right, it's also there's a built-in audience. But I think the important thing is you have to make a good movie, right? No one's going to go see a bad video game movie because they like the game. I shouldn't say no one, but not enough people. So I'm still waiting for that great video game movie.

Yeah. But I will say I saw Assassin's Creed because it was the first time that somebody had made a movie of a series. I guess if you don't count the Super Mario Brothers movie from like 94. But it was the first time that somebody had made a movie of a series that I like and have played many games in. And I actually thought that movie, like, it wasn't. I probably shouldn't say this because I'm going to get myself in trouble. But it was not as bad as reviews. Sure.

That's what I will say. Yeah, we talked about it on the podcast and we didn't think it was good, but we didn't think it was worse than your generic run-of-the-mill, not good movie. Exactly. I would, I told my friends, if that had been an original IP with the exact same script, same actors, same everything, just wasn't a call of Assassin's Creed. Yeah. Instead of the 20% it has around tomatoes, it would have like a 50% or a 40%, which still isn't lighting the world on fire.

But I do think people walk into those movies sort of with a, oh, another video game movie. This is going to be, yeah. Well, when someone calls you and asks you whether you think it would make a good movie, what do you tell them or how do you make that decision? What do you look for in a game that you think would make a good movie? Yeah, I mean, I think that it either needs to be two things that are sort of on the opposite ends of the spectrum. It either needs to be such an incredible story that you could really just, like the movie writes itself. So I would say like The Last of Us is probably the first thing that comes to mind when I think of something like that. And I know for a while Neil Druckman was writing the Last of Us film script.

So I thought that was great. Or the other end of the spectrum, which is it has to be something so sort of generic that you can kind of just plug any sort of story into it. So I don't know. The first thing that just came to mind was like Resident Evil, which is it has to be something. I know they've done a bunch of Resident Evil movies and they've sort of all followed the same character, but you could kind of do anything, you know, horror related and call it Resident Evil. Yeah. So I think those are the two things I would say.

But one thing I have to explain to people all the time is there's a tremendous risk for some of these people to get involved in the movie business, right? I would personally love to see a great Zelda movie. Nothing would make me happier. And I think if they made a Zelda movie and it was good, I think Hollywood would be completely blown away by how well it would do, and that would probably start like a whole video game frenzy. But from Nintendo's perspective, think about how scary that is to have your, I would say, if you were to independently value the Zelda IP, it would have to be close to a billion dollars,

if not more. Think about how scary that is. One of your crown jewels, one of this beloved IP that you sort of own and control and have fostered for years, suddenly you're giving it to a company that operates in a space that you're not fluent in. Right, which didn't work out so well for them the first time. Exactly. And you're not fluent.

And what's the best case scenario? The best case scenario is the movie makes a billion dollars, and you got 20% of it as a license owner, right? And then, okay, so the risk and reward maybe just isn't there. But then there's also the other, there's the flip side, which is, okay, maybe you have like a somewhat successful video game franchise that could become more popular because of a movie. So I think it's interesting. somebody will figure it out. I think a big part of it is that you don't really have filmmakers or you haven't in the past had filmmakers that grew up with video games and sort of a square peg round hole thing. And I think that like many other things involving video games, you're going to

start having and you probably already do have a whole bunch of directors and writers who are genuinely fans of this medium. And hopefully somebody sort of finds the right match of somebody that respects the medium and wants to make a great movie. But I know it's more complicated than that. The movie business is tough. You were mentioning how telling people that you're a video game agent

or introducing yourself in that way is still kind of novel for some people. It's such a young part of the business. I remember the first time someone that I knew was like my agent. It was mind blowing to me. At what point did you feel like people kind of expected that you would exist?

You know what I mean? Like, people weren't just shocked that you're like a video game agent? What? Yeah. So not even me personally, but when did people just start to like understate? Like that didn't become like a thing that was weird to say that you were a video game agent. Yeah. I would say somewhere probably 2014 if I had to like put a year on it.

I couldn't tell you exactly why. My guess it would be it would be a function of just time. Like I said, people have been sort of at this since the since 2000 really. And also I think there were, you know, high profile success stories that had. agents behind them. And sort of whether or not that's reported in the media, I think people in the industry slowly became aware that some of the best studios out there were represented. And some of the best games were the result of an agent making a deal for that game to exist. Have you been doing this long enough that there are now stories you are allowed to tell

about, I don't know, a time you landed a client you were really excited about or a time that you arranged a deal that everyone was really happy with or just some game or some studio that you are most proud of having done deals with. So we're always hesitant to go into specifics because there's a lot of things that we shouldn't talk about, can't talk about, and haven't been announced. Sure. There's something that I wanted to say, but it's unannounced and it would be a great one. So maybe if I'm on, you can go back a bit.

Maybe if I'm on like after E3 or something, we can talk about it. No, this is a very unpopular podcast. There's very few people. But one example, actually, and it sort of goes back to the early thing when we talked about the different buckets that we operate in. One of my very first clients, I actually started working with him when I was still an assistant, is Dean Hall. And he made Daisy, which you may be familiar with. It's the zombie survival. He sort of kind of created the whole modern survival genre.

When I met Dean, he was still giving the mod away for free. And he was, I remember the first time I'm. ever spoke to him. He was like, dude, my life is insane right now. I don't know what's happening. There are Korean businessmen sleeping outside my door, trying to like sign me to deals. And that sort of started a very long process of us at UTA representing Dean. We ended up making sort of employment deals for him at the company that he, or sorry, so he modded ARMA. Arma. Correct. Yes. So he ended up being hired by the guys who make ARMA. Bohemia Interactive to sort of come on full time. He sold the IP to them and sort of work on

the game. So we ended up representing him there for a few years. And then he decided to leave, sort of start his own thing. Companies called RocketWorks. And that was like an 18-month process from the time that he left Bohemia until the time that we announced late last year that Tencent giant internet company out of China who owns Riot Games, owns Supercell. they invested in his company RocketWorks. So that's one I can talk about because I know that that was sort of publicly out there. And how has your gaming changed as it's gone from recreational hobby to profession? Are you playing with a purpose more often now?

Are you like scouting prospective clients or just feeling like you have to play certain games so that you will be able to talk about them if they come up in conversation? Yeah, I would say very naturally, I mean, I, I cannot stress enough. I'm a huge gamer. So it's changed probably very little. I think there are some things that maybe I will check out so that I can have an opinion on.

A game that maybe I would have skipped, just knowing it's not my thing, maybe I'll check in on it because everyone's talking about it. But maybe I would have been doing that regardless, now that I'm an adult, really, an adult gamer. Maybe I would have been doing that. But I game all the time, I mean, maybe really the only difference is

if there's like a signing person or somebody that I want to work with, maybe I'll race to finish the game before I speak to them or something along those lines. But to be honest, it hasn't changed much other than it gives me, you know, I'm recently married and people always say, oh, how does your wife handle you being a gamer? Which I think is such a weird question because I would never have married somebody who had a problem with it. But it is, I mean, it, you know, it is my, it's sort of my job and it puts food on the table. So it's sort of, in that respect, I think it's just, I don't know, there's no excuses for why I can't play games because it is my job, but I don't think I would ever have made

excuses anyway. So let's talk about your top 10 games of 2016 list. Sure. He's impressed by this list, I've got to say. Thank you. It showed that you're a man of taste when it comes to video games. Should we read it? Yeah, I'll read it down and then we can talk about it. Okay. Overwatch number one, last guardian. Number two, Final Fantasy 15. Inside, Hyperlight Drifter, Batman. Man, Arkham, VR. Titanfall 2, Firewatch, Uncharted 4, Dishonored 2. Anything you want to say about these games? Overwatch, we'll start with Overwatch.

Yeah, I mean, Overwatch, I think, was sort of the objective game of the year. Whether you're talking about quality or not, it was easily the most important game, or the sort of game that garnered the most attention. I've never been a big competitive multiplayer person, with the exception of Rocket League. and the first time I played the first time I played Overwatch was they did like an open beta before the game came out and I totally

bounced off of it I was like this is too chaotic I don't know what's what's going on and oh this is just going to be another one of the shooters that everyone plays that I don't understand I never got into Teap Fortress or anything like that then they did it was right around Black Friday actually their sort of evil geniuses there

they did the free weekend that led into a $30 Black Friday deal and I play the free weekend on PS4 and for whatever, I don't even know why, for whatever reason it clicked. I loved it. I bought the game and then I think that combined with the fact that somehow or another, it

became very apparent to me fast that I knew a bunch of people that were playing Overwatch within Hollywood. Oh wow. Overwatch is one of those games that's really transcended. People who don't play, I know somebody who owns a PS4 and only plays Overwatch. Like, that's literally

the only game they have. There's a lot of people. I know people who do like stats and stuff for the NBA and it's the only game they play. Yeah, I know somebody who his roommate was playing Overwatch on his PS4, he got addicted to it. They ended up like, you know, he moved out

and bought a PS4 in Overwatch and that's it. Like, he doesn't play any other games. And it's an amazing game. I don't need, I'm sure most people in the audience are well familiar with it, but I think the genius things it does is it makes you, it only makes you feel good, never makes you feel bad, and there's 16 different ways to play it, right?

I don't know how they balance it. Obviously, they're always working on it. I know they're nerfing Roadhog soon, which is much needed. Get in while the hookin's good, guys. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. But there's 16 different ways to play the game.

And it took me a while to sort of find the characters that I liked. I eventually settled on Zinata, which is maybe bad because now it's like, I can't even, I don't even enjoy it if I don't play as Zanata. And I'm like one of those now. Well, he's, he's very much in them, like everybody, there's nobody that can really argue with the Orbs of Discord. Yeah, exactly. Well, and the other day, the other night, maybe even been last night, somebody else did

take Zanada when I was playing and I started playing as, I forgot, I think I was playing as Farah. Sure. And I'm so used to doing the L1 for the Discord orb that I was doing it and nothing was happening. Like I would see somebody and I'd hit L1 to discord them and nothing would happen. I thought that was funny. Last Guardian, I would say in almost any other year would have been my game of the year. It's just Overwatch just had a shocking and major impact on my gaming experience in the latter half for last year. The Last Guardian's absolutely incredible. Trico, I think, is one of the all-time

great game characters. Did you guys, did you guys play it? Yes. And I don't know if I would have had the exact reaction that I had to Last Guardian if I didn't have a dog, but I didn't go up with a dog, but I have a dog now, and I've had a dog for about four years now. And if you have a, if you have an animal that you, that you're close with, I think the Last Guardian will have sort of a special place in your heart. And it's just, it's an amazing game. I'm glad it lived up to the hype. Final Fantasy 15. I'm a huge Final Fantasy fan from back in the day. I'm one of those. What's your favorite iteration of the game? Seven, because the other answer would be 10, but what happened when my brothers and I, I'm the youngest of, I was the youngest of four. And growing up,

we played a lot of video games together. I think it's one of the reasons why I am such a big gamer because it was a cheap way of entertaining all of us. We used to play games altogether, collective in the basement. And there was one winter break that we were playing Final Fantasy 10 for PS2 in the basement. And we, uh, we played. probably got like 20 hours in together and our memory card got corrupted. So I never finished Final Fantasy 10. So I can't, I can't say that that's my favorite. Although I love Final Fantasy 10, but I never finished it.

And I thought 15 is definitely not without its flaws. You can tell that it had, you can tell that it had sort of a long, I don't want to say troubled, but tumultuous development. I think that's well documented. There are just parts of the game where like, you're like, oh, wow, they clearly just cut out a huge chunk there. The car is trash. I disagree.

I actually love the car. I think it's what I know, no, no game has ever like captured a road trip. Like it, that is true. I couldn't believe. The car itself. The car itself is trash. That final fantasy would be the, would take such a, and it sounds like even Resident Evil 7 does this too, that there are these big AAA franchises that sort of would take

such a big, you know, left turn in a, in a, in a, a, uh, a risk. so to speak, I was blown away by. It just, it has a tone that I've never seen any sort of big game like that have. It's the quintessential greater than the sum of its parts game. Because if you look at each part on its own, you could find a flaw in every part of that game. And yet, I absolutely loved it. And I really, really sincerely hope that they make a 15-2. It sounds like the game sold really well for the franchise. So hopefully they will. Just to close, you brought up VR earlier, and we've talked on the podcast before about the past and the future and where it's headed. And I'm curious about your perspective as someone who's sort of on the front lines.

Do you expect it to be a big part of your job in the near future? Is it going to keep growing? Do you think that the issues it's had, you know, typical for any first generation hardware, are going to persist or will it all be figured out and take over the world? So I think that VR success and AR success. And some people will tell you, like, some people are like, oh, the very common thing I hear sometimes is like, oh, VR is not where it's at. It's AR is where it's at. And there's truth to that, but I also think that that's like trying to sound a little too smart. Like,

they will become the same thing. If AR becomes the thing, Oculus will just be an AR company. Like, they're not that different, right? It's, it's things in front of people's eyes that make them perceive and experience things that are beyond our current reality, right? But I do, I believe that their success is inevitable. I think it's too cool to fail VR. I do think that there is a little bit of a hangover because it's very rare that something sort of been out there in the ethos and in the developer community for so long without being commercially available.

Apple announces the iPhone one. iPhone one still comes out within like six months. Right. gamers have been hearing about the Oculus since, I don't know, 2012 was when the Kickstarter was or was it? It was years of hype and hearing these people on podcasts that would go to GDC and experience it. And the technology has been like in the kind of pop culture sphere for even longer than that. Exactly.

So I think there is a little bit of a hangover from that right now. Also, it doesn't help that you need a $1,000 computer and a $600 headset to do Oculus. And it also doesn't help that Sony for whatever reason is having trouble stocking the PSVR. I don't know if it's because it's super popular or they're having manufacturing problems, but I know that you cannot get a PSVR right now, which is a shame because it sounds like Resident Evil 7, the PSVR is incredible. Do I think that it will be successful?

Absolutely for sure. Do I think it will eventually become a bigger part of my job? But I do think that it will likely not happen this generation. I think it needs, you know, I think before it becomes super popular, it needs to be wireless. I think it needs to have 4K screens behind it so that you don't necessarily see the pixels.

I think that motion controls need to be ubiquitous and also developers just need to become more fluent in sort of the medium, but it's for sure. I mean, there's no doubt. We're not going to be, we're not going to play games on our two-dimensional screens forever. Yeah. All right. Well, people can find Blake on Twitter at Blake Rockkind. That's R-O-C-H-K-I-N-D. And we will have to have you back on when you can talk about the big thing that you can't talk about yet. Sounds good. All right. Really good talking to you. Thank you for coming on. Thanks a lot. Okay, we will be right back with Josh Hano, the creator of Nefarious.

Remember that throughout the second segment, we will be splicing in favorite boss battle picks from a bunch of our former guests, ranging from 30 seconds or so to a couple of minutes. So don't be surprised when you hear those familiar voices cutting in. All right, so we are welcoming in now Josh Hano, who is the storyboard artist, animator, and creator of Nefarious, a game that came out for PC on Steam earlier this week. He is coming to us from Pax South, where you can find him in a booth hawking his wares. Hi, Josh. Hi, guys. I'm pretty excited to be here. Yeah, so I want to ask you, according to SteamSpy, there were something like 4,721 Steam Games released last year.

It's crazy. How do you stand out from the pack other than coming on achievement oriented and getting the big Jason and Ben bump? Huge, huge bump. Yes, incalculable. Or setting up at Pack South, like, how do you break out of just the ever-flowing flood of Steam releases. Yeah, you know, I saw that article, like, in the weeks leading up to our launch. And I was like, oh, geez. You know, I think nefarious stands out in quite a few ways. You know, obviously the whole tagline is you are the villain, which, you know, not a lot of games do.

Some do. But I found in those games where you play as a villain, you either fight other villains or you fight heroes who are basically kind of corrupt. So in this game, And you are a Bowser-type villain, and you know, you fight genuinely good heroes. And aside from that, you know, you're not just the villain from a story perspective. We go out of our way to make sure that, you know, you're the villain in mechanics as well. Like, which brings us to, you know, instead of rescuing the princess, you kidnap the princess, and the princess will affect game mechanics in some way. We have an insectian type princess, and she has wings so you can jump higher.

We have like a lava-type character when you kidnapped up the princess, she turns your grenades into like this lava trail that you can run on so you can kind of create your own platforms. Not only that, we've got reverse boss fights, which is kind of our biggest way to distinguish ourselves. Some games where you play as the hero in our game, since you are the bad guy, you are the boss fight. A little hero will show up and you get into like this giant machine and you fight them. Justin Charity, Ringerstaff writer here. The boss battle that I think about the most, probably many years after playing it is when Cloud and company fight Rufus Shindra at the top of the building in Final Fantasy 7, which is actually a pretty easy battle.

Rufus has this shotgun and all of your characters have their standard weapons. But I remember at the time it was super impressive because of how the battle is shot and sort of the pans that open and close the battle and the animation of how Rufus uses his shotgun. And, like, chiefly, the fact that he ends the battle by escaping, by hopping on a helicopter. And a lot of how that battle looks, you know, I remember as a kid, I think before I was a teen, even, I just remember the cinematography of that battle looking like nothing I'd ever seen in a video game before. And it sort of tracks with a lot of how video games across all different genres became way more cinematic and movie-like with, later console generations. And you kind of have subverted the typical kidnap the princess formula,

which comes under fire nowadays, like with Super Mario Run, for instance, took a lot of criticism for just being the same regressive formula where you are the guy and you kidnap the girl and she's helpless and she's the damsel in distress. And in this game, of course, you are the villain doing the kidnapping, but the princesses are kind of complicit. It's like almost a A symbiotic relationship between the villain and the kidnappers. And sometimes the kidnappers kind of become the kidnappers. So was that in your mind as you were laying this out? Yeah.

So, like, you know, in a lot of these other games, you only see the princess once at the beginning of the game. And then you see her at the end. Neferius kind of gave kind of gave us a unique opportunity to make the princess essentially a co-star on the, you know, the player's adventure. and we try to really have fun with that. You know, the villain and the princess, they banter back and forth. I feel like we've been getting quite a good bit of praise for our writing on that. I feel pretty proud of that. And I don't want to get into too many spoilers,

but we really try to deconstruct the trope and present it like in every way possible. Right. I'm John Lovett, co-host of Pod Save America. I've given this a lot of thought, and I'm going to say the bosses of Shadow of the Colossus are my favorite boss fights. Now, that is a game literally. made exclusively of boss fights. So you can call it a cop out, but Trump is president and you can say whatever the hell you want now. Shadow the Klossus is a beautiful, haunting game with a control

scheme that's absolutely bananas. And then all of a sudden, it's intuitive and satisfying. And this simple, sad story unfolds to these incredible battles with these mammoth creatures. It's the best. Mechanically, what makes a great boss fight? And then how do you turn that around? You know, like a lot of the early boss fights, I know from like Nintendo days when we were kids, it's just like basically just a ton of hit points. Obviously, there's more nuanced now. But so how do you subvert that and how do you make that into, how do you reverse that dynamic and make it playable? Well, that was certainly a challenge throughout the whole process.

You know, one of the first boss fights we implemented was one of the first ones we were really excited because it's one of the few ones that you can look at and almost everyone immediately recognizes it. from an old Sonic. Actually, camera film, Sonic one or Sonic 2. It's one where Dr. Robotnik has the pod and like little, the ball and chain.

I think that's one. Yeah. Yeah. And for that one, actually, when we were trying to figure out, like, all right,

how do we make this fun if you're the guy and holding the ball and chain? And we had an Xbox controller in our office. So we like, we picked that up by the wire and we were like kind of swinging that back and forth.

And we're like, where's the game with this? And like, pretending like there's like a little heroing around. And we, That's what led us to that particular battle in which you have your little sonic parody character, Dash the Bee, who he doesn't just run back and forth and try to jump up to the player, but he creates these little honeycomb towers that he then tries to jump up onto, you know, to reach you.

Because we found that swinging the ball around, it was really fun to just like knock things down. So we had to devise mechanics that supported that, you know, just to keep the whole experience fun. Hey, this is Chris Plant from Theverge.com. My favorite boss fight is Gygus or Gigis from Earthbound or Mother 2 for hip elite gamers. If you haven't played Earthbound, this is a huge spoiler. It's the final boss of the game. And you ultimately defeat it by praying nine times. And different people from across the video games world, who you've come to be friends with,

they send their prayers back to you. and ultimately the prayer of you, the player, is the final death blow to Gygus. It's prayer, not violence, that wins the game. I don't think that's ever going to happen again in a video game. So I hope you enjoy it because that's the last one. And have you kind of always empathized with the villain? Or I know that you've had this game in your mind for what a decade or close to it in some form. But has this kind of been something that you always wanted to see more of when you're playing?

playing a game and you're playing the square-jaw light side hero and it's, you know, the villain is bad and not very complex. And did you always kind of want to find out more about the villain? Is that what led you to this? Oh, it's, I call it the Batman principle. You know, I've always thought Batman was like the least interesting character in Batman. It's, it's all about the rogue gallery, right? Like everyone loves the villains.

Right. And that's kind of how it's been for me. You know, I love the villains in almost every major animated film or like major friends. Like I like Bowser, like Dr. Robotnik, Gandor. Those characters are always like the really interesting ones to me. Because I feel like as the main character, as like in most games we're the hero, you're kind of stuck to this like kind of template almost. If the character has any personality at all, because a lot of times they just make them a blank slate so you can kind of project yourself on them. And while there is a little bit of projection in nefarious, we definitely wanted the main character to have a personality.

Yeah. Hi, this is Blake Harris, the author of Council Wars. And even after all these years, one of my greatest achievements in life has to be a literation alert ahead, defeating Grumble Grommet in the bubble-bobble boss battle. Phew, I said it correctly. Not only because of the odd visceral joy that came from popping those lightning bubbles and shocking that big, ugly, but because like so many games back then, you know, during that pre-Internet, pre-my parents allowing me to get Nintendo power time period, I had no idea what

to do going into the fight. So there was that whole interesting dynamic that came from trying to figure out the rules of combat. And then all that's compounded by the fact that it's just really, really fun to be a little bubble dragon. How big is your team? And is this the only thing you're working on? And more broadly, how did you get into game design? So the team size, it's primarily two people working on the title. It's me doing all the art animation, and it is Philip Spear who does all the programming. However, we do contract out a lot of work.

Like Matthew Toronto did a majority of our music. And he was supported by David Levy and Doubleclip to create our pretty cool soundtrack. As far as how I got into game design, I went to school for 3D animation back in 2007. I got my first job as a character artist in 2008, and I've essentially been freelancing ever since. my last two major projects where I was a contractor were tadpole treble, which is currently available on Steam. Awesome little game. That's actually our composer, Matthew Tramante, that's his game. It's a game where you play as like a little tadpole and you swim through sheet music.

The other game, Quest of Souls and Necroball, they're kind of the same, like, franchise, Necroball is like kind of a, almost like a spin-off multiplayer title. You're basically your two wizards playing a, like, a wizard sport where you're, you're trying to knock like a skullhead into the opposing wizard's like goal. And there's like zombies spawning. And they're also walking towards your goal. So you have to kind of like contend with them as well. Because if they walk into the opposing wizard's goal, they're worth one point.

So it's, um, it's pretty cool. This is Peter from the Netherlands, also known as how big is the map. We're talking about bosses and video games here. I hate bosses and video games. I don't fight them anymore since Half-Life 1. I remember fighting those marchers and Quake 1, Quake 2. Chiroquan and a lot of all the old games, and it sucked. They always had a weak spot, and I couldn't find it. And I didn't want to search for it because that took too much time. The only reason I thought of show-offs

was because I thought there would be new levels to play after that. But no, the game was finished. What a disappointment. So I don't like bosses, not at my work and not in video games. Give me some weak creatures that I can kill fast and let me just walk peacefully across my maps. In the last couple of years, I'd say last maybe three, four years, it really feels like the indie game market has matured into something just so varied and interesting. And it's not something that was really available to a lot of people, you know, for most of, you know, the last 10, 12 years of gaming, especially on consoles. With the Steam marketplace really being so varied as it is,

how have you seen the industry change with kind of the rise of indie games? Well, it's kind of like that, well, it's kind of like, what we touched on earlier, there's certainly been a large saturation of indie games coming out. I think as the tools become easier, we're going to, you know, just to keep seeing just more and more games

getting cranked out. I still think that, you know, we'll still have like plenty of quality. I think it's a good thing, though. I think it's a good thing that a lot of games are coming out, because it gives us a better opportunity to see, like, great games. And how much of your 3D modeling experience is transferable to

a game like Nefarious, which is a 2D side-scroller? Not a whole lot, honestly. I have been, mostly my, I think because of the explosion of the iPhone, ever since that device came out, I've been getting so many contracts for 2D art that I haven't really needed to use my 3D expertise. Coincidentally, though, we're kind of starting to see the opposite with the rise of the VR, you know, the VE and the Oculus.

You know, 3D work is becoming far more frequent in the, the independent game market, which is also super cool. I'm Nels Anderson and I'm a game designer who recently worked on Firewatch. And before that, I was lead designer on Marker the Ninja. And my favorite boss is Ludwig the Accursed from Bloodbourne, the old hunters. You know, while I think that the orphan of costs is probably the hardest boss in Bloodbourne and an encounter like Father Gascoigne or Vicar Amelia may be more memorable, Ludwig is definitely my favorite.

Now, it's this character you've heard all about through the course of Bloodborm. And when you finally encounter him in the old Hunter's expansion, he's this hideous, misshapen, abomination. But he's also very tragic and kind of pitiable. You know, like all the best characters in Bloodborn, he's not what do you expect. He tells of the fate that befalls that first hunter and all the hunters who have come after him. Mechanically, he's demanding and requires the player be very dynamic and adapt. His environment is, of course, horribly gruesome and laced with small but important details and the music in the encounter is just fantastic.

Ludwig basically represents everything I love about Hidehaka Miyazaki's games, and that's why he's probably my favorite boss. And you mentioned that this game kind of tackles a lot of tropes, and this is a game where, you know, the minions will talk about not standing next to explosive red barrels like minions do in every game or you don't need keys to unlock the chests. you can just break them because you're a bad guy. Was there any game you look to kind of as a guide or a model for mocking gaming conventions? Because, you know, so many games take themselves very seriously and they don't really make fun of themselves. But nefarious does to good effect, I think. Yeah, I'd say a lot of the, I feel like of all the, of all the gaming consoles and all that, I feel like Nintendo really plays with these tropes the most, which leads to a lot of

her jokes like what does princess peach do you know while she's at bowser's castle or whatever that's a good that's a good question and i always like the idea that even though crow is like this maniacal egomaniac you know that he actually like treats his captive well you know that there's like there's exercise ruins um you know when you first bring princess mayapel to your ship uh your your major domo becky um is like preparing her usual you know spelt a la roso like just like really fancy sounding food you know like it's almost like a vacation for these princesses. Do you have any particular favorite boss fights of your own that you use to inform the game?

I don't know if it has much to do with how we ended up implementing a lot of boss fights. But when you asked me that, the boss fight that immediately jumped to my head was the one in Undertale because it just really jumped out at me as like epic and awesome. As far as boss fights that we used for nefarious, I would actually have to say Super Metroid. Oh, wow. Yeah, like the boss fight with Samus. First of all, I just thought it was a cool fight because I love Mother Brain's design. I love that the fight gets interrupted.

And there's like that, you know, a big emotional moment with the Navy Metro. Sorry, it's like a 22-year-old game. I think we're okay. It's a statue of the patient on the 14-year-old games. I don't know. And for that fight, we looked at that idea, like, okay, big giant thing. that shoots lasers, which as we play tested

and iterated on, that became our Deppco, which is like our kind of near the middle, midpoint of the game, the boss fight where you're like this giant robot and you're running through the city. And you're, you have to, this guy Mac is on the left and he's shooting these little energy bolts at you and you have to

actually catch them to stop them from hitting you. But when you catch them, you store them up in your fist and then once you collect four of them, you shoot like this laser. are back at him. Hi, Ben. Hi, Jason. It's Chris Sullentrop. I'm the host of the podcast, Shall We Play a Game, which I host with J.J. Sutherland. I'm also a video game critic for places like the New York Times and Glicksel and elsewhere. When it comes to boss fights, I'm a first day of school kind of guy. I like going to class, getting the syllabus, thinking about all the great fun I'm going to have, reading the books, learning. And then, of course, when you get to that point in the semester or the video game, It's always a little disappointing. Bowser is indisputably the worst part of Super Mario Brothers, probably the greatest video game ever made.

Bioshock, one of my favorite video games, ends with a hilariously bad boss fight that is, you know, out of keeping with the tone of the entire rest of the game. Growing up, I didn't even think of these things as boss fights. It's not terminology we used, but I remember the mothership from the Atari 2,600 game Phoenix, fighting Mike Tyson in Punch Out. And I guess if I need a conventional boss choice, that would be it.

But if you ask me what my favorite interactive video game ending is, I would say it's when John Marston in Red Dead Redemption confronts his foes who've arrived for a shootout and there's no way to win it. And you die almost instantly. And of course, you don't restart and try to win again. The game doesn't end. I won't spoil that part. But to me, what's thrilling and amazing about that sequence, which I think is really,

in one of the best video games ever made is how it subverts your expectations of what a boss fight is, how challenging and difficult it will be, how it will bring together all of the skills that you've learned. And instead, what you do is you come back, retire with Bonnie to your life of farming and solitude. And then, of course, you're brought back into it and die tragically and heroically. And maybe it's not a boss fight, but I think it is. It's a boss fight that you can't win. We talked about just the wave of Steam games, the wave of indie games, and so many of them are defined by sort of a 16-bit throwback retro look. 16-bit is part of your email address, so I assume that that is an era that is near and dear to you. And so how do you go about sort of

honoring the classics and trying to evoke that look, but also try to be distinctive while so many new games are trying to do essentially the same thing. How do you stand out visually? That led to one of our decisions to, because when we were originally thinking about art styles, you know, we were thinking about doing pixel art just because I love, you know, drawing pixel art.

But at the time, there was just a lot of games coming out that were doing that. And so we're like, all right, let's, I guess let's try to modernize, like let's do like a modern 2D game, which we took more inspiration You know, Ray Man, the new Super Mario Brothers, Earthworm Jim, HD, stuff like that. And were those sort of gameplay touchstones, too, for you?

Was there any specific platformer you were modeling it after? I would have to say Earthworm Jim. Yeah. When I'm pitching the mechanics to someone, and I want to explain it in its most, like, simplest terms, I'll usually say, like, you know, Mega Man meets Earthworm Jim, because like Earthworm Gym, we've got 360 aiming mechanics. And like Mega Man, there's a lot of jumping and shooting. For anybody out there who loves games, would love to make games,

but really doesn't know how to start in a career of making games, how would they do it? Well, fortunately, there is a plethora of online resources available to someone who's interested in learning how to basically make games. I mean, you can go to any YouTube channel and just be like, you know, how to make a platformer, and you'll get tons of, like little tutorials. There's subredits.

So that way you can network with other devs, you know, ask for help. I believe even the Unity website has like a good, library tutorials. And I mean,

Unity's free. You just need an internet connection and not even like a super powerful computer, but, you know, just go and download it and, you know, start making games.

Definitely pick a focus. Well, if you want to do it professionally, I think it's always good to pick a focus. If you're making games for yourself, you have a lot more freedom to kind of branch out

and, you know, just kind of, do what feels fun at the time. And I guess Kickstarter doesn't hurt either. That helps you too. Yes, Kickstarter is always great. We're very fortunate in our Kickstarter campaign. We hit our goal of 50,000 in the last 10 minutes of our campaign.

Ooh. Yeah, the morning of the last day. We had to hit like 40,000. I was like, oh, how am I going to raise $10,000 in one day? So it's like, there's no way I could cover the rest of that myself, you know. So it was a very stressful day. Do you find yourself like, is that like the promo part of the business? Is that it wearying sometimes?

It's like, you know, you're making a product. Someone's going to buy it. It's not just like a labor of love. Yeah, I feel like a lot of artists in particular are always that I talk to anyway. They're kind of like that. Like they're really not into self-promotion. I wasn't super into it either. I feel like I've gotten a lot better in it now that we're kind of since we obviously

launched a few days ago. So I forced myself to like get out there. and be like, hey, here's a key, play my game, review it, please. Yeah. Singing out to lets players and doing, actually, I love doing conventions. I really like watching people play the game because I love to see. Nefarious in particular, I try to create like a lot of little moments, you know, where we teach the player in mechanics without outright telling them. And, you know, a bunch of little jokes.

I like seeing with jokes land or, you know, if a joke fails too many times and I'll, you know, rewrite it, stuff like that. All right. Well, Nefarious is out now. You can find it on the Steam Store. You can read more about it at the website nefariousgame.com. And you can find Josh on Twitter at Josh Hano, H-A-N-O. Josh, thank you so much for coming on. Yeah, thanks so much.

I appreciate it. I had a whole lot of fun. And before Jason and I wrap up by talking about a few of our favorite boss battles, we have one more former guest cameo from Charles U, Westworld writer and author of How to Live Safely in a science fictional universe. My favorite boss battle was Mike Tyson, who was the boss of Mike Tyson's Punchout for the N-E-S. I like, well, I didn't like it. I hated it. The first 11 guys are easy. They're idiots. You just figure out their trick and you can reliably beat them every time. But no matter how good you got at that

game, Tyson was always just ridiculous. It was just his difficulty setting was too high. He touches you once and you fall down. So, you know, you get through the first 11 guys without losing. And then it all comes down to this now. You're going into the final battle and your hands are sweaty and your mom's mad at you and like where you have to go down to dinner in a minute. So like this is your last chance and the stakes are just too high for a little kid. And if you lose, you just wasted your afternoon. And I usually lost and kind of ruined your day. But I remember the first time I did win. I walked around in a daze for a while. I just didn't know what to do with myself. I felt like I would never do anything that great again. And I didn't. Okay. So Jason, you and I have not discussed

our favorite boss fight. So give me what makes a good boss fight. What are your favorite? boss fights. What makes a good boss fight? I think the key to a great boss fight is fairness. It can't feel like bullshit. Yeah. I think that's the key. A lot of boss fights can degenerate into this kind of hacking. You feel like you're hacking away at a tree with like a butter knife. Right. And it's just this massive thing that has 10 million hit points and you're just, you know, you find the little movement pattern that you need to do and you just repeat that over and over. It's got to be some variation. And you've got to feel like that you have a chance if you make a mistake. I think you can't be overly punishing.

But it's got to be challenging enough to where, you know, at the end of the thing, your your hands are cramped up and there's a sigh of relief and you feel like you really accomplish something. Yeah. And it's nice if you have to work for it a little bit. If it's not glowing weak points that are just exposed over and over and it's very obvious what you have to do. It's nice if you have to think a little bit. Obviously, every boss has a few different forms. and the more varied they are probably the better.

But I am just a sucker for scale in my boss fights. Yes. Huge something. Like it doesn't even necessarily have to be that hard or that clever. If it is great, that's a bonus. But I just want to be confronted with some monstrosity that just dwarfs my avatar and like takes up the whole screen. And it seems totally improbable that I could ever fight this thing. And then you do.

So a few that came to mind in that category, obviously, God of War has a bunch of bosses like that. So the Colossus of Rhodes in God of War II. Oh, yeah. Poseidon in God of War III. God of War really knows how to do scale. Yeah. And Shadow of the Colossus, of course, I don't know what the best Colossus is. The first one is maybe just the most jarring, like when you actually see a boss that big for the first time.

I don't even know that I could pick a favorite, but if I'm just going with pure size, probably the final colossus is the largest. And then I was thinking, Auxon from Sirius Sam, who is a bus who just like takes up the entire screen and it takes a few different levels to fight him. It's just a really drawn out battle and he's enormous and he towers over you. I love Sirius. Sam. And in that vein, the mothership from Earth Defense Force 2017, which is celebrating its 10-year anniversary. This year, it's just like a giant Death Star looking thing or it looks like the orb from destiny and you're just shooting at it with guns from the ground, which is completely ridiculous,

but it works for that game. And then there are others like the Reaper in Mass Effect 2 and the Riftworm in Gears of War II, which is just like a whole level where you go inside it and you kill it from the inside out. Those are all kind of in that genre of just buses that are too big to fail and then you take them down. Nice. It's a good list. Where do you got? You got any? Well, you know, I'd say I've played mostly shooters and multiplayer shooters. But I would say the big daddies from Bioshock 1 were kind of like a mini boss.

But those fights were just great because they were just so menacing. And you'd fight them in these kind of like areas of the map where there's a lot of mobility. You can kind of duck in and out of like a room into a bar into like some destroyed hotel. And, you know, if you hit them with your with your firepower, the first. Flames would still kind of lick off their metal helmet as it comes at you. And it was just really, really great. I loved hitting him with the bees. That was some of my favorite ones, David versus Ellie in The Last of Us. Do you remember that one? That's kind of like an uncommon boss fight in that it's a dude. And there's some kind of like dissonance, logistical dissonance

in that it's a dude who is really like super hard to kill. He's not a beast. He's not some giant creature. But I remember when the first, when I, the very first time I played it and, you know, the animation stopped and it came right into the fight. He just, there's something about the way that scene is lit in the way he kind of like is, is like marching around looking for Ellie and you're creeping, you know, like behind tables and things like that. It's just so menacing. That's like, that's like, that's a great one. Yeah, it's hard to have a memorable bus in a first person shooter. I think. It's just it's hard to get that variety because you're just shooting ultimately. That's kind of all you can do. I was also thinking of Gannon in Okreene of Time. Yeah. Where you beat Gannendorf and you think it's over and then he rises up.

Those are the ones where if they don't do it right, if they don't calibrate that right, it just feels like bullshit. It's like, oh, God, he's back. I'm a lot. It's like. Right. But that one, it's atmospheric and there's lightning and it's the end of the incredible game and it feels very satisfying. So those are the ones that come to my mind. But feel free to tweet at us, email us, however you want to reach us, share your favorite boss fight memories. And we will be back next Friday. Talk to you then. Bye.